Underworld- Sword Art Online: Alicization First Episode Review, Future Directions, and Brief Parallels Between Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya and John Patrick “Jack” Ryan

“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?” —Morpheus, The Matrix

Kirito is recruited to test the development of a new technology known as the Soul Translator (STR) system, an interface that directly interacts with the neurological impulses within the brain to create a dream-like sequence. In his time using the device, Kirito befriends Alice in a fantasy world, but after venturing out of bounds after their search for ice takes them into a deep cave, Alice is taken away for execution. Meanwhile, Sinon asks Kirito to help her with another Bullet of Bullets Tournament in Gun Gale Online, after they confront a team whose modus operandi is killing other players. While he listens to Sinon’s request, Kirito reveals to Asuna he’s been working on an experimental new full-dive system several orders of magnitude more sophisticated than any previous technology. He later expresses to Asuna a desire to go overseas to study North American technologies, and encounters Jonny Black, the remaining Death Gun member who was never apprehended. Despite his attempts to fend off Black, Kirito is stabbed with an injector containing succinylcholine. Thus, Sword Art Online‘s third season, Alicization for brevity, has begun: unusual in its opening, and unusual for having four cours’ worth of episodes, Alicization is the next great journey for the Sword Art Online franchise. Out of the gates, Alicization wastes no time in setting up the new environment and new stakes. I’ve long regarded Sword Art Online with a mixture of engagement and disappointment: on one hand, the character development is lacking and outrageous, but on the other hand, world-building and storytelling are solid. Having followed Sword Art Online since its first season, some interesting patterns are also beginning to emerge from this series, especially with respect to Kirito, a bit of a controversial character at the centre of virtually all discussions on Sword Art Online.

Originally a Sword Art Online beta participant, Kirito became known for his past experience after the SAO incident began, and sought constantly to prove himself. Kirito’s singular determination and persistence, in conjunction with a deep-seated desire to help those around him and prevent deaths where he could help it, eventually led him to defeat Sword Art Online’s lead developer and creator. With his involvement, the Japanese government begin involving him in solving a variety of crimes surrounding the VR technology. Through Kirito’s adventures, his uncanny ability to amass female companions and develop limit-breaking skills from raw emotions have made him somewhat of a dull character; many count Kirito to be a clueless young man who stumbled into incredible fortune, as Tom Clancy might put it. Infallible, firmly determined to do what is right and look out for those around him, Kirito does indeed resemble Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, the central character to Clancy’s early novels. Born in Baltimore, Ryan majored in economics and minored in history before joining the Marines, where he was injured in a helicopter crash. Leaving the Marines, Ryan becomes a stockbroker and makes several million on Wall Street before enrolling in a PhD. While in England, Ryan saves the Royal Family from a terrorist attack and is knighted. His abilities lead him to become a consultant for the CIA, and Admiral James Greer, noticing Ryan’s accomplishments, offer him a position at the CIA. Ryan is promoted and later, Ryan reluctantly accepts the post of Vice-President. When a plane crash caused by a Japanese airline pilot kills most of the administration, Ryan is made the President of the United States. Clancy originally created Ryan as an every-man, and from an external perspective, it is true that Ryan stumbles into incredible fortune. Like Reki Kawahara’s Kirito, Ryan is competent, but is otherwise an ordinary man dedicated to doing what’s right. Circumstances come, time and time again, that force both Kirito and Ryan to step their game up. Rising to the occasion each time, both become well-known in their own worlds, with Ryan taking on the presidency twice, and Kirito becoming regarded as an asset in the controversies surrounding VR technology. Clancy uses Ryan to voice his own opinions on the political landscape, creating a character whose position of power allows Clancy to, in effect, write out his thoughts on what a government should do. Kawahara likely wrote Kirito with a similar idea in mind, that as Kirito continued progressing, his experiences would similarly make him suitable for providing a means for Kawahara to express his thoughts on where VR technologies are moving, and their subsequent impact on society.

Screenshots and Commentary

• Sword Art Online was wreathed in controversy from the day it began, and was polarising the day it began. At the start of Alicization (IPA aˈliˈzāSH(ə)n rather than aˈliˈkāSH(ə)n as I originally imagined), however, Kirito’s traits are nowhere to be seen. Curious and and somewhat chivalrous, Kirito appears to behave as any child would, working on his assignments, messing around with Eugeo and enjoying Alice’s baking.

• While trying to seek out ice to keep their food from spoiling, the turn of events change their world forever. The great advantage of Sword Art Online is that there is opportunity to depict a variety of settings, and with A-1 Pictures driving the show, audiences are treated to visually pleasing environments and animation. Compared to 3Hz’s presentation of Alternative, A-1’s world is brighter, more crisply animated and more immersive.

• If and when I am asked about Sword Art Online, I’ll say that if Sword Art Online aside from Kirito’s unparalleled tendency to become involved in outrageous situations and implausible backstories for characters, then the series otherwise did a reasonable job of create a compelling environment to explore the prevalence of virtual technologies and the impact on social sub-systems in a society.

• Now that I understand why Kirito is written in this manner, and see his similarities to Jack Ryan, my antipathy for Kirito diminishes slightly. At the end of the day, I think maturity is the deciding factor here: Kirito was originally immature and prone to moping around, while Jack Ryan’s sense of duty means that he will enter situations that he may not agree with and still do what is right. Consequently, if I were to offer a suggestion into Sword Art Online, it would have been to make Kirito a ways older, as a university student, and then have him meet male and female gamers along the way. Similarly, I could come around if Kirito’s decisions in Alicization are consistently more rational and mature, more befitting those of a man than a boy.

• The world inside the STR is said to be many orders of magnitude more sophisticated than anything seen previously, and a bit of digging around finds that this system directly interfaces with the neurons of the brain to create dream-like experiences. Reading the summaries in writing makes it difficult to appreciate what is going on, and whatever other faults there might be in Sword Art Online, A-1’s execution means that these stories become much more approachable.

• Alicization has number of references to Lewis Carrol’s “Alice in Wonderland”. Written in 1865, the story’s nonsensical premise and use of logic makes it a popular work to allude to in both software and science fiction. Originally intended to be a parody of Victorian culture, the story has since been used to represent flights of fancy. I’ve never read the story in full for myself, and so, will not likely fully appreciate all of the references made to it, but some are common enough so that it’s clear when something is being said in allusion to “Alice in Wonderland”.

• When Alice’s accidental contact with the Dark World is discovered, she is arrested and set to be executed. Lacking any of his abilities elsewhere, Kirito is powerless to stop the knight from taking off. Like any nightmare, Kirito soon wakes up shortly after, only with tears in his eyes and very little memory of what’s happened. Sword Art Online is set in 2022, and by the events of Alicization, it is 2027; originally airing in 2012, I wondered if the resurgence in consumer-grade VR technologies would begin with the Oculus Rift.

• While we’ve made considerable strides in GPUs and power supplies, technical limitations still limit VR from being as robust as they are in Sword Art Online. Convenience is still the main issue, given that the need to set up motion sensors, connective cables and necessity of having a powerful desktop to render the images in 3D make VR setups one that require considerable expense and space. It is unlikely that real-world VR will reach the same prevalence as seen in Sword Art Online by 2022, but I hesitate to say “never reach that point” because technology is always marching ahead, and some things once thought to be impossible, such as virtual assistants, are now becoming increasingly commonplace.

• Folks complaining about customisation in things like Battlefield V should probably hold their tongues: the customisation seen in GGO is far beyond anything DICE is likely to implement into Battlefield games, and in such games, it is most fair to implement a system where armour and protection in gear be inversely proportional with movement speed and agility. Simply put, players wearing Sinon’s loadout would be quite fast, but at the expense of durability.

• Liz’s in-game appearance resembles that of Sakura Quest‘s Yoshino Koharu, but beyond their outward characteristics, are completely different. Liz is voiced by Ayahi Takagaki, whereas Yoshino is voiced by Ayaka Nanase. She uses a Mossberg shotgun here against their unknown assailants, and admittedly, her choice of customisations is rather more appropriate than that of Sinon’s.

• Silica mans the mounted machine gun here and lays down suppressive fire. It’s been a while since the likes of GGO has graced this blog, and unlike Alternative‘s Squad Jam, Bullet of Bullets (itself named after “King of Kings”) has a different rule set. Battle royale was the focus of Sword Art Online II‘s first half, and in reality, the basis for the battle royale shooter was inspired by the DayZ mod for Arma II. In 2013, Brendan Greene subsequently took this concept and further modified it in his own DayZ mod, drawing inspiration from Battle Royale, a Japanese film.

• Since then, the concept had widely taken off: proponents cite the excitement and unknown as the biggest thrill of this genre, while folks like me, lacking patience, would prefer more traditional shooters. With battle royale games becoming increasingly commonplace, giants like Activision and DICE have taken notice: Black Ops IV and Battlefield V have their own battle royale modes.

• To make it clear, I’m not in the camp that hates the mere concept of Sword Art Online, nor am I in the camp that believes Sword Art Online to be flawless and incomparable. Instead, I see the series as a reasonably entertaining one, with its strengths and weaknesses. Of late, word has reached my ear that folks are taking Alicization as a chance to drive up their own visibility: apparently, hating on this series is what’s trendy right now. Both aware of the flaws in this series and of what it does well, my assessment of Alicization will be determined by the enjoyability factor. I can enjoy and recommend this series even if there are things I did not like, for instance.

• Sinon attempts to recruit Kirito to help her in the next Bullet of Bullets, which he accepts. One aspect of Sword Art Online that I found completely unnecessary were the implausible stories some characters had. Sinon is an example of this: having picked up a pistol and killed a bank robber as a child, she developed a fear for handguns. When GGO was introduced, she played the game with the aim of overcoming her fear. Having Sinon play the hero was strictly unnecessary: had she witnessed a firearm go off in her childhood, the effects would have been similar to drive the story forwards without need for this additional drama.

• If Kirito is Jack Ryan, then it makes sense to see Asuna as Caroline “Cathy” Muller-Ryan, Ryan’s wife. Both Cathy and Asuna are sensible, smart and concerned whenever their respective partner puts himself in the path of danger while on duty. Asuna worries about Kirito’s health, and Cathy grows suspicious, before concerned, after Ryan reveals that he’s doing fieldwork for the CIA. I’m certain that had the technology existed in reality, Cathy would likely track Ryan’s health the same way Asuna does for Kirito.

