Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Sword Art Online: Alicization
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青白
Posts: 184 |
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I mean, either that, or Asuna get tasered and locked up/dumped into ocean. Since Kikuoka is in the military and cares a great deal for the lives of his fellow human beings, he probably wouldn't do something like that. If you are going to keep Asuna alive, it is better to appease her misunderstanding than to refuse cooperation. The former would at least calm her teenage a$$ down and prevent her from doing anything rash that would put the project (and her boyfriend's live) in danger. |
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jdnation
Posts: 2082 |
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Incredibly? It's a disturbingly neat sci-fi concept for sure. But at the end of the day I doubt the military would be too perturbed by what the general public may think about essentially keeping one boy alive and mending his brain condition, while making what are essentially just high-faluted video game NPCs. Basically, it's no different than what is already occurring now with AI systems designed to kill for military purposes and which are already running and screwing our financial systems and economies into the ground without any oversight. If they were going to keep something secret it'd have nothing to do with how the general public feels about what they're doing, as much as that they probably don't want their research leaked to competitors or rival nations. But I have a feeling there's probably something far more to it than that - such as essentially being capable of bringing dead people "back to life" via an AI copy. I think that'll play a part further down the road. And maybe have something to do with resurrecting SAO's creator. Not that I know... since I'm only watching the anime... |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1458 |
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Ah, good to know Kawahara addressed the differences in limitations between Yui and an artificial Fluctlight. Hopefully the anime will show a bit of that. |
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 364 |
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Yeah, but fixing Kirito isn't really what the project's about (though I suppose a skilled PR department could spin it that way). They're raising AIs for military use, using brain scans of actual babies. And based on how blatantly they moved Kirito, a human with friends and family, under the guise of providing care, I'd bet good money the families of those babies probably don't know they have digital clones being raised for military use (gotta read the fine print at the hospital). I mean like you said, the real world public has problems with things like drones and very basic AI; comparatively this is way more shady. It'd be like finding out that Siri or Alexa weren't just programs but AIs that think they're real humans trapped in machines. My guess is if the whole project was successful, the military would never let the secret about what the AIs are leak. But in SAO-land, they just let Asuna spill all the details to her buds. Plus, like you said, leaking details could mean that this whole project gets leaked to other companies/nations, and that's something they wouldn't want, which is immediately put at risk by letting her pals know everything about what's going down at Rath HQ. I mean, it'd be like if you snuck onto Area 51, found out aliens are real, got caught, but no one took your phone away. In the end I guess the ethical issue boils down to how "human" the general public would find these fluctlights, since the military's endgame is basically to plug Alice or Eugeo into a tank and put them into service, and regardless of how "real" humans would find the AIs, I'd bet the public would throw a fit once they found out that the AIs are based off of copied baby souls. (Also, the very concept of scientifically finding and copying the human soul would cause a whole mess in the religious community) |
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Showsni
 Posts: 641 |
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The anime skipped this bit, but apparently the 12 newborn babies they scanned all had practically identical souls - the few differences between them made up of memories stored whilst in the womb. They compared the 12 souls to eliminate these differences, ending up with a single soul archetype that is apparently (in this world, anyway) identical to the single pure soul all humans start out with. And it's this archetypical soul they use to seed all newborn babies in Underworld. Interesting how they all treat Alice accidentally falling over and her finger touching over the border as this massive act of rebellion that has destroyed the taboo index.  You'd think they wouldn't jump to conclusion so fast...
spoiler[Of course, it turns out that all of the artificial fluctlights pretty much would be ALICEs capable of breaking the taboo index if it weren't for the seal of the right eye, which was introduced into the programme by a traitor in the organisation sabotaging it from within.] |
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Yune Amagiri
 Posts: 1049 Location: France |
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I'm glad they used flashback to highlight the few mandatory scenes that were skipped like the one when Kirito cuts the branch which served as meterial for his sword.
I really don't mind Vol.10 being mostly skipped, it was easily the one i liked the least, also most informations that were given during this volume only served for the academy parts, i agree with the reviewer though, they are really gonna save a lot a screen time at this rate, if they intend to allocate this time to the spoiler[War arc] then it's gonna be awesome. |
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Fred Lougee
Posts: 127 |
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Ah...and here I was just thinking that the pacing was going slower than previous installments of the series. No. I learn, thanks to the article, that the series is for four cours and they are dropping content from the manga in order to shoehorn the meta-arc into that time frame. Will say that this is not a complaint, just an observation. I intentionally passed on reading the manga because I knew that it would get animated at some point and I dislike that feeling of noticing discrepancies.
From what I am reading here I am glad that the chapter of the manga dealing with the Sword Skill Academy has gotten reduced to a single episode, more or less.I really want the storyline to get on with the story and spending several episodes on "here's all the sword skill types in this world, you're welcome for all the excess information" would have been a killer. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18388 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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To be clear, the Sword Academy part of the story isn't getting reduced to a single episode. There's going to be at least two more episodes to it, maybe three. Doing it in two would be pushing the pace a bit but seems logical to me, as that would prevent having a whole episode of just piddling around and have episode 9 ending at an ideal break point. (Novel readers will probably know exactly what I mean.) We'll see how deliberate the adaptation wants to be.
