Sword Art Online: KiriAsu Authorized ShipCenter®

[GeneD]

Thinking about it would've been nice if Kirito freaked out the first time someone died in AFO and nobody cared.

To his credit I believe he did ask to check if dying in the game isn't fatal IRL.

[MangaRocks!]

Episode 21:

LOL! Well, that's one way to wake someone up.

As for Asuna: [spoiler]Ugh. Of *course* she had to go to the one place she shouldn't. As soon as she did that, I knew she'd get caught. I mean, yeah, at least she got the key card; but, seriously... this is now stretching even my patience. [/spoiler]

[blkmage]

that was pretty much everything bad about SAO condensed into twenty minutes

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

Well, yeah, that was pretty awful. I guess that is probably the bottom barrel the show can reach, at least, right?

[MangaRocks!]

Episode 22:

Well, that was certainly a lot better than last week, LOL. Fighting was fairly decent, and SPOILER: Highlight text to read: I was actually slightly surprised (and slightly impressed) by that, er, conversation at the end-- I hadn't really been expecting Suguha to just air it all out to him like that, but I'm glad she did.

[blkmage]

great delivery by taketatsu ayana for what's probably my second most favourite part of fairy dance, because I am a mean person who finds joy in the sinking of other ships
SPOILER: Highlight text to read: >Baaaaaawwww onii-chan won't love me because he already has a girlfriend
>Well, it's okay. I still have that cool and nice guy I met in an online game
>BAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW HE'S ACTUALLY MY ONII-CHAN

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

It isn't proper yelling drama if they aren't both yelling though :<

Good fighting and music this episode, though, which are pretty much the only things I care about in this second arc anyways.

[blkmage]

Okay, looks like we're on track to make it to the epilogue, something I was worried that would be cut.

Also I'm sure ALO is great for PvP, but the PvE design is awful. Just trying to figure out how aggro worked in that encounter made me sad.

[MangaRocks!]

Episode 23: SPOILER: Highlight text to read: Figures that the evil nut would rig the game so that it's literally impossible to beat unless you use admin codes. At least that key card was good for something, I guess...

Man, though, the pacing in this second arc... I wish they would have compressed this into a more tolerable length. I mean, I really enjoyed the first arc, but this second one has been pretty 'meh,' IMO (minus a few moments here and there). Plus-- aside from the one back in episode 20-- the second-arc fights (when they even occur) haven't even been as good, either.

Ah well, just two more episodes (and what had better be a darn good ending...) to go.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

This week is a testament to the power of Yuki Kajiura to make kind of lol stuff awesome.

[blkmage]

Episode 23: SPOILER: Highlight text to read: Figures that the evil nut would rig the game so that it's literally impossible to beat unless you use admin codes. At least that key card was good for something, I guess...

Man, though, the pacing in this second arc... I wish they would have compressed this into a more tolerable length. I mean, I really enjoyed the first arc, but this second one has been pretty 'meh,' IMO (minus a few moments here and there). Plus-- aside from the one back in episode 20-- the second-arc fights (when they even occur) haven't even been as good, either.

Ah well, just two more episodes (and what had better be a darn good ending...) to go.

SPOILER: Highlight text to read: It's not that the encounter requires admin access to beat, but the encounter was not designed to be beatable, so players should not have been able to reach the door in the first place. The only reason they were able to do it was because Kirito's stats were broken enough to break the encounter.

As far as pacing goes, it's been pretty much unchanged, except for the omission of what happens between beating the Salamanders and reaching the city.

Anyway, Heathcliff was a much better game designer than this dude.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

I think the issue with Fairy Dance isn't so much the pacing (which feels about the same as SAO) but that it's a completely different feel from the good parts of SAO. I mentioned this before but the fun part about SAO is that it was the characters playing the game and doing game-y things. We had Kirito being cool with his swords and Asuna with her rapier and they cut down monsters and PK'ers and Kirito won the heart of every girl he met like the perfect chuunibyou stand-in and it was serious because people could die but the show was somehow still fun and it made sense for it to be in a video game and stuff. ALO doesn't really feel like there's much of that video game feel that made SAO fun.

[MangaRocks!]

SPOILER: Highlight text to read: It's not that the encounter requires admin access to beat, but the encounter was not designed to be beatable, so players should not have been able to reach the door in the first place. The only reason they were able to do it was because Kirito's stats were broken enough to break the encounter.

As far as pacing goes, it's been pretty much unchanged, except for the omission of what happens between beating the Salamanders and reaching the city.

Anyway, Heathcliff was a much better game designer than this dude.

SPOILER: Highlight text to read: Yeah, I knew that, and that's what I meant, LOL. Sorry, I guess I didn't word that very well.

And as for the pacing-- what I meant by that was that, at least to me, this arc has felt a whole lot slower overall than arc 1 did. And even the slower ep.'s of arc 1 kept me fully interested-- here, not so much. (...And, I mean, it's undeniable that it actually is slower, because arc 1 covered two years' worth of time, and-- minus flashbacks-- this second arc only spans a few days' worth. ) So, IMO, it could have done with some speeding up to match the relatively-brisk-feeling pace (overall) of arc 1.

Totally agree on that last statement, though.

I think the issue with Fairy Dance isn't so much the pacing (which feels about the same as SAO) but that it's a completely different feel from the good parts of SAO. I mentioned this before but the fun part about SAO is that it was the characters playing the game and doing game-y things. We had Kirito being cool with his swords and Asuna with her rapier and they cut down monsters and PK'ers and Kirito won the heart of every girl he met like the perfect chuunibyou stand-in and it was serious because people could die but the show was somehow still fun and it made sense for it to be in a video game and stuff. ALO doesn't really feel like there's much of that video game feel that made SAO fun.