• Kirito explains the concept behind the STR system to Asuna and Sinon here, stating that photons inside the microtubules of the body carry the soul. This is a reference to the orchestrated objective reduction theory, which supposes that the quantum vibrations in microtubules are somehow responsible for consciousness. While I appreciate that Alicization is science fiction, this is wrong: microtubules are part of the cytoskeleton, participating in maintaining cell shape and transportation by providing a pathway for motor proteins traverse. Thanks to dynamic instability, the tubulin monomers that make up microtubules can assemble and disassemble rapidly in response to conditions within the cell: dynamic instability and other cellular conditions would make microtubules ill-suited for storing information; by Kirito’s account, if we held this to be true, every time the microtubule disassembled, the photons would escape, causing information loss.

• We’re at the end of the Thanksgiving Long Weekend, a time to mostly relax and capitalise on the pleasant weather. After a month of non-stop cloud cover, things have finally cleared up, giving rise to the beautiful autumn skies I know the area for. The trees did not yellow quite as nicely this year on account of the unpleasant weather: most of the leaves are still green or else went straight to brown, but otherwise, it was very pleasant. Weather or no, however, Thanksgiving dinner was as pleasant as always: after an afternoon of cooking, things were ready to be enjoyed. Besides turkey, we also had ham, cheese prawns and mashed potatoes of a home-made recipe. As well, the turkey turned out well: by cooking the it with brine and adding carrots, onions and parsley to the interior, the cooking forces moisture into the turkey.

• Kirito expresses a desire to study VR over in the United States: the US is indeed the forefront of VR technology at present, and is also home to some of the world’s most advanced software and hardware groups. Asuna supports his decision and resolves to be by his side: at this point in Sword Art Online, I’m glad that it is established that Kirito and Asuna are meant to be together, and once the love tesseract plaguing Sword Art Online was solved, the series could finally explore more interesting ground. Of everyone, Asuna is the most similar to Cathy Ryan, so I figure that she’s the most suitable to be with Kirito.

• Kirito and Asuna run into Johnny Black, a member of Laughing Coffin who would later develop an addiction to murder and participated in the Death Gun incident. When Kirito confronts him, Black stabs Kirito with succinylcholine: in Tom Clancy’s The Teeth of the Tiger and Dead or Alive, the Campus employs it as an agent to dispose of enemies. Clancy and other fiction writers characterise it as the ideal murder weapon: it acts quickly, relaxing muscles to the point of shutting down the heart and starving the brain of oxygen. Furthermore, succinylcholine metabolises into succinic acid, amongst other things, which is not something routinely looked for unless one was suspecting a murder with this compound.

• In his fight with Black, Kirito is hit with a lethal dose: unless he is put on a respirator, the next few minutes for him will be living hell, as the Emir in Dead or Alive discovers. Eventually, the Campus uses other methods beyond what they colloquially refer to as poison pens: by the events of Locked On, the drug is not utilised, and Clark only uses it for a hit on a Libyan terrorist cell in Threat Vector. This is a potent way to begin Alicization, and from what little I know of this arc, Kirito will be sent back into the STR system, where he will continue to unravel the mystery of Alice and her fate. A year’s worth of Alicization is on the table, and with so many unknowns on the table, I think the best course of action will be to sit down and simply enjoy the ride.

With this in mind, Kirito’s portrayal, as a character who stumbles into incredible fortune, has a justification from a narrative perspective; Kirito’s role in the anime becomes more relevant, providing viewers an idea of what Kawahara thinks of VR. One episode into Alicization, and the traits that define Kirito of older episodes is absent: he is more weary, more reserved and contemplative, even if he does still allow his emotions to get the better of him. His characterisation in the anime has improved over time, signifying a gradual maturity. Of course, at this point, it is still early into Alicization, so it remains to be seen as to whether or not some of the weaker aspects of Kirito’s character make a return, or if his experiences continue to shape his decisions in a rational manner. Over the next year, I imagine there will be plenty to cover and discuss. Because of the scale Alicization, however, I will not be blogging about this series with my usual frequency: Sword Art Online‘s strength is exploring details, and the big-picture materials I tend to cover usually require several episodes before there is something significant to say. Further to this, blogging with a high frequency about any series is a bit of a challenge on my end, so I would prefer not to burn out writing about Sword Art Online. Having said this, I will be watching the series and will return to offer feedback after certain milestones in this series. It would make sense, for example, to write about Alicization once the halfway point is reached, and once the finale has aired. With a year ahead, this is looking to be an interesting series, and while I might not be writing about it half as much as half of my readers might like, folks looking to pick my mind about Alicization are always free to do so here, or on Twitter, should they so choose.

Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online: Whole-series Review and Reflection

“Behind every gun sight is a human being. We are those people.” –Battlefield 1 Prologue

Teaming up with Miyu, Karen introduces her to Gun Gale Online, where she decides to roll with a pair of Milkor MGLs. They participate in the next Squad Jam tournament; shortly after the game starts, Karen and Miyu spawn in at the opposite end of the map to Pitohui and Gōshi. Karen is immobilised after falling into a trap at the start, but manages to ambush an enemy team and push their way into a dome, where they defeat pursuing enemies, and Karen relinquishes supplies from another player in exchange for a kiss. Meanwhile, several teams have formed an alliance with the goal of taking out Pitohui and her team, but are promptly slaughtered. When Karen and Miyu run into the rhythm athletics club players, they agree to properly duel another day and work together. Pushing towards Pitohui’s position, Miyu and Karen capitalise on a distraction the rhythm athletics club players provide with their anti-tank rifle. While Karen is immobilised, Miyu draws fire from Gōshi, and manages to draw out the pair. A vehicle pursuit follows, ending with a brutal final fight where Karen severs Pitohui’s carotid artery, before another team finishes them off to claim victory in the tournament. In the real world, Karen receives a birthday gift from the rhythm athletics club, and Gōshi explains his relationship with Pitohui. He takes them to visit her – it turns out that Pitohui is none other than Karen’s idol, Elsa Kanzaki. Elsa is surprised that Karen’s deduced her identity, and kisses her. Later, Karen and Elsa return to Gun Gale Online in pursuit of the rush that can only come from hunting things down and killing them. This brings Alternative to a close, and while superior to Sword Art Online‘s main incarnation in virtually all ways, Alternative nonetheless inherits some of the elements that made the Sword Art Online series more melodramatic and ill-conceived.

The weakness in Alternative lies entirely in Elsa and Gōshi’s backstory and motivations for playing Gun Gale Online: an implausible relationship borne of character flaws so severe that in real life, clinical intervention and law enforcement would have certainly intervened. It is immensely difficult to accept these as the driving factors for why Elsa and Gōshi are in Gun Gale Online and fighting with the intensity that they do, breaking the immersion and authenticity of a spin-off that is otherwise superb. Setting up contrived, unrealistic situations for some of the characters for the singular purpose of creating melodrama is ineffective in raising the audience’s interest and a practise that I find to detract from the story, and moreover, in the case of Alternative, this is a missed opportunity to have told a much more meaningful story about games and social behaviours. In particular, Elsa’s character could have suffered from gaming addiction and aggression associated with withdrawal symptoms, while Gōshi certainly did not require such an objectionable backstory and instead, could have simply played the role of a concerned manager worried about Elsa’s ability to perform on stage. In doing so, Alternative would be able to explore themes of addiction and recovery, and perhaps illustrate how moderation might be one solution to addressing addiction problems among individuals. Through meeting Karen, Elsa could have simply regained her love for performing and with everyone’s help, manage her work and gaming in a more balanced manner. All of this logically fits into the flow of events within Alternative, and in fact, save for this (albeit major) change of motivations from Elsa and Gōshi, it’s not difficult to imagine that Alternative could have progressed in a very similar manner without losing its momentum – the inclusion of more current social issues over fabricated drama would have allowed Alternative to genuinely set itself apart from other instalments with the Sword Art Online brand and impress audiences to the extent that Kirito is unlikely to achieve.

Screenshots and Commentary

• When Miyu first spawns into Gun Gale Online, she is given a large amount of funds and blows it on a pair of Milkor MGLs. These 40mm six-shot grenade launchers fire a variety of low-velocity rounds out to 400 meters, and in Battlefield 4, acted as a battle pickup. Miyu’s character was optimised for support, and in her shoes, I would’ve gone with a reliable mid-range LMG such as the M240B in place of grenade launchers. However, being Sword Art Online, characters don’t always choose the best of loadouts and yet, somehow still manage to do well enough with them – this stands in contrast with Battlefield 4‘s MGL and other battle pickups, which are only useful in some situations and are otherwise outclassed by standard weapons.

• To get Miyu accustomed with the mechanics of Gun Gale Online, Karen agrees to train with her, and here, after a near miss, Karen reprimands Miyu, who is still getting used to her MGLs. However, over time, Miyu becomes comfortable with her loadout, to the point where she gives Matimi0 a run for his money as far as effectiveness goes with her weapons. Throughout the course of her run in Squad Jam, Miyu never seems to run into the constraints that Matimi0 outlines as being the limitations of Battlefield 4‘s battle pickups, and so, one is forced to accept that, while Alternative does a great job with most of its mechanics, it’s not fully reflective of the sorts of things that folk pick up by playing shooters.

• One feature that DICE is definitely not going to add to Battlefield V will be player hubs where one can eat virtual meals and the like: it was revealed that Battlefield V will have a battle royale mode, and while I’m not particularly big on this game mode on account of the slow gameplay, I can understand DICE wanting a piece of the battle royale market (Activision has announced its intention to add a battle royale mode to Black Ops IV). Even against the likes of Fortnite, DICE has the advantage in that the Frostbite Engine is a tried-and-true technology – it’s been handling 64 player servers with solid performance since Battlefield 3, and large maps are a staple of the Battlefield franchise. Thus, even if I don’t play battle royale, I think it’s a great move on DICE’s part to add this mode.

