Sword Art Online II

Episode 11

A fairly slow and talky episode of Sword Art Online this week, but we did cover some necessary ground. This week started with Kirito and Sinon figuring out how Death Gun pulls off his Death Fun, shifted over to Kirito's old friends for some general exposition, and ended with our heroes preparing for battle.

Our first stop this week was Kirito and Sinon's Character Development Cave, where we began by concluding Sinon's breakdown with her obvious final question - how has Kirito gotten over his own past? The answer, of course, is he hasn't - the opposite of what Sinon wants to hear, but the truth she'll eventually have to accept. This segued into a discussion of how Death Gun goes about his murderings, which ended at them realizing he most likely has an accomplice who actually does the killing.

I enjoyed hearing Kirito and Sinon think their way towards this conclusion - instead of the first season's two-part mystery, this one actually built off worldbuilding information we already knew, meaning the viewer could legitimately follow along with their line of thinking. My one major complaint for this section was the director's decision to spend basically half of this scene staring at Sinon's butt. I understand it can sometimes be tough to visually spruce up a scene of pure dialogue, but if you do that by staring at the heroine's short shorts the entire time, it makes it hard for me to take either the scene itself or her as a character seriously. My eyes are up here, SAO.

The question of Death Gun's methods ultimately led to one of his motives, returning us to this season's most charged and compelling questions. Kirito's answer to the question of why he would do any of this is “he must have wanted to keep being a red player.” Just like in the first season, Sword Art Online is once again proposing that any actions you take in the virtual world are likely reflective of your real identity. And not only are your actions a tangible part of your identity, but your choices and identity in the game can even start to reflect back on your real-life self, which Kirito and Sinon both acknowledge with the thought that they sometimes really do see themselves as a swordsman and a sniper. The actual relationship between our digital actions and real selves is a complicated one, but I'm impressed to see a show largely based in embracing the fantasy of videogame escapism juggling with themes that could easily be construed as “videogames can make you lose track of reality.”

Unfortunately, the episode's second half was a great deal less interesting, as Kirito's harem was largely going over information we already knew. This is another area where SAO's prior decisions have become something of a liability - the show initially introduced injections of conflict by adding a new character every few episodes, meaning now we have all these bonus characters sitting around with not much to do. It'd have been nice if this arc had managed to make better use of them, but if they are going to appear, it only damages the show's pacing to have them just sit around telling each other things the viewer already knows.

Fortunately, next week will likely improve on this, as it's looking like we'll be returning to the action with a Mexican standoff. I'm certainly ready to see some stuff explode!

Rating: B-

Sword Art Online II is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Nick writes about anime, storytelling, and the meaning of life at Wrong Every Time.