^ I agree, and I think that is indeed probably the main problem I'm having with this arc.

[blkmage]

Fairy Dance is unique compared to the other SAO arcs because of what's at stake and what it's about. Essentially, without the death penalty, what's driving the plot along now is the deadline. This didn't get translated into animation particularly well, because it's missing a lot of Kirito's internal anxiety. And thematically, the reason why it's different is that it acts as sort of the final act of what happened in Aincrad. In fact, Kirito alludes to this himself in this episode.

On boss fights: SPOILER: Highlight text to read: Unbeatable bosses aren't actually something that's unheard of in MMOs, so it's not like it's a transparently jerk move on evil dude's part to hide his evil plans. The prime example of this is the Pandemonium Warden fight in Final Fantasy XI, a boss encounter in which a raid group of 36 people spent 18 hours on it and eventually had to call it off because people were throwing up and passing out by the end of it.

[Falx]

[mechana2015]

I... *facepalm*

[MightiMidget]

Episode 22:

SPOILER: Highlight text to read: Because "we're not real siblings!" makes this so much less creepy...

[blkmage]

Everything about this episode was way more awkward than I imagined it when I read it. The cuts were kinda weird, but there ain't nothing more discomforting than screaming creeper Koyasu.

I mentioned before that we'd hit my second-favourite part of Fairy Dance. Well, next week will be number one.

[MangaRocks!]

there ain't nothing more discomforting than screaming creeper Koyasu.

You've got that right.

And man, good grief-- as if you thought Sugou couldn't get any worse... Thank goodness that's over with!!

I mentioned before that we'd hit my second-favourite part of Fairy Dance. Well, next week will be number one.

Interesting. Hope it's a good finale then.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

Just when I thought it couldn't possibly have a more lol ending than the first arc's, it would appear the show will continue to surprise me with it's high standard of excellence.

Not sure if I'm more impressed by the villain being even dumber or Kirito's ability to bend the universe in his favor going so far as resurrecting dead villains to steal their abilities.

[blkmage]

There are a number of different things going on with that scene.

SPOILER: Highlight text to read: Sugou isn't Kabaya. Kabaya was a genius villain who built everything about virtual worlds from the ground up and set things in motion for his crazy plans. Sugou is just a bad person who tried to use what Kabaya had built to do some forbidden research. From a software engineering perspective, ALO is pretty shoddy. It was likely thrown together on top of SAO, which is why you have weird things happening. Also, Sugou isn't a software engineer like Kabaya. Notice how he doesn't: realize Kirito's stats are broken, use his admin powers to make himself immortal, use his admin powers for anything nontrivial, use his admin powers for anything other than being a really creepy modder, know anything about Yui or any of the systems in ALO.

Kayaba's encounter with Kirito is actually much more important in the long run than giving him more hax to beat Sugou. I suspect that specific encounter is one of the reasons why Fairy Dance is written the way it is. It's to give an excuse for Kayaba to show up and give Kirito the Seed. The Seed basically ends up laying the foundations for all the VR stuff that's going to be happening later on in the series. It's why ALO is still running and why things like New Aincrad and GGO and other things show up. And Kayaba basically copying his existence into the game hints at other developments with the VR tech that are coming down the road.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

It's less that I don't think he can be actually dumb, but rather his being dumb makes him a pretty uninteresting and lackluster villain. Kayaba wasn't like an amazing villain but he was fairly competent and stuff.

Edit: Just to keep things clear, I don't hate SAO or anything. I've mentioned multiple times in this thread my love for generic fantasy, so when there are well-animated swordfights with the Kajiura soundtrack playing I'm actually enjoying this a lot more than I probably should be, and even when the show is really dumb it's dumb in the Kuroko no Basket way of being really entertaining about it. I'd really say the only parts I'd call awful are the rapey/incest parts of the ALO.

[blkmage]

Yeah, Sugou is pretty much the worst villain in the series so far.

I didn't think the oniichan~ parts of the show were particularly awful since she kinda dealt with it early on, and especially because the payoff of the ticking time bomb was so delicious.

[minakichan]

Lack of actual closure in the ending of this episode really makes me scared we'll have another "your princess is in another castle" finale.

At least there were a few cute KiriAsu moments, although I think Sugou being uncreatively gross kind of canceled those out.

Whatever, among the little sister and the fairy wings and the gross villain, I'm just glad ALO will be over soon; really just waiting for GGO in inevitable season 3 (because of a certain something blkmage brought to my attention~)

[blkmage]

SPOILER: Highlight text to read: ＫＮＩＦＥ　ＦＩＧＨＴＳ　ＯＦＦＬＩＮＥ
also Kirito and Asuna being all raburabu yes excellent

[MangaRocks!]

Finale: Well, that was actually pretty excellent! Easily the best episode of this arc (obviously), and I'm glad it went out on such a good note.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

CONGRATULATIONS KIRITO

[spark300c]

some of stuff ep 24 should been have censored or cut out of script. Now I am no sure if I should stop watching SAO.

[MightiMidget]

CONGRATULATIONS KIRITO

LOL! YES. xD

I was happy...enough...with the last episode. I guess. It was satisfying enough, but I kind of wish I had just skipped the entire second arc and watched the last episode. O_O Oh well. . .

[A_Yellow_Dress]

With SAO as popular as it was/is, I think they would be crazy to end it now...

I liked that the finale meant that we got to see the others from the first arc... I've missed them. (However, I found myself trying to figure out who was missing only to remember that 'Oh, that's right... Sachi died.' D:)

I liked it more than I disliked it, but... the second half killed it for me. I was slightly emotional at the end of the first arc. This arc I just sort of felt obligated to finish. Oh well.