• Although Miyu might be a gamer who puts me to shame with her profound knowledge of games and in terms of pure hours, her decision to eat nine cartons of ice cream prior to joining Karen in a Squad Jam is foolish to the point of hilarity: she gets the runs for her troubles and is very nearly late for their match. One of the biggest disadvantages about full-immersion VR games as seen in Sword Art Online is that there is not an option to pause out of a game. When I game, I find that the pause feature is the most critical, since I’m busy enough so need to leave games with a non-trivial frequency. For online multiplayer shooters like Battlefield, I usually camp in some remote corner or stay at the spawn screen, and hope that I’m not idle long enough for the server to kick me.

• My last Alternative post featured my reaction to Pitohui’s situation, but since Karen and Miyu are unlikely to tell Pitohui to go fuck herself and stop the events of Alternative cold in its tracks, I’ve opted to go with a different quote for this finale post – sourced from Battlefield 1‘s opening cinematic, the juxtaposition in Alternative is an appropriate place for such a quote: in the context of Battlefield 1, the line refers to the fact that soldiers in war are people, each with their own story. However, the line is also relevant to Alternative in that Karen sees her opponents as people who are playing the game and trying to have a blast, the same as her: she makes a clear distinction between gaming and the real world, using Gun Gale Online as an escape. This stands in contrast with how Pitohui seemingly plays Gun Gale Online.

• In the match’s opening moments, Miyu runs into explosive traps that blow her legs off, resulting in one of the most adorable apologies I’ve seen in any anime for quite some time. Unlike DOOM or Wolfenstein, Gun Gale Online does not have any blood and gore even though limbs can be severed, and bodies bisected. I imagine this design is by choice rather than hardware limitations in-universe: using digital effects would lower the game’s ESRB rating to “Teen” rather than “Mature” and allow Gun Gale Online to reach a wider market. Within ten minutes, her limbs regenerate, and the pair continue on with their goal of reaching Pitohui.

• Karen’s avatar, LLEN, is entirely speed driven: against opponents, her advantage is surprise, but she’s also surprisingly fragile. In games where I have a choice, I usually go with slower, more heavily armoured characters because they handle most similarly with the spartans of Halo 2. If fighting LLEN, strategy would be key: Karen is what one would call a hipfire scrub, and her fighting style emphasises speed at close range, so one would reasonably counter with good mid-to-long range options. A DMR and traps would certainly do the trick, although it would also be a fun challenge to trade blows with such an avatar using whatever equivalent Gun Gale Online has as the Doom Slayer.

• Moving through a railyard, Karen spots for Miyu, who uses her MGLs as a makeshift mortar and hammers all opposing players with ease. Battlefield 3, 4 and 1 include mortars: when used in conjunction with good recon players and their ability to spot, mortars are powerful to the point of ludicrousness. Mortars are useful for shelling positions with a large enemy presence, but as stationary weapons, they also leave operators exposed to retaliatory fire – one of my favourite pastimes in Battlefield is humiliating mortar users by killing them with weak weapons.

• My curiosity with the Alternative loadout led me to run a naked P90 and the MGL in Battlefield 4: coming back in from Battlefield 1, the movement feels much more limited, and hit detection is not as responsive, but the time to kill is significantly more satisfying, and with a P90 having no attachments, I nonetheless managed to do quite well in TDM on Operation Locker. Like Matimi0 shows, however, the MGL is rather less useful: I did end up scoring a double kill with it when I found one on Siege of Shanghai in TDM, but the weapon is very restricting. I conclude that Karen and Miyu are probably uncommonly lucky half the time with their situations, if they are able to make their loadouts work as well as they did, and one wonders if Alternative‘s writers have some experience in Battlefield or other shooters.

• The hipfire penalty is strong with this one: Pitohui is seen firing an AK-74M here from the hip against ambushing enemies, and while she’s touted as being highly effective, during the fight against the amassed enemy players, it seems that their inability to use cover and strategy, coupled with their tendency to charge towards Pitohui, contributed to their loss more than any exceptional skills or gear on Pitohui’s part: it’s not exactly hard to kill someone charging forwards. The best counter against Pitohui’s dug-in group, under the assumption of superior numbers, would be sustained artillery and mortar fire, before closing the distance and picking off any survivors with mid-range weapons.

• Evidently, resupplies are not a thing in Gun Gale Online, and Karen expends more ammunition than intended. She’s able to acquire some from an unscrupulous-looking fellow in exchange for a kiss: long presented as a practical individual, Karen’s actions here are not particularly surprising, given that she knows this is a game, and that in exchange for something few will likely remember, she will be given the provisions needed to carry on with her objectives.

• The players on Team Slayer are counted as the most fearsome of the players participating in this Squad Jam tournament. Donning armour that resembles the Praetor Suit of DOOM, this team is armed with Heckler & Koch XM-8 rifles, experimental light-weight rifles that were born of a want for versatile, durable replacements for the M4 and M16 assault rifles. A good assault rifle is all one needed in Battlefield 3 and 4, as well as most games: they strike a balance between DPS and accuracy at range, making them highly adaptable.

• The rhythm athletics club field a WWII-era PTRD-41; alternatively known as the Degtyaryov Anti-Tank Rifle, it was a Soviet weapon that could punch through up to 40 mm of armour at 100 metres (compared to the .50 BMG’s ~22.2mm at 91 metres). After sacrificing one of their own to act as a shield, the rhythm athletics club blow away Gōshi’s shield, forcing him to retreat, and use the opportunity to press the attack, but come under sniper fire. Their actions create the distraction that Karen and Miyu need to close the distance and flank the cabin that Pitohui is recovering in, after she takes a near-lethal shot from an enemy sniper. Karen eliminates this sniper, and the remainder of her team give themselves up to defend Pitohui.

• When Pitohui recovers enough of her health, she decides to emulate Lord Vader’s massacre at the end of Rogue One. Like Kylo Ren’s pale emulations of one of the most iconic Sith Lords of all time, Pitohui’s gleeful slaughter of an enemy force with her lightsaber, however fun it was to watch, barely holds a candle to the sheer impact of Vader’s methodical, calculated elimination of Rebel soldiers in Rogue One.

• Because Karen seems to lose most of her motivation after watching Pitohui dominate everything that tries to stop her, Miyu decides to jump into the open and in the process, binds Karen’s shoelaces together to give her some time to regroup. Miyu references the Gordian Knot here: it refers to a tale where an oracle at Telmissus decreed that any man who could unravel an seemingly unsolvable knot would hereafter be king of Phrygians. In some versions of this story, when Alexander the Great was confronted with the knot, he simply drew his sword and slashed. Since then, the Gordian Knot refers to a problem where thinking outside of the box can offer a solution that conventional thinking might not. Miyu’s rationale is that Karen’s overthinking things, and forcing Karen to slow down might allow her to see that settling things with Pitohui is much simpler than she might otherwise think it to be.

• From a technical perspective, Alternative does not impress in the artwork department: the world of Gun Gale Online during the Squad Jam mode is monotonous, with the golden glow of evening permeating all environments save the social hub, which is eternally locked in the night. Battlefield 1 and The Division have dynamic weather, as does The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – it stands to reason that a game as technically sophisticated as Gun Gale Online would conceivably have dynamic weather that could alter the way players approach a problem, and while one might argue that unchanging weather is more fair for battle royale modes, I counter that shifting weather patterns, especially those affecting visibility, forces players to alter their tactics. As such, those with more familiarity with the game and a higher skill level would therefore adapt more readily.

• In the final confrontation, it ultimately boils down to a confrontation between two opponents who both are fighting for the sake of exhilaration, and because of a promise they’d made to give it their all when challenging one another. This fight would’ve stood alone just fine even without Pitohui’s threats to kill herself and Gōshi, and as argued above, the excessively dramatic setup for why Pitohui and Gōshi play Gun Gale Online comes across as being corny, implausible. This is the one strike I have against Alternative, a series that I feel could’ve done to deal with contemporary and more plausible issues, such as gaming addiction and its surrounding mental health challenges.

• After a firefight that sees Karen’s second P90 destroyed, combat enters the realm of melee. It should not take a whole lot of effort to convince readers that had Pitohui’s situation merely be that of a gaming addict who suffers from severe withdrawal and anger issues when unable to game, and that Karen is trying to get Pitohui to come around by beating her, Alternative‘s flow would largely remain unchanged, and the progression would have continued very closely to what we ended up seeing in Alternative. Of course, I suppose it would not be Sword Art Online if at least a handful of ridiculous situations were not presented.

• Karen’s strongest suit is her pragmatism: she goads Pitohui into attacking, and then knifes her. However, she looks to meet her end when Pitohui picks her up and prepares to execute her. A distraction, in the form of Gōshi and Miyu arriving, leads Pitohui to shoot Gōshi for setting up a situation that favoured Karen, and Miyu “frees” Karen from Pitohui’s grip, slicing off Karen’s hands in the process. This forces Karen to take out Pitoshui with the only weapon that she has remaining to her in a brutal manner, and I admit that Karen’s playstyle as LLEN is a bit of a turn-on.

• I’ve never been a particular fan of the deranged faces in Sword Art Online when characters go in for the kill, especially those of Kirito’s, but for Karen’s execution of Pitohui, the faces seem to work fine without coming across as extraneous. Karen’s actions in Gun Gale Online are continually unexpected, even if they are consistent with her play style, and this is one of the aspects that make me particularly fond of Karen as a character in Alternative. After Karen chews through Pitohui’s internal carotid artery, she defeats her, but does not live long enough to savour the moment: Team Slayer arrives and scavenges kills off Karen.

• I refer to TS as Team Slayer simply because their powered armour resembles the Doom Slayer’s Praetor Suit: close inspection of the armour’s design finds that it has rounded elements on the shoulder and chest piece that makes it similar to the Praetor Suit, rather than the Mjolnir armour variants seen in Halo. Had Gun Gale Online allowed players to play as the Doom Slayer, right down to having the same powerups and abilities, however, it might’ve been a little too much – DOOM encourages players to go in up close and personal for brutal glory kills, and seeing Pitohui and LLEN ripped apart the same way the Doom Slayer kills Hell’s dæmons would not be suitable for television, even if the violence in Gun Gale Online is restricted to a simplified red grid texture and particle effects denoting injury.