Oh, and for sake of reference, I'm now through vol. 14 of the novels. That raises the question to me about whether or not the series is going to try to get that far (i.e., through the 6th of 10 volumes) in its first two cours, as the end of that novel seems like an ideal season break. Cutting the Zakkaria content down to a flashback is the first indicator that such may be the production's intent. Thoughts from fellow novel readers on this? |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3666 |
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Jesus, this is the fast version? I'm interested in the plot, I'd like to see what comes next, and yet I spend the entire show thinking "can we move on to the next plot point already?"
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Emerje
 Posts: 7391 Location: Maine |
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This episode just made me mad. What they should have done was edit down Asuna's side of the story and spent the second half of episode 6 on the tournament. Instead we keep getting filler. We're really supposed to believe a top secret military vessel is going to just let Asuna jump onto ALO and start spilling military secrets to her friends? What were they thinking? Between that and the massive amount of filler in the first episode and then the removal of key moments from the novels I'm getting rather underwhelmed by this adaptation.
There was so much that they skipped during their journey that would have made for a solid episode. spoiler[The introduction of Charlotte, the incident with the horse, Kirito's super fast sword kata, and overcoming his opponent with a weakened sword.] It was a great little travel arc in the story witht he right mix of fun, action, and tension. Also why are they animating his sword with a blue hue? It's nicknamed "the Black One" since Kirito isn't concerned with giving it a proper name (at least as far as the most recent official English LN release), it's supposed to be semi-translucent black. They also cut a really quick scene in the novels that I enjoyed from where he makes his first test swing in the weapon shop, in the book the force of his swing cuts a shield on the wall in half. The shield was there but they didn't complete the scene. On the bright side when the anime surpasses what's been translated of the novel I'll still have plenty of new content to read. 
Emerje |
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pikkuhukka
 Posts: 72 |
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47, its going to be 47 eps
24 + 23 |
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Shinji Paradox
Posts: 15 |
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This! I thought I was the only one, who thought Asuna story should of been cut in half. Everyone, keeps saying that what they skip really wasn't that important to the story. Really??? Not finding out how Kirito and Eugeo made it into the swordcraft academy wasn't that important? Not knowing how they end up and winning there way through a tournament-ish entrance exam was not really important. To me, that sound like excellent plot points to drive the story forward and get us to be immersed in the journey. The struggles of the characters and their development makes it much more rewarding. Just because you read a book and know all the good nooks and cranny of a story detail, doesn't justify for you tell us, (the ones who haven't read the book) that its wasn't that important. |
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Yune Amagiri
Posts: 1049 Location: France |
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spoiler[To be honest, before it started i was even expecting a pacing way slower that the current one, now considering the current pace and possible futur skip of low-key scenes i'm even wondering if by episode 15 we won't already reach the Eugeo/Bercouli fight and by 17-8, so half way in the second cour, the final fight with Administator then the death of Eugeo and Non-Syntehsis Alice. I mean starting the moment they were taken to the tower and jailed in Vol 11 until Vol 14, it was moslty battles scenes with a lot of narration and some long discussions like the one with loli Cardinal in the library until the end. Compared to the precedents volumes these ones were not only high paced but also restricted from both geographical and temporal point of view, spending too much times to adapt them would make no sense and kill the momentum which made the tower arc so interesting in the LN, also, considering that 4 cours announced i doubt the studio bothered spending a whole episode on every fight, scenes which are highly animated and so requires a lot of work. Of course, i don't think they intend to stop the tower arc so early, that wouln't make a good ending for the second cour otherwise but if they don't, because of the current high pace, they will definitely have to seriously slow down and unnecessary drag an arc which should be instead carried by it's momentum. They should have instead spend more time during the tournament.] |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18388 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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What filler? The only "filler" was the scene where Asuna was talking to the others in ALO, and that was relatively brief. (And yes, for the record, I'll entirely agree that that particular scene is problematic. I understand why they inserted it, but they didn't think it through all that well.) Everything else was in the source material and, at least IMO, pretty important. No, the Asuna scenes went on as long as they needed to, and I think I can say that fairly even given that Asuna's my favorite franchise character.
In my view, the Zakkaria content isn't as important as the content that comes before or after it, whether you've read the novels or not. (The exception, of course, being the omission of a certain character.) How they got there isn't anywhere near as important as the fact that they got there. If a major cut had to be made in this part of the story, that was the place to do it, because I don't see any place before or after where a whole chapter can be summarized like that. Of course, the series will need to justify that cut by how it handles things later on, and I'm curious to see how the production staff will do that. |
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Fred Lougee
Posts: 127 |
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Thanks for clarifying all that. To my points, so far as I have been concerned one of the consistent strengths of the SAO franchise has been that the respective series have all had a good pacing, whatever other perceived (by some) flaws might exist. Some folk trashed on the Elfheim storyline for reducing Asuna to a stereotypical damsel in distress (funny, nobody ever complained about Princess Leia in the detention block aboard the Death Star). For the Gun Gale Online arc of SAO II there was a crowd who took issue with Kirito finding an energy sword in a game which is exclusively guns. Don't like it, write your own manga. Alicization is just moving slower. Somehow it feels like we are still in the set-up process, similar to Bleach. That show had a very long set-up, really the entire arc in Karakura Town where Ichigo first meets Rukia and learns the truths behind his friends and acquaintances but the story does not begin in earnest until he has acquired Soul Reaper powers of his own and heads off with his friends into Soul Society to save Rukia. That is still how the show "feels" at this point. It's still all about introductions and tutorials, well get to the real action later, please sit tight. Okay then, I am sitting tight. |
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