Sword Art Online

[Kraco]

Fuck. Death Gun was the only cool character in this season. And now he was reduced into a pitiful, slavering, love-sick psycho. That leaves zero cool characters.

Where's Asuna? Did Kirito tell his girlfriend to go home so that he can go visit another girl at the girl's apartment? Quite a Romeo. Or rather, where's the cop Kirito was supposed to have the goverment guy arrange to visit Sinon's place? I guess that foolish official isn't good enough even for that. Really, what do they pay the dude for? I guess he just plays VR games at work from 8AM till 6PM with zilch productivity, yet collects a good salary. What a dream job!

[MasterOfMoogles]

Well, technically, the cool Death Gun and the guy in the real world aren't the same person.

Is Kirito's motorcycle 2-person? He wouldn't want Asuna to come anyways because of the danger.
Depending on how close he is, he would beat the police there, too.

[Kraco]

Well, technically, the cool Death Gun and the guy in the real world aren't the same person.

Haha. There's not a single person among the audience who could take him seriously after this. I guess there's a chance his brother is the real deal, though, so maybe there's some hope left. But then again, now that they know his identity, it's not like he could very well keep playing the game and pulling off the Death Gun stunts.

[MFauli]

I dont know how many arcs there are after the GGO-arc, but this anime really needs an element of true danger again. SAO S1 was great with the whole "die in-game, die irl" concept. Right now, however, Kirito and all his waifus have "immortal main cast" status, perceivedly so anyway. Would it have been so difficult to have Sinon raped here instead of the Disney-esque Happy End with Kirito appearing out of nowhere? Asuna, Leafa, Silica, etc - they all send out the feeling that they´ll never be at risk of danger ever again.

All of this basically reduces all possible occurences to "watching Kirito doing cool sword moves", without anything else of substance.

If there is an arc after this one, I hope it begins with Asuna´s death, so we can have some darker revenge plot, instead of this ... easy mode stuff.

[Ryllharu]

I actually appreciated the fact that DeathGun is attracted to in the first place Shino because she's a killer.

Shino is gonna have to have some long talks with Yui (or a real world therapist), because she's gonna be pretty screwed in the mental department for a while.

I wish they had made the scene with Sinon waking up a little more tense. Instead they're playing soothing music. That situation would be utterly terrifying.

I thought it was pretty well done, I didn't think the music killed it at all. Her quick actions searching in fairly illogical spots did the trick.

Now the attempted rape defense struggle scene...that was terrifying. I'd have to put that up in the "Perfect Blue" Category of traumatic anime sequences (and that one is fake!). Before he gets all foamy in the mouth that is. That makes it a bit more comedic than it should be.

I'm also much happier with the way Kirito busted in there and started just wailing on the guy. It's much better than the showdown in the snowy hospital parking lot last season.

My only major complaint was that the bisection scene was almost cool and then somehow Deathgun's pistol magazine exploded like it was a grenade. The Happiness Joy Gift Grenade made up for it a little bit.

[Buffalobiian]

It's hard to say, unless it's Death Gun. He's only 99% certain that people really die in real life due to this particular individual.

On the other hand, the the "friend" of Shino smells the most like Death Gun right now. Being led to take the agility route and then being shafted could easily put him into revenge mode. I suppose saving Shino from the bullies IRL doesn't fit into the whole "jealousy" idea though.

I feel so smug right now.

The suicide grenade was pretty damn funny. If I was the crowd I wouldn't be excited to see the top two players cop out of a duel though.

[shinta|hikari]

They must be happy seeing two hot chicks all hot for each other.

Only one has a dick they do not know of.

Best part of this episode was the grenade ending. I really like GGO. I actually wish Asuna was never born (or never got official with Kirito). If Kirito was not committed, this could have been a better romance story.

@Ryll - I assumed it was a grenade that exploded, but I thought that was retarded as well because Kirito should have died.

@Mfauli - If you want rape, anime is not the right medium for you. Anime is usually aimed at younger people, and rape isn't exactly the best thing to show them. For some reason, death is easier to accept than rape in fiction, though I do understand that somewhat considering my pride.

[Ryllharu]

@Ryll - I assumed it was a grenade that exploded, but I thought that was retarded as well because Kirito should have died.

Unfortunately, you can just barely see the star from the grip on the top half just before it explodes.

So it really is that bad.

[Kraco]

Unfortunately, you can just barely see the star from the grip on the top half just before it explodes.

So it really is that bad.

He must have switched to explosive bullets. Death Gun needs not follow treaties.

[MFauli]

So I´m really the only one to have a problem with the fact that there´s suddenly a better sword fighter than Kirito? :/

[shinta|hikari]

The Kirito who has been lazing about with his harem and with only one sword that does not match his usual heavy blades? I have no issue with it.