• In an anti-climatic closing to the second Squad Jam competition, Karen and Pitohui die in one another’s arms, bringing things to a close. To have another team come in and win is a plausible outcome: so focused are Karen and the others on taking Pitohui out that they neglected another capable team’s presence. This is one aspect of battle royale games that is raised: it is possible to do very well by picking one’s battles and not engaging in every encounter. Some of my friends who’ve played Fortnite, for instance, have gotten very far into the game simply by avoiding active combat and only picking off survivors following firefights.

• The rhythm athletics club gift Karen a necklace for her birthday in the aftermath of the Squad Jam. As promised, more sweets and tea are had: Karen keeps her word, and throughout Alternative, Karen’s personality and motivations are what kept me interested in watching the series. She’s the polar opposite of Kirito: I actually have no problems with Kirito’s exploits in-game any more than I do with Karen’s exploits in-game. Instead, it is the presentation his real world actions that I find bothersome; Kirito is presented as being worthy of working alongside law enforcement and government agencies despite an lack of formal training, beyond his entanglement in some situations.

• I get that Kirito, at a certain level, is similar to Jack Ryan Senior of the Tom Clancy universe, but most of Jack Ryan’s achievements follow a somewhat logical pattern. By comparison, Kirito’s circumstances simply happen. As my grievances with this particular aspect of Sword Art Online is a lengthy one, we’ll return discussion to Alternative, where Pitohui agrees to have Karen meet with her in person as a bit of a prize for having bested her in single combat. While we’ve not seen much of Miyu in the real world, my impressions of her are that she’s a bit similar to Girls und Panzer‘s Saori Takebe and gaming club members, being both highly interested in VR games and has a bit of an eye for men.

• Gōshi’s story behind how he met Pitohui and the formation of their relationship subsequently is pretty messed up: I’m not sure what was going through the writers’ heads when they designed things in this manner, given that it is implausible and also reflects poorly on Gōshi’s character by presenting him as weak and ineffectual, lacking any agency. By comparison, Karen and Miyu are solid characters because they have agency. I’m not sure why characters in Sword Art Online necessarily need such unrealistic backstories: Sword Art Online‘s Sinon is another example of this, and I found that her fear of firearms could have stemmed from a different story that doesn’t involve her playing the hero.

• Up until now, I’ve referred to everyone by their real names save Pitohui, and it is here that Pitohui is shown to be the singer Elsa Kanzaki, Karen’s idol. While she’s voiced by Yōko Hikasa, her singing voice is provided by Kameda Reona. Diminutive in stature, one wonders how she manages to pound Gōshi into the ground in the anime adaptation, where in the original light novel, she capitalised on his being injured to subdue him. With Pitohui’s identity in the open now, I will refer to her as Elsa from here on out, having deliberately not done so previously to minimise on the spoilers.

• All of the posters in Alternative give Elsa’s name as Elza, which is probably the correct spelling, but since I’m lazy, I’m not likely to go back and change all of the spellings here. While Elsa attempts to surprise Karen by having the establishment’s manager stand in for her, Karen quickly works out who Elsa really is. The fan letter that Karen’s written to her evidently got through, and Karen embraces her tearfully. Elsa’s appearance does not appear to suggest any sort of mental health issues that Gōshi’s described, although the truth is that some problems do not manifest in ways that can be easily seen. With this being said, I still find it difficult to believe that Elsa can kick Gōshi’s ass in a fight.

• Elsa kisses a surprised Karen while Miyu looks on in shock: whether it be trolling or a genuine token of gratitude will remain unknown for the present, but the consequences are invariably hilarious, with Karen remarking that she’ll never get married now with such a stunt. This joke has long overstayed its welcome, and it’s not like guys decide whether or not they’ll marry someone based on whether or not that individual had been kissed by other girls before. However, rather than going into a tirade about this joke, I will instead liken Elsa’s actions here as making her the equivalent of Alternative‘s Brad Marchand.

• I’m not sure how many of my readers watch ice hockey, or the NHL in particular: Brad Marchand who is a colourful player known for his goal scoring and on-ice antics. During the 2018 playoffs, Marchand licked Ryan Callahan during game four of the Tampa Bay and Boston series, and Maple Leafs players similarly complained when he did something similar during the games against them. The NHL threatened Marchand with disciplinary action, but this pales compared to when he kissed former Flames right wing Jerome Iginla during 2014. In this game, Iginla scored an overtime winner after Marchand had missed his shot on net, and a grateful Marchand is said to have kissed Iginla afterwards. Knowing this, I wager that suddenly, Elsa kissing Karen does not seem so difficult to watch now.

• Overall, Alternative earns a B grade (7.5 of ten), the same as Comic Girls. I enjoyed the FPS and PvP aspects very strongly – I’m normally well out of my depth when it comes to Sword Art Online‘s RPG mechanics, and despite having played my share of RPGs, I personally prefer shooters. As such, knowing the mechanics of Gun Gale Online in Alternative, and seeing a story that largely remains coherent, without an excessive emphasis on unnecessary relationships and the like, was a breath of fresh air. Similarly, while Karen might be quite skillful in Gun Gale Online, she’s an ordinary university student in real life – Kirito, by comparison, stumbles into positions of responsibility and only wears the role because the plot demands it. With this post done, the last of the series from Spring 2018 that I planned to write for are now finished, and the focus for the summer season is largely going to be Harukana Receive.

While Alternative might have succumbed to the symptoms of poor exposition that plague Sword Art Online, that each episode nonetheless commanded engagement and left me excited to see what was next is a testament to the strengths in Alternative: with its well-thought out game mechanics in Gun Gale Online, strategies and tactics that I am familiar with as a long-time FPS gamer, and main characters who are very relatable and likeable, Alternative gives viewers clear incentive to cheer for Karen and later, Miyu. Watching them overcome various challenges with the aim of reaching Elsa and Gōshi to make a difference was quite touching, and although this might have been a gaming environment, Karen’s feelings and intents are very real. Seeing the story come together, and having Karen meet her idol was a satisfactory ending – overall, Alternative remains a fun watch that I would recommend to those who do not view Sword Art Online negatively: most of the issues impeding Sword Art Online have been addressed, and having relatable, well-written main characters works in Alternative‘s favour. For folks who are not big on Sword Art Online, I’m largely neutral towards recommending Alternative; on one hand, the firefights are well-animated, and build-ups are quite exhilarating, but Elsa and Gōshi’s character motivations are lacking. This wasn’t enough to detract from the solid writing in Karen’s character for me, so Alternative ended up being a fun experience overall despite its shortcomings. Gōshi might have eyes for only Elsa, but I would contend that Karen and Miyu are tied for first as my favourite characters in the whole of Sword Art Online.

Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online: Review and Reflections at the Halfway Point

“What do you say we tell these Squad Jam people to fuck themselves, then we can go home, find a couch and a TV, then sit back and watch Pitohui burn to the goddamned ground?” –Domingo Chavez, Tom Clancy’s Locked On

Karen Kohiruimaki is a Hokkaido native who moves to Tokyo in pursuit of her post secondary studies. Because of her height, she is insecure and finds herself wishing that she were shorter. Her best friend, Miyu Shinohara, suggests that Karen take up a VR game, where she may customise an avatar to her heart’s content, and after iterating through multiple games, Karen encounters Gun Gale Online (GGO for brevity), which provides her with a diminutive character that she takes an immediate liking to. She takes on the screen name Llenn, and after exploring the game world with her new avatar, Karen begins playing the PvE components and earns enough currency to upgrade her weapons and gear. One day, while breaking from her travels, she is ambushed by other players and manages to take them out. Rumours begin speaking about the “Pink Devil”, and this attracts the attention of a fellow player, Pitohui. She introduces Karen to the “Squad Jam” battle royale competition and asks her to compete alongside fellow player “M”. M covers a range of techniques and gear for the battle royale mode, bringing Karen up to speed, and after out-manoeuvring a team of military-trained players, Karen’s confidence increases. She and M manage to fight off an assault from another team that had commandeered airboats, but when moving to engage the final remaining team, M breaks down, fearing for his life should he lose. He admits to Karen that Pitohui would kill him in reality should they lose, and befuddled, Karen decides to leave him behind and engage the final team on her own. She is overwhelmed, but M reappears to provide sniper fire, allowing Karen to finish off the remaining team’s leader.

Emboldened by her experiences, Karen cuts her hair short to signify a new beginning, and runs into the team’s real-world players: rhythm athletics club members who are in high school. Spending time with her new friends, Karen also runs into Gōshi Asōgi, who plays M in GGO. Gōshi reveals that he knows and is in love with Pitohui, but fears Pitohui will commit suicide should she lose in GGO. Perplexed, Karen decides to help him out nonetheless and asks Miyu to join up wiht them. This is where we are in Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online (Alternative from here on out, as spelling the entire thing out is too lengthy): immediately, my impressions of this Sword Art Online spin-off is that it is very enjoyable. Kirito’s absence is a significant one, and I contend that the series proceeds smoothly without his presence. I’ve long found his character to be implausible, and his attitude insufferable. By comparison, Karen is a very plausible character who finds escape in video games, and while she may enjoy unnatural performance in GGO, her real-world struggles and desire to escape to a fictional space are something that gamers can strongly relate to. I personally play shooters because it’s fun to both explore new worlds and test the limit of my skills in a space where performance is not relevant: reality requires that put in an honest effort into what I do, so I escape this in video games and play where how I do is unimportant. Karen’s newfound sense of confidence from playing GGO is also refreshing to watch. At the halfway point, however, Alternative also reintroduces the old death-related themes that characterised Sword Art Online. Here, it is not a forced component, and Alternative explores a darker side of gaming, as well. While perhaps overtly dramatic, I am curious to see how Karen will play a role in helping Gōshi with Pitohui.

Screenshots and Commentary

• By Alternative‘s halfway point, audiences know that Llenn is Karen and M is Gōshi, so I’m going to refer to them by their real-world names rather than their in-game names. While engaging, half of Alternative is set in a desert akin to Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds‘s Miramar map. Here, the two are playing sniper-spotter, where Gōshi decides against engaging another group of enemies. The first episode drops viewers straight into things and ends with Karen beating up a group made up of either Special Units (Japan’s equivalent of SWAT) or JDSF’s Special Forces members.

