The
newly married couple is enjoying their time away from the front line.
But a new guest will take them all the way back to the beginning.
(Source: Crunchyroll)
Spoiler
warning: Review
contains spoilers for the eleventh episode of Sword Art Online.
This
is going to be a quick and dirty post. No, I mean, the content
won't be dirty, it just won't be as long-winded as my other Sword Art
Online posts. Which works, because this episode is more of a prelude
to grander things on the near horizon and not many actual events
occur within "The Girl of Morning Due". However, it is the
first episode featuring our newly married couple, Kirito and Asuna,
who are clearly enjoying their honeymoon at their secluded little
cottage far from the action on the front line. But as their guild
leader reminded them, they won't be able to stay away from the battle
for much longer...
There
is a lot of cute scenes featuring Asuna and Kirito as typical
newlyweds - well, typical newlyweds who are trapped in an MMORPG and
are also concurrently fighting for their lives. The scene where Asuna
rides on Kirito's shoulders and people gawk at them was oddly
adorable, as was when Kirito was trying to spook Asuna out with the
ghost stories. I found Asuna's reactions to his stories very
realistic. Her fears from the outside world, such as ghosts and the
supernatural, still come through in this digital fantasy world. Don't
cry, Asuna, I get spooked too!
Also,
I loved the fact that they've pretty much decided that when
they break out of Sword Art Online and back into the real world,
they'll find each other and fall in love all over again. My heart,
cultivated by years of rom-coms and shojo manga, pretty much burst
into thousands of sparks and rainbows and happy emoji when that
declaration was made. I have no doubt in my mind (or my heart) that
Asuna and Kirito will find each other beyond the boundaries of
Aincrad. Y'all can't stop true love. Or the power of married folks!
Yui
as a character bores me. Right now, she seems like a plot device to
further develop the married relationship between Asuna and Kirito, as
well as shed light upon the fact that there are still people living
on floor one, which was thought to have been abandoned after episode
one. Yes, folks are still on the bottom floor, and for some reason
there's an orphanage? So I assume there wasn't any minimal age cap
for joining SAO, which means these kids joined and were subsequently
abandoned by their parents. Awesome parenting skills. Except for the ones who died in the first month and didn't
just skip off and leave their kids behind. Actually, that is a really
depressing realization, especially if these players' avatars actually
reflect their true age and their real parents brought them into the
game only to die on higher levels. (In the words of Hurley from LOST,
"Dude."
With that sad infliction Jorge Garcia does so well, of course.)
I
probably should not be so hard on poor Yui, considering she has
amnesia, but the fact that she reverts to this child-like state and
calls Asuna and Kirito as her Mom and Dad for some reason grates
after a while. It's not terribly realistic. Although it does make me
wonder what kind of brain damage can be sustained in Aincrad through
the virtual reality set everyone is wearing, if a user's memory can
be so heavily distorted.
Also,
maybe it's because I played a lot of MMORPGs back in the day, but why
is everyone assuming Yui is who she says she is. Do you know how many
assassins I played with on Diablo 2 - a female class - that were
being controlled by guys behind their keyboards? A lot. Although I
don't blame the guys for playing as avatars of skimpily dressed blade
wielding women: assassin is best class, come at me bro.
We
also see the pathetic Aincrad Liberation Army again, a faction of
which we saw in the previous episode fall to a level boss after being
whipped into exhaustion by their leader. Naturally, these Army
soldiers are drunk on power and abusing the children left behind on
floor one. Luckily, Asuna is there to teach them a lesson. She didn't
even have to flaunt her status as a guild member and really high
ranking soldier on the front line; her skill set with her sword and
her spirit alone send the Army's so-called soldiers scurrying away.
Did I mention I love Asuna? Gosh, I love Asuna.
So
is Yui a glitch? A genuine amnesia patient? A liar and a creep? At
the end of the episode, we know less about Yui than when we started -
which means we're in the negatives. But Asuna and Kirito clearly care
about her, therefore we as viewers must care about her safety and
memory. I hope she turns out to be a plant from the game's creator,
sent to remind the two of them that Aincard isn't a safe place and
that their happiness is not guaranteed. Watch me be Jossed royally,
though. If anything, Sword Art Online is good at dashing all of my
theories to the pavement.
No comments:
Post a Comment