[Kraco]

So I´m really the only one to have a problem with the fact that there´s suddenly a better sword fighter than Kirito? :/

I was bothered by it, and I think I indicated as much earlier, but then MOM reminded me of the essential fact that Kirito indeed is a dual-wielder. Which makes me wonder why he doesn't have a second sword now. Did he spend all of his money getting the single one and the pistol and couldn't afford another, or what was it? Not that the situation would really surprise me as he has shown nothing but ill preparation for the mission during the whole arc.

[shinta|hikari]

He had no more money, and he needs his other hand for the pistol.

[Kraco]

he needs his other hand for the pistol.

Drop the second sword and grab the pistol; time lost: 1 ms.

[Ryllharu]

Once Kirito stopped being dumb, he realized the pistol could be used as a second "sword" (which he had done previously in the knockout rounds prior to the main tournament).

It wasn't a bad visual effect here. As deathgun started to go invisible, kirito "stabbed" him with the his "second sword."

That said, I wonder how well the lightsaber functions in the way Kirito is used to, very heavy blades. Since it didn't look like he was batting aside the estoc very well, I would wager that Kirito was at a severe disadvantage that whole fight.

So no, there is not suddenly a better swordsman. Deathgun had been playing GGO for two years while Kirito was off farting around in ALO with his harem. He had all the good gear, and Kirito bought whatever he could last minute and barely knew how to play.

[DarthEnderX]

I guess the guy wouldn´t have been able to be painted evil, if he was reacting in a realistic manner, because then it´d be clear that Sinon´s permanent rejection to his very real romantic advances simply hurt and damaged him, ultimately breaking him. Meanwhile, he gets to watch how she´s all lovey-dovey with a strange guy she just recently met in GGO. Classy. But no worries, by presenting him as a complete wacko, repeatingly and non-sensically shouting "Asada! Asada!", all blame goes to him, none to her. siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

Uh...even if he wasn't being presented as completely crazy, how would the blame not still be all his?

Do you think she owes him something? That she's in some way obligated to return his feelings? And if not, that he's somehow justified in his action, as long as his not raving while doing it?

[kmkze04]

I actually had no problem with this episode. Kirito being at a disadvantage against a weapon wielded by a person who more or less was designed to kill him is more than believable, and while he could have bought two swords (price was 150k, if I remember right, and he won 300k from the game), that would have neglected armor and a range weapon in a gun-based game. Did no one else pick up on the "hospital" and "medicine" mention from the previous eps? I found that suspicious, and then as soon as I saw the guy's obsessive nature in GGO after the playground scene, he was on my list of suspects. I don't think he snapped from rejection, I'm pretty sure he was well broken before, so his insanity was not unexpected or out of character for me. The rape/murder was stopped actually I think a little past what you'd expect of a series geared for younger crowds, and yes while a full rape may have been a super turn-on for hentai fans, that's something for fan fiction rather than public TV.
As for Kirito coming to the rescue, it would not surprise me at all if he reconsidered momentarily Death Gun's parting words and straight up charged over to Sinon's house while keeping Asuna in the dark probably for her own safety. Or he may have left her instructions to call. Based on that, and him saying Sinon's house was near the hospital, he could definitely reach there before police, and it is just like him to do so.

[Kraco]

Did no one else pick up on the "hospital" and "medicine" mention from the previous eps? I found that suspicious, and then as soon as I saw the guy's obsessive nature in GGO after the playground scene, he was on my list of suspects.

Sure, but like I said before, Death Gun was the only cool character in this arc. Why would I want the only cool one to be that sniveling fool in RL (and as a matter of fact his secondary cover character in GGO was a similar dunce as well)? The other characters (Kirito+harem) aren't that different, on a basic level, between RL and the total immersion VR. Why does Death Gun need to be so vastly different? He should have been a coldly psychotic and murderous personality of some manner in RL as well, not a weepy, creepy stalker dude sticking to a girl who only stands his presence because she has absolutely nobody else to talk to, despite not even being able to bear his slightest touch, let alone return his feelings.

[kmkze04]

Yeah but he's not the only Death Gun. Actually, I'm not even convinced he was the main Death Gun. He said he was one of the hands and did control Sterben for awhile, but the real Death Gun concept I think came from someone else, probably the brother who was Red Eyed Zaza. I'm pretty sure you'll get to see the dark psycho still.

[Ryllharu]

He said he controlled Sterben up to this point, but decided he wanted to do the actual killing this time. He's the one who leveled the Sterben and was playing DeathGun in-game when the blue-haired guy was killed in the beginning.

Arguably, you could even say that Kirito could have lost if the actual guy was playing instead of wanting to creep on Shino IRL, since it was his actual equipment.

I guess the next question is if the Amusphere tech allows someone else to play as someone else's character.