• Karen Kohiruimaki stands at 183 centimeters and is voiced by Tomori Kusunoki (who’d played minor roles in Eromanga Sensei, Girls’ Last Tour and Slow Start, but also has recently played more major roles in Märchen Mädchen). Uncomfortable with her height, Karen is disinterested in fashion, prefers reading and is quite introverted. By the time of Alternative, Karen is a second-year university student in an undisclosed major and does not appear to have a part-time job, so going on a limb and recalling my own experiences, I would also conclude that Karen’s a reasonably capable student if she can find the time to game and keep up with her studies.

• I say this because in my second year, I nearly fell below the 3.3 GPA required to stay in my honours program because I was ineffective in managing my time. After my third year, however, things turned around. Here, Karen is talking with Miyu, her best friend and a gamer who puts me to shame in terms of hours spent gaming. There are really all sorts of people out there – while I count myself a gamer of moderate skill, there are some people who spend more time playing games than I spent working. I am always baffled by some folks who have a hundred service stars for their gas grenades in Battlefield 1, for instance.

• Karen initially struggles to find a game with a proper avatar for her, and this is something I cannot relate to. For games where I can customise how I look, I usually choose something that isn’t too ugly and then pop straight into the game. This moment also highlights an interesting safety feature of the new VR headsets in Alternative: if the user’s vitals reach unsafe points, the system will automatically disengage. I certainly would not mind seeing more fanservice moments of Karen in Alternative, but for the present, this has been very limited.

• Karen eventually lands on a tiny female avatar that is the epitome of Japanese standards for kawaii: a petite frame, round face, large eyes and a squeaky voice. Kusunoki does a solid job with voices in Alternative, presenting Llenn’s voice as squeaky as one is wont to hearing in shows like Kiniro Mosaic or Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu Ka?, switching over to a deeper, quieter and more mature voice when playing Karen. This avatar is precisely what Karen’s been looking for, and she prances about in celebration. Soon after creating her avatar and enjoying it, Karen decides to actually go into the world of GGO and see what it’s about.

• Initially participating in PvE against monsters to collect the resources needed to buy better gear, Karen’s experience in GGO is not too dissimilar to that of games like Destiny or The Division. In fact, The Division encourages players to reach level thirty, wherein the entire array of skills, talents and perks unlock. In MMO terms, The Division allows one to unlock all branches of a skill tree at the level cap, and then forces players to pick the combination of skills, talents and perks that best suit their play-style. It is at level thirty when things get real interesting in The Division.

• Unlike Karen and GGO, I’m completely optimised for PvE combat in The Division, and I get my ass kicked if I should run into any rogue agents. After some time in GGO, Karen has earned enough currency to customise her looks somewhat, and while she enjoys a beverage here, her choice of pink gear allows her to blend in to the fiery desert sunset. This is where she has her first PvP encounter: while some folks find Llenn’s design to be overpowered, her high speed and puny hitbox is offset by a low durability. While the size of female hitboxes are apparently the subject of no small debate, the best games out there with variably-sized hitboxes will always balance things out so that characters that are harder to hit are also more fragile.

• Karen eventually meets one Pitohui in GGO: a highly skilled player, Pitohui teams up with Karen on PvE missions. Pitohui’s identity is no mystery to me, and she’s voiced by Yōko Hikasa (Mio Akiyama of K-On!, Houki Shinonono from Infinite Stratos and New Game‘s Kō Yagami). I’ve long enjoyed Hikasa’s performances: she’s able to project a sense of maturity and sexiness in her characters, and her singing voice is also quite good. The music of K-On! with Mio on leading vocals, and Mio’s character songs are the best place to hear Hikasa’s performances.

• Pitohui plays GGO the same way I play many shooters: with different guns on almost every mission. It’s always fun to experience shooters with a diverse range of weapons, and things get old real fast if I were to run through every mission or match with the “best” or “easy” guns. This is why I will occasionally mix it up in things like battlefield, where I run with weapons I am unfamiliar with for the thrill of the challenge. Of course, if I get salty, I will switch back over to the “tryhard” guns. Karen, on the other hand, prefers to run with her FN P90, a space age-looking personal defense weapon with a 50-round capacity, fires at 900 RPM and shoots 5.7×28mm ammunition. Its design makes it highly manoeuvrable, and in Battlefield 3, I found the P90 a fine gun when outfitted with a laser sight, suppressor and Kobra RDS.

• In Battlefield 4, I’ve unlocked the P90 but have yet to use it extensively for my engineer: the UMP-45 is my most used PDW. Battlefield 1 has changed the way gunplay works, and I’ve not touched earlier Battlefield titles for some time, but I am tempted to come back and try Karen’s loadout, which is a stock P90-only setup I would call “hipfire scrub”. Like all gamers who want to get the most bang for their buck, Karen occasionally consults online guides to better improve her strategy, although there are occasions when she gets in touch with Miyu, as well.

• With all of the formalities out of the way now, the Squad Jam event begins. My main reason for not playing current battle royale titles like Fortnite or PUBG is that I am an impatient gamer. I am at my best running around, killing people and then dying, respawning and doing the same. As a result of my styles, I have a very high number of deaths in Battlefield games, but I also contribute greatly to my team’s performances. In other games, where staying alive is important, I tend to play more cautiously. Here, Karen is seen with Gōshi: as M, Gōshi rolls with the M14 EBR and the HK45. In order to approximate his loadout, I would run with support class with the M39 EMR and the Compact 45.

• I’ve opted to leave out most of the combat scenes in Alternative because they’re meant to be watched in motion, not as individual stills. After taking down a team of players with real-world training and a team with airboats, Gōshi and Karen evade a third team. Gōshi reveals a plot to kill Karen so he can stand down without dying, leading to the most hilarious moment of Alternative that leaves Karen’s Llenn with what I’ve come to call funny faces. The presence of these funny faces show that Alternative is not taking itself as seriously as its predecessors, which I greatly welcome.

• Against a team of deadly-looking female players, Karen finds herself outgunned, but clever use of plasma grenades that look a great deal like the seeker mines of The Division and support from Gōshi, who’s regained his composure, allows Karen to escape defeat and fight another day. As Llenn, Karen’s playstyle is absolutely brutal and sexy: she makes use of Llenn’s small size, speed, game mechanics and her environment to devastate her enemies in ways that I’ve not seen from the YouTubers that I follow, even sacrificing her P90 to stop the enemy’s bullets for the sake of victory.

• In a one-on-one, Karen manages to best the remaining group’s leader with a knife, bringing an end to her first-ever Squad Jam competition. Despite the first five episodes being focused around Squad Jam, Alternative never becomes boring at all, and I am very fond of Karen/Llenn’s characterisation. Lacking the things that made Kirito a dull protagonist at best (and an insufferable one at worse), I feel that Sword Art Online would have done better to have Kirito encounter a larger number of male players, doing away with the group of female admirers he accumulated in favour of people who are there to share his experiences and challenges. Back in Alternative, Karen’s win brings to mind how Jeremy defeats DeathStriker6666 in Pure Pwnage by means of a knife in the “Lanageddon” episode.

• In the real world, Karen meets up with the high school students whom she’d played against in the Squad Jam tournament and finds in them a new group of friends who are impressed with her play-style. Having long envied them for their short stature, Karen had no idea they were equally envious of her figure, and it is with the confidence of victory from GGO that Karen finally is able to break the ice with this group of high school students. She’s cut her hair short to signify the turning over of a new leaf.

• I’ve been called a scrub before for using PDWs like the P90 in Battlefield 3, and in Battlefield 1, players who use the Automatico M1918 Trench are similarly disparaged. High RPM weapons, or “spray-and-pray” weapons require very little skill to use in single combat: because they fire quickly, they have a higher DPS as well. In this sense, Karen is a scrub for favouring PDWs and speed: her approach is one of my favourite ways to roll, although since Battlefield 1 introduced the sweet spot mechanic and increased muzzle velocity to make sniping easier, I’ve taken to using bolt action rifles more frequently. At present, I can make use of any rifle outside of their sweet spot and be modestly effective with them.

• Introducing everyone on the rhythm athletics club members will be an exercise for another day, but their story is another example of how video games can be helpful. Initially, this group of girls lacked team spirit, so their coach encouraged them to work on this in a virtual space, where faces and names do not matter. After becoming hooked on GGO, the girls have seen an improved performance in their club activities and also have another hobby from which to bond over. They seek Karen’s counsel in trying to improve, since the thrill of Squad Jam has left a considerable impression on them.

• Karen travels home while on break, and upon returning to Tokyo, finds herself face to face with Gōshi. She’s visibly shocked at meeting Gōshi in person, sufficiently so that she has another funny face moment. I note here that if my readers are interested in meeting me in person, there’d better be a bloody good reason for it.

• Gōshi explains a bit of his story with Pitohui to Karen and details Pitohui’s obsession with death in a story that is chilling as befitting of Sword Art Online. Thrill-seekers such as these are rare in reality, and Gōshi’s devotion to Pitohui foreshadows at what is to happen next. The second half of Alternative will follow another Squad Jam battle where the stakes are much higher, and if executed well, this will certainly be a blast to watch.

• I will conclude this Alternative post with a fanservice image of Miyu for your amusement, and explain the page quote: it’s sourced from Tom Clancy’s Locked On, and is a reasonable approximation of how Karen might feel about things concerning Gōshi and Pitohui. Instead of backing down, however, she recruits game expert Miyu to help out, and I’m curious to see what Miyu brings to the table. Since we’re dealing with games, The Division‘s Onslaught global event begins tomorrow, and Wednesday will see the reveal trailer to Battlefield V.

