Quote Originally Posted by KrayZ33 View Post
as I said, you make it sound and look like he loves to bath in the tears of others and is doing all for his own amusement.
First of all, the main character's social dysfunction should be immediately evident. In addition to the comments about the game's creator, in the first episode his home life is presented as a featureless room and his only interaction with his family is through a closed door. Do you not find this image telling in a show about an MMORPG? Kirito finds MMORPG virtual worlds more fulfilling than the real world. Secondly, just because he is deeply dysfunctional does not mean he is a sadist. I don't think the character we've seen in these episodes relates to human beings enough to take pleasure in their discomfort. In episode four, why does he help the girl out? Because she was an innocent person about to die? Because he wants to repair her self-confidence and her relationship with her MMO pet? No, because she reminded him of a family member. This is a reflection of his threat to the PK guild leader at the end of the episode - the consequence for murder isn't moral or spiritual to him, it's a few days of being PVP flagged.