It is therefore appropriate to say that, despite its simpler showing insofar, Alternative has nonetheless done a fantastic job of conveying what a VR battle royale shooter looks like, and for illustrating the postive impact that video games may have on folk like Karen. Sword Art Online had always excelled in having strong background and world-building, as well as for inclusion of game mechanics in its narrative. I understand that presently, battle royale games are all the rage, especially with the likes of Fortnite and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, so Alternative is also relevant to the period. While I’m adamantly against playing battle royale games because they involve more running than shooting, I also accept that the unpredictability and the attendant thrill adds to the genre’s appeal. Seeing terminology and mechanics from first person shooters make their way into GGO, with a game type that has surged in popularity was therefore highly entertaining. GGO is especially attractive for me because I’ve played enough shooters to know how they work from a technical level (I presently don’t play MMOs). By comparison, Sword Art Online‘s thematic elements and characterisation have traditionally been weaker. While themes of death slowly begin to return with a host of individuals with uncommon backgrounds, Alternative has remained reasonably grounded and relatable. One would therefore hope that this trend continues; at the risk of treading on toes, Kirito’s absence and all of the romance-related turmoil makes Alternative all the stronger, and one would hope that Karen’s story in GGO is unfettered by unnecessary romance, allowing Alternative to focus purely on video games and their potential positive impact on one’s mental health.

Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale- On The Portrayal of Augmented Reality in Popular Fiction and a Movie Review

“A significant portion of the population… will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day.” –Tim Cook

The recent surge of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies has come about as a consequence of increasingly efficient graphics hardware and portable display devices; my graduate thesis demonstrated the flexibility of my eukaryotic cell simulations in being able to run on platforms as diverse as the Oculus Rift headset and Cave Augmented Virtual Environment (CAVE), both of which offered a unique environment in which to explore a virtual cell. My models were later adapted to run on Microsoft’s HoloLens, an augmented reality platform. Compared to virtual reality, which immerses users in a virtual space, augmented reality projects virtual elements into real space. In my thesis, I concluded that these visualisation technologies would be powerful tools for education, making what was once possibly only in science fiction one step closer to reality. With this being said, these developments remain very much in the experimental stage at present, but in the realm of fiction, technological advancement is much greater in order to facilitate the narrative. Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale is one such work of fiction – a film that premièred in February this year, it follows Kirito and Asuna as they investigate a mysterious phenomenon of memory loss amongst players when they begin encountering SAO bosses in Ordinal Scale, which has seen a rise in popularity after multiple incidents involving VR technologies. It turns out that Tetsuhiro Shigemura, the Augma’s developer, implemented the system in order to collect players for memories related to his late daughter, who lost her life in SAO years previously. Intending to make use of machine learning techniques, Shigemura aims to resurrect his daughter as an AI construct.

Like its predecessors before it, Ordinal Scale‘s strengths lie within its depiction of how a technology might be used within a society: depictions of how ordinary users are drawn to game events in Ordinal Scale mirror phenomenon seen with last year’s Pokémon Go fad, and subtle elements, such as playing AR games and collecting points that can be redeemed for real-world rewards lie within the realm of reality, showing the technology as being one that is quite familiar despite the novel modes of interaction and presentation. Ordinal Scale thus suggests that technologies capable of great popularity and amassing large numbers of users can potentially be harmful for these users if their developers have a malicious or misguided intent – Shigemura had meant for his technology to resurrect his daughter’s consciousness digitally by mining data from the userbase’s collective memories even if it meant killing the users. While not quite as dramatic in reality, programs with a large user count invariably will produce a great quantity of data relating to the user’s habits. The risk that this information can similarly be abused is non-trivial; it gives a great deal of insight as to our interests, intents and desires, and in the present age, it is not surprising that our data can be considered of greater importance than the hardware storing the data. As such, Ordinal Scale illustrates of the risks associated with an increasingly connected world and (albeit in a fanciful manner) what ends large organisations might have for data they collect from their users.

Screenshots and Commentary

• The storyline in Ordinal Scale ends up being something that I felt that I would enjoy more so than the light novel’s Alicization arc; whereas Alicization would have been more or less the same thing in Sword Art Online, really being just a high-stakes version where Kirito is poisoned, the Augma and AR in Ordinal Scale is novel, reflective of the public interest in AR to keep up with current trends. For this review, I will feature thirty screenshots.

• One aspect about Ordinal Scale that I enjoyed was the fact that AR was so interwoven into social interactions; things such as customer loyalty programmes take advantage of the Ordinal Scale to encourage and reward interaction with their services. Kirito is less-than-enthusiastic about AR at the film’s beginning, feeling that immersion into a completely virtual space is more effective than enhancing real spaces digitally. For clarity’s sake, Ordinal Scale in italics refers to the film itself, while Ordinal Scale in standard formatting refers to the game.

• Yuuna is presented as an AI construct in the Augma, arriving on battlefields to cheer on participants and perform. While seemingly sophisticated to the point where she is said to be able to pass the Turing Test, I remark that mimicking human behaviours is actually not too far off, especially with the pace that machine learning is advancing. Chat bots using machine learning can simulate surprisingly real conversations, and sentiment analysis algorithms can allow these bots to now respond appropriately based on what a human user is typing in. Coupled with advances in voice recognition and generation, personal digital assistants like Siri and Cortana could begin rivaling Yuuna in complexity within the next ten years.

• One of the reasons why Kirito is not fond of AR is that for all of his capabilities in virtual spaces, his physicality in the real world is low, and in this battle, his performance is not quite what he is expecting owing to the fact that swinging a weapon around for long periods requires great stamina. While I lift weights, run and do martial arts, it seems that I’ve somewhat pigeon-holed myself for short bursts of power rather than longer endurance events, making me less effective in an AR combat game: bench pressing 120 percent body weight isn’t quite the same as what amounts to running around on a soccer field for half an hour.

• During the first battle, a mysterious player ranked number two arrives and provides enough assistance to help Asuna eliminate the event boss. This player is Eiji, who works on behalf of Tetsuhiro, and as a SAO player, he regrets not being able to save Yuuna, hence his involvement with the project. His presence in the film is one of its weaker points, being spurred on only by his sense of regret and a personality that certainly won’t lead audiences to symapthise with his motivations. Formerly a member of Blood Oath, Eiji has also sought out other SAO players and enjoys harming them out of a desire to remind players that AR and VR are quite separate.

• One aspect of Sword Art Online that the critics have frequently discussed is Kirito’s nigh-invulnerability in games and uncommonly quick learning in reality, which leads him to be an asset for government officials looking to investigate the different incidents surrounding AR and VR games. Kirito is a highly competent character with limited flaws; he is similar to Jack Ryan Senior in Tom Clancy’s novels. Tom Clancy further shares strong female partner for the protagonist with Sword Art Online (Cathy Ryan in Tom Clancy novels, and Asuna in Sword Art Online), and Tom Clancy avoids the trap of such hyper-competent protagonists by shifting focus in the narrative to other characters, such as John Clark.

• Sword Art Online is at its strongest when focus switches between Kirito and the other characters, especially Asuna, whose role and experiences are worth depicting. In a series where the focus is on contemporary technology and their impact on society, I’m actually a little surprised that the only discussions out there about the movie are on this particular frame, specifically how the BD edition has certain advantages over the theatrical releases in that they show Asuna’s Papilla mammaria.

• Kirito runs into a Yuuna look-alike here, who points him in a direction of interest. With the previous screenshot in mind, I admittedly would prefer folks discuss those elements than attempt their hand at talking about neural networks, a topic that is sufficiently complex that in order for me to adequately write about it, I would likely need to return to university and do a PhD on the topic. One element about some parts of the anime community I’ve never been too fond of is that some discussions fixate on technical details, and the lack of talk on artificial neural networks in discussions surrounding Ordinal Scale suggests that folks who affectedly display their technical knowledge have limits.

• I bet that an anime fan admitting that they don’t know something at Tango-victor-tango would be a foreign concept. With this in mind, I have sat through some lectures on artificial neural networks (ANN), and while I have no background with the implementation, I can say that ANN are made up of what are conceptually called layers. Information from the input are passed to these layers, and if a particular score is reached, the information is passed to the next layer, similar to how stimuli propagate in biological neurons. Information that reaches the end is subsequently classified. Back in Ordinal Scale, Yuuna and Eiji share a moment in a virtual version of what one of our readers has identified to be the Fairmont Hot Springs in British Columbia.

• ANN are highly useful for classification functions, and with Tetsuhiro’s goal being the acquisition of memories pertaining to Yuuna from a vast data set, it is appropriate to use ANN for finding these memories and using them to re-create Yuuna’s personality digitally. Ordinal Scale only refers to this as deep learning, of which ANN are one particular approach; the movie wisely chooses to be very general with its descriptions, so it doesn’t misrepresent machine learning as a whole. While waiting for an event to start, Silica grows irritated with Lizbeth and elbows her, causing a minor loss of health.

• The visual effects in Ordinal Scale are absolutely stunning: like the preceding installments of Sword Art Online, the film is produced by A-1 pictures and is afforded exceptional quality in both artwork and animation. While real-world locations and AR UI elements are fantastic, the film really shines whenever Augma events begin. The reappearance of SAO bosses is described as significant, and during this battle, Asuna is defeated in combat and loses her memories of SAO in the process.

• Ordinal Scale‘s soundtrack is composed by Yuki Kajiura; I know her best for composing Puella Magi Madoka Magica‘s soundtrack, and a closer listen of her compositions find that they share motifs and aural elements. In her best pieces, Kajiuramakes extensive use of choral elements in her songs to create a cold, distant sound that conveys a sense of mystique about a setting or disconnect that characters experience from those around them. Yuuna’s songs are particularly well-written, sounding like vocal versions of Kajiura’s instrumental pieces.

• The realm of neurological sciences is well outside my discipline, although I can say with reasonable confidence that the technology to artificially manipulate or alter our memories is not an impossibility. Recent studies have found that external information can affect neuron connections and modify how we recall an event, while straight-up suppression or erasing of memories has been somewhat successful in highly controlled experimental settings. We are nowhere near having the medical knowledge or technological implements to selectively remove all memories related to one particular element, however.

• Kirito is devastated when Asuna loses her SAO memories, and after deducing that SAO events are somehow related to Asuna’s memory loss, he posts warnings onto forums, asking other players to stay away from SAO bosses. His findings are met with skepticism, and Kirito turns to his old standby of levelling up far enough to investigate what’s going on. He runs into Sinon, who agrees to help him out. Sinon had one of the best stories in Sword Art Online and is also quick to accept Kirito’s relationship with Asuna.

• The ghostly form of Yuuna appears once again, prompting Kirito to chase down this apparition and ask for answers – the apparition clarifies the location that Kirito is to visit. One of the remarks I have about this review is that I was not inclined to include too many moments with Eiji. He befriended Yuuna in SAO and regrets not being strong enough to save her from death; his motivations have the same depth as that of a puddle formed from a light rainfall, and his enjoyment of causing physical harm to other participants in is petty revenge for having felt so powerless in SAO.

• When Kirito asks Yui to map out the location the ghostly Yuuna presents, he brings up a map worthy of Tom Clancy’s The Division, a game whose UI is highly unique, being modelled after AR elements. It’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed the beta to the extent that I did, and after the beta, I decided that the game would be worth playing if there was enough to do from a single-player perspective, without the need to party up with other players. After the game’s release, the amount of content for solo players, coupled with the price tag, dissuaded me from buying it. However, it’s seen a ten dollar drop in price now, and records indicate that it will go for 28 CAD during a Steam Sale.

• Kirito’s meeting with Tetsuhiro proves unfruitful; Tetsuhiro refuses to answer any questions about the Augma, and only allows Kirito to know that his daughter died in SAO. Kirito later visits Asuna and promises to retrieve her memories. Ever since the second season, Sword Art Online made it clear that Kirito and Asuna are meant to be, and the other girls amongst Kirito’s group of friends have accepted this. Once this particular aspect was established, Sword Art Online was free to pursue more worthwhile stories, and Ordinal Scale is illustrating just how much there is that can be explored once Sword Art Online dispensed with the whole love tesseract concept.

• Yuuna is voiced by Sayaka Kanda, an actress and singer whose roles in live action films far outnumber her appearances in animated film. Eiji is voiced by Yoshio Inoue. There is a pronounced difference in the Yuuna that performs during events and the one that Eiji speaks with, compared to the Yuuna that appears in front of Kirito when he’s investigating the mystery behind Ordinal Scale. In a one-on-one duel against Eiji later on, Kirito learns the truth behind Eiji’s role in things and Tetsuhiro’s intents. While initially outmatched by Eiji’s superior physicality, Kirito notices a power supply on Eiji’s collar. He disables it and manages to overpower Eiji, suggesting that Eiji’s martial arts capability was only possible because he was hooked up to a powered exoskeleton.

• I found that the idea of the drones generating enough energy to fry the human brain and kill individuals being scanned was tacked on to the film in an attempt to elevate the stakes for Kirito to overcome – having spent most of the film reinforcing the notion that the Augma was orders of magnitude safer than any VR hardware, this revelation comes out of the blue. While perhaps necessary to convey a sense of urgency, it would have been more effective to suggest that the scanning technology involved energy levels sufficient to damage the brain much earlier on, such as when Asuna lost her memories of SAO. Knowledge of this threat would therefore lead audiences to appreciate what Kirito stands to lose if he should fail in advance of his fight with Eiji.

• With Eiji neutralised, Kirito rejoins the others as they engage hordes of SAO monsters. In order to stop the data transfer, Kirito is returned into the virtual reality environment and with his friends, prepare to do battle with SAO’s ultimate boss, which never made it into the original game. Despite being outmatched initially, Yui accesses Kirito and company’s old save files, allowing them to fight on even footing with the boss.

• Ordinal Scale could not count itself as an instalment in Sword Art Online without the main cast returning to their SAO gear for at least one battle in Aincrad. One of my friends wondered, in his words, “how a franchise about internet fighting can go on so long”; Sword Art Online‘s popularity is often attributed to likeable characters and emotional impact, but I personally found these aspects to be passable. For me, technical excellence and social relevance ends up being the reasons why I continue to watch this anime: while the characters are not particularly noteworthy, the world they inhabit and the aural-visual strengths make this a series that I enjoy.

• While all of the battles in Ordinal Scale were exceptionally well-choreographed and written, the final battle exceeds even those. Unrestricted by the physical laws of the real world, each of the characters have their moment in the limelight as they help defeat the new devilry that is the boss to the 100th floor. One would imagine that by the events of Sword Art Online, each of SAO, ALO and GGO use the same game engine, backend and share assets if players can freely import their profiles from one game into another.

• In the years since Sword Art Online became popular, technologies such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have arrived on the market, bringing us one step closer to the immersion seen in Sword Art Online; during my attendance of the 2016 Laval Virtual Conference last year, attendees mentioned this fact, although we agreed that the biggest factor that presently precludes widespread adoption of VR headsets is the fact that they still remain quite cumbersome to set up and wield: when I tried the HTC Vive, it took another individual to help me gear up.

• There’s also a cost factor – the HTC Vive costs 600 USD, but having a PC powerful enough to provide a satisfactory experience is also necessary. By comparison, conventional gaming is much more affordable and convenient: playing Battlefield 1 and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus entails turning on a computer and double-clicking on the play button. Sword Art Online is able to have widespread VR adoption precisely because the headsets are more convenient to use.

• While I’m not one to play that particular game, if and when I’m asked, Suguha/Leafa is my favourite character of the Sword Art Online franchise; she’s strong-willed and driven despite her internal challenges, and moreover, is able to eventually accept Kirito and Asuna’s relationship. While her story in Sword Art Online‘s ALO narrative is counted as the weakest, there’s an appeal about Suguha’s character that sets her apart from the other characters, and her design ultimately is why I managed to finish the ALO arc.

• While a solid film, Ordinal Scale is not for all viewers: folks will need to have seen the first and second seasons in order to understand all of the mechanics and characters: Yuuki makes a short return during the final boss fight to boost Asuna’s attack power. A member of the Sleeping Knights, Yuuki was a bed-ridden patient with HIV; she befriended Asuna in Mother’s Rosario, one of Sword Art Online‘s best arcs, and passed away peacefully.

• Apparently, Kirito’s fondness for swords is a callback to author Reki Kawahara’s own fondness for Halo‘s energy sword; he cites it as being the best weapon in Halo, but I disagree – the M6D pistol, BR-55 Battle Rifle and M329 DMR are the best weapons on account of their versatility. While the energy sword is exceptionally powerful, it is useless at longer ranges. Conversely, the weapons I prefer, the MLG weapons, are useful at all ranges. One of the aspects I’ve not included in this Sword Art Online talk, or any previous talks, are frames where Kirito’s facial features distort as he moves in for a killing blow. I’ve never been too fond of these moments where Kirito appears inhuman.

• Kirito et al. ultimately succeed in defeating the floor boss and share a conversation with Yuuna, who cancels execution of Tetsuhiro’s program and restores the attendees’ lost SAO memories, including those of Asuna’s. Tetsuhiro is taken in for questioning, and is later recruited by government officials to work on another programme, which will likely form the basis for Alicization. Given the success of Sword Art Online, I imagine that this arc will see an animated form at some point in the future, and with the series continuing, there is certainly not a shortage of materials to adapt.

• I’m unlikely to ever pick up the Sword Art Online light novels: the writing style in most light novels has never been to my liking because of the limitations of a first person narrative, which precludes insights into other characters’ minds and perspectives. As readers are limited to what the protagonist can see, and their own thoughts, authors must rely on what the protagonist perceives in order to depict the world around them. In the case of light novels, constraints with translating metaphors and other narrative devices into English mean that characters like The Melancholy of Suzumiya‘s Kyon come across as being unnecessarily pedantic, or else, like Kirito, describe things in very a roundabout fashion.

• I admit that I’ve been spoiled by the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien and Tom Clancy as far as fiction goes, so while I won’t enjoy light novels, I won’t hold it against folks who do enjoy them. Asuna and Kirito share in a meteor shower as per Kirito’s promise in the film’s final moments. This also brings my take on Ordinal Scale to an end, and overall, I must admit that my initial expectations for the film were not particularly great, but after seeing the film in full, I did enjoy it. With this post over, I’m not too sure what November’s schedule looks like, save the fact that I will definitely be writing about Yūki Yūna is a Hero: Hero Chapter once that lands on November 17.

From a narrative perspective, Ordinal Scale inherits all of the strengths and weaknesses of Sword Art Online; Kirito’s improbable ability to uncover what investigative groups could not and his uncommon talent for overcoming almost any challenge by means of brute force come into play within Ordinal Scale. There’s no point in the film where he is presented as vulnerable, giving audiences no suspense in wondering if Kirito will figure out a clever solution to his situation and no sense of elation when such a moment does occur. Similarly, villains with exceptionally thin motivations also dominate the film – while one sympathises with Shigemura’s situation, it is dubious that the Augma could have been approved for sales without the input of regulatory bodies. Eiji’s reason for working with Shigemura is similarly shallow, reducing his role to that of a mere puppet despite the threat that the movie attempts to portray him as presenting to the protagonists. While characterisation in Sword Art Online has always been lacking, Ordinal Scale does address some of the weaknesses its predecessors possessed. Kirito’s interactions with the others in the film, especially Asuna, were executed to a satisfactory extent. Further to this, the audio-visual aspects of Ordinal Scale are of a superb quality. The sound effects for combat, especially the sword-play, are as visceral as Star Wars’ seismic charges (which is high praise), and Yuki Kajiura’s soundtrack is phenomenal. Overall, Ordinal Scale earns a weak recommendation: it’s certainly not a bad film and will be enjoyable for fans of Sword Art Online, but audiences will have to accept that while it does exceptionally well what it does well, Ordinal Scale continues to share the same shortcomings as earlier instalments.

Sword Art Online II- Final Reflections

“It’s okay. I’ll see you on the other side.” —Will Irons

The Mother’s Rosario arc began a little more than a month ago, and what was originally a quest to figure out more about Zekken turned into an emotionally-charged arc dealing with Yuuki’s AIDS and how Asuna’s involvement in all of this leads her to help Yuuki and the Sleeping Knights on their quest to do one final thing in ALO before their time passed. Through this process, Asuna and Yuuki’s friendship allows the two to help one another out: Asuna helps Yuuki experience and understand what life is, while Yuuki helps Asuna figure out what the latter wants for her future. Though the future and life itself is constantly uncertain, both Asuna and Yuuki discover much through talking with one another and find the strength to continue on, and the impact of Yuuki’s presence is ultimately one that brings people together, showing that her continued existence was more than merely a drain on resources and was capable of bringing people’s hearts together.

• Yuuki Konno (right) is introduced as Zekken, a player whose skill surpasses even Kirito’s. Asuna challenges her early on and befriends her; Yuuki asks her to help defeating the 27th floor boss with her guild the “Sleeping Knights”. Later on, Yuuki is revealed to be afflicted with HIV/AIDS and the Sleeping Knights members are terminally-ill patients. Yuuki’s condition deteriorates as time passes on, and after she entrusts her sword skill “Mother’s Rosario” to Asuna she dies peacefully in ALO, surrounded by over 1000 players from every tribe in the game, including her guild members, Asuna and her friends.

• I imagine that for the most part, spoilers won’t matter, as the readers coming in are probably looking for a talk on what they’ve finished watching. Here, the Sleeping Knights take on a boss with the hopes of defeating it and getting their name Monument of Swordsmen to commemorate their friendship and time spent together; their illness means that their time together is short, hence their desire to make the most of things.

• Aside from Yuuki, the Sleeping Knights also consists of Jun, Nori, Siune, Talken and Tecchi. Becuase I had a rough idea of what the Mother’s Rosario arc entailed, the major revelations did not come as too much of a surprise. As such, even through the more emotional moments of the Mother’s Rosario arc, I never teared up once. With that being said, such moments were remarkably well done and captured all of the tenor that such moments evoke.

• Why do people do things? Because we wish to leave a positive impression of ourselves upon the world. This motivation is what drives the Sleeping Knights, who wish to do one final swan song before their time together concludes. Despite being pressured by other guilds, Kirito manages to buy the Sleeping Knights enough time for one more attempt after their initial efforts fall short.

• After knowing who the Sleeping Knights really are, their victory and Asuna’s role in helping everyone out becomes all the more significant. The topics dealt with in Sword Art Online predominantly deal with the significance of death in a virtual environment, and through Kirito’s dialogue, Reki Kawahara appears to be reinforcing the idea that as the technology improves, the line between reality and virtual reality becomes less well-defined, making it difficult to tell what’s real and what isn’t. However, whereas Kawahara leaves the implications of this process undefined, The Matrix suggests that people will eventually become complacent if such systems ever became a reality.

• Admittedly, I was quite surprised to learn that no other blog or discussion out there that was ready to talk about the implications of deploying something like the Medicuboid from a medical or technological perspective. After watching the twenty-second episode, I was wondering if I should do a talk there, but decided against it because I didn’t have enough content to make a proper discussion happen.

• As such, the main body of this final reflections post will deal predominantly with what my personal thoughts on the Medicuboid are within the context of Sword Art Online and how it may ostensibly tie in with medical technology in reality. While I’m now dealing with computer science and software development, a long time ago, I was an aspiring medical doctor, and though my interests shifted, I still read through some books on medical ethics in preparation for the interviews. Reading through the book made me realise that medicine was something that I might not have been cut out for.

• While I have chosen a different path, I do not particularly regret having applied for medicine or have taken the MCAT two years ago. I do not write the passages here to enforce a particular outlook on anime, but rather, the passages are intended at presenting a novel viewpoint (mine) on a particular anime. Thus, while Sword Art Online might not be about medical ethics, I personally find that its depiction within the anime does merit a talk.

• The environment within the Medicuboid is one that’s desolate, but the fact that Yuuki can interact with people in the real world leads Asuna to make a request for Kirito: to build an interface that would allow Yuuki to view the world through a camera and experience the sounds through a microphone. Making use of a specialised camera and microphone, Kirito manages to configure the camera, allowing Asuna to give Yuuki a glimpse into what life is like at a high school.

• In the future, broadband internet will probably be so ubiquitous that it would be possible to stream 4K or above video feeds with sound without too much difficulty. In places like Japan, wireless internet is already widespread, although back here in the Wild West, ubiquitous wireless internet is still very much a novelty and requires a small bit of setup in order to use properly

Aside from the trickier topics about life and death, the Mother’s Rosario arc leads to an interesting questions that are worth mentioning, although curiously enough, the this is not covered by any blogger or forum discussion anywhere. This topic relates to medical ethics, specifically, concerning whether or not devices such as the Medicuboid will be realistically fielded as actual means of relieving pain and helping medical professionals interact with their patients in a different means. As an experimental method, the patient and/or the patient’s family must make a choice as to whether or not the situation merits chancing the patient’s life on this technology or treatment. In Sword Art Online, the technology is explicitly mentioned to be not a treatment, but a method of improving the patient’s quality of life by cutting off their pain, restoring their senses in a virtual world and a limited degree of autonomy. Thus, by the Principle of Beneficence, the medical doctors in Sword Art Online are helping Yuuki by making use of the Medicuboid to cut off her pain. Moreover, even if they are unable to treat her AIDS, they are doing their best to improve her quality of life. This is what stands to be gained by taking a chance on the Medicuboid. However, use of such a technology must first be approved, and the ethics for that is more challenging. Assuming that medical professionals hold their duties to the highest ethical standards, and that they will do everything 1) within their power and 2) within reason of keeping the patients free of harm, there is a possibility that Medicuboid-like technologies would be something the public might push for. The medical professionals themselves may digress, as the technology would represent a placebo that does nothing to treat their patients’ diseases, and moreover, medicine is a conservative field, so introducing something like the Medicuboid will succeed only if it can be decisively shown that the technology is able to allow medical professionals to uphold their obligations and responsibilities to their patients. While such a technology was adapted in Sword Art Online, it is reasonable to anticipate more resistance in reality, and anything resembling the Medicuboid may not even make it past ethics approval for clinical trials on human patients unless their advocates propose compelling reasons to make use of these technologies.

• The reason why I do not consider anime such as Sword Art Online to be “though-provoking” or “deep” (that is to say, insufficient to change my world-view) is because original light novel and anime were not written with the intent of speculating on or providing a commentary on the dangers of virtual reality technology. Instead, the technology is used as a catalyst to facilitate an adventure, and the light novel covered a sufficiently diverse array of topics such that individuals have provide prompts for conversation.

• Here, Asuna convinces her mother to listen to the former’s side of things and resolves to tell the latter her true feelings concerning the future. From a strictly personal side of things, I’ve been encouraged to find a balance between the idealistic “follow my heart” route and the pragmatic “occupation must be able to help you raise a family and retire”: my dream job is to be involved in mobile software development and eventually, managing the development of these projects.

• It turns out that Kyouko Yuuki came from a modest family and managed to excel in what appears to be economics or commerce. Desiring Asuna to grow up with privilege, she expected nothing short of the best from and for Asuna, but after a tearful moment, Kyouko concedes that her main wish is for Asuna to be happy, and agrees to let the latter pursue the career and life paths she chooses.

• Kyouko’s approach appears similar to that of the tiger mother, someone who pushes their children to high levels of achievement using methods regarded as typical of child-rearing in East Asia. Though the children eventually might succeed in obtaining a financially successful occupation, it often results in individuals who lack emotional fulfillment, and is unsurprisingly depicted as a negative concept in anime (such as in Girls und Panzer). Here’s an interesting aside: compared to the Asian students at my old high school who had strict parents, I managed to perform to the same level that they did (sans the volunteer hours and bewilderingly large array of extra-curricular activity) anyways.

• Yuuki’s final moments in the world are in Asuna’s arms, under the same tree where the two had first met. The page quote from above comes from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and has two meanings. The first meaning is “see you when the mission’s done”. It originates from the Apollo 8 mission, when Gerry Carr speaks with Lovell right before the lunar capsule entered the dark side of the moon, severing all contact. For the next 34 minutes, Apollo 8 would become the most alone that humans had ever been. This mission was a success and paved the way for the later Apollo missions. The other meaning, when Will is speaking to Mitchell for the last time, refers to the other side of death itself.

• Here, the anime does a better job than the light novel: having full access to visuals, A-1 Pictures is able to portray emotional tenor far more effectively than the visual novels could. The Mother’s Rosario arc is characterised by these tender, moving moments that add a sense of immersion, that the characters are human and governed by the same laws despite being exceptional MMORPG players. I think now is a good time as any to note, while Mother’s Rosario certainly does tend to play with the heartstrings, using the impertinent ‘feels’ meme to describe things is hardly appropriate or necessary.

• Yuuki’s story is spread, and soon, thousands of other ALO players arrive to watch Yuuki’s final moments. This phenomenon is not a fictional one and players in MMORPGs do gather to hold vigils for players who pass on.

• An Si-eun (Siune in-game) is a member of the Sleeping Knights who was afflicted with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells. Treatments are most effective if the cancer is detected early on, although An experienced a relapse in her symptoms. Shortly after Yuuki’s passing, she recovers and is discharged from hospital, meeting Asuna for the first time.

• Thus, the Mother’s Rosario arc comes to an end, leading to the question of what happens next in Sword Art Online. There was a two-year gap between the first and second season, so I imagine that Sword Art Online III will come out in 2016, dealing with the Alicization story. This story is the darkest of any of the arcs seen thus far, and will probably require a full cour to adequately explore. However, the Early and Late arc precedes Alicization, and one might reasonably expect this to be a long OVA of 45 minutes.

• Kirito and Asuna share a conversation during a picnic with their friends, and this post comes to an end. At this point in time, I should mention that I encountered some difficulty with the Tari Tari special and as such, will be writing about that after the New Year arrives. I’m going on hiatus for the next few weeks on a much-needed and well-earned breaks, so regular programming will resume once the calendar reads 2015.

With Mother’s Rosario now over, Sword Art Online II comes to a close, and immediately, I see a series that was much better than its predecessor. Sword Art Online II has solid execution as far as plot and character development goes. The progression of events and development of backstories is sufficiently explored so the audience can relate to the characters at some level, or sympathise with them: instead of crudely-wrought backgrounds, Sword Art Online II takes the time to emphasise that these characters are human, worth showing concern for. As such, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Sword Art Online II, and the recommended audience for Sword Art Online II (aside from the die-hard fans of Sword Art Online) would be anyone who’s looking for something dealing with virtual reality, MMOs and fights with a remarkable choreography. Additional praise must be given where it is due, as Sword Art Online II also manages to raise questions about what could happen as things like virtual reality become more and more possible. While Sword Art Online II is far from being revolutionary, it is well-executed, managing to tell a story that is both moving and direct and kept me looking forwards to new episodes every week, which alone is sufficient for me to say that this is an anime that’s worth watching.