Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II

Episode 7

When it comes down to it, this is hands-down my favorite episode of the second season so far. This is because, more than anything else, this is a Pitohui episode. As the antagonist, she carried the first season even more than Llenn. After all, without Pitohui and her death game, the stakes would have been non-existent and Llenn would have likely never bothered to join Squad Jam 2.

There's been one big question looming over season two: What does it mean for Pitohui and Llenn now that Pitohui's obsession has switched from re-creating the Sword Art Online experience to Llenn herself? How will her fixation on Llenn dictate her actions? In this episode, we get our answer.

Just like before, Pitohui is chasing a high. This time, however, that high is not from a life-or-death struggle, but from an all-out confrontation with Llenn because Pitohui is a genius at reading people's emotions. She knows that Llenn has no interest in fighting her again and most certainly not with the earnestness she did when Pitohui's life was on the line. Thus, the real quandary facing Pitohui this season has not been how to win the tournament, but rather how to get Llenn to want to fight her.

As a master manipulator, Pitohui knows that the easiest way to control a person is to provoke them—to anger them to the point that they act against their normal nature. In this case, all she has to do is make herself the target of Llenn's anger. When you look back at the season this far, you can clearly see that all of Pitohui's actions regarding Llenn were designed to do just that. She's constantly forced Llenn to do things she didn't want to do—like being bait—and then made jokes about it at Llenn's expense.

Pitohui's original plan likely involved her taking out team SHINC herself in some anticlimactic way that robbed Llenn of her chance to battle the team honorably as they had promised. The whole betrayer team announcement was almost certainly an unexpected gift from the heavens as far as she was concerned. It allowed her to do two things: 1) use an expendable team (the betrayers) to take out as many of the other teams as possible to leave a battlefield for her and Llenn alone and 2) allow her to betray Llenn in a way that was doubly personal.

As Llenn was the true traitor, Pitohui joining the betrayer team allowed her to pretend that she and Llenn were still on the same team. In Llenn's mind, she and Pitohui were still working together, even if against her friends Fukaziroh and M. She even left M to get strangled when she obviously could have helped for the sake of the game. But when it's revealed that Pitohui was faking all along, it becomes clear to Llenn that everything Pitohui was doing on the betrayer team was to ruin her Squad Jam 3 experience. She not only manipulated Llenn's feelings but also went out of her way to make sure there was no way the fight between SHINC and Llenn could happen as Llenn wanted.

With Llenn blinded by rage, everything looks like Pitohui will get her desired fight. However, this episode shows that this is not without cost. As was established last season, Pitohui is self-destructive. She's more than willing to put her life on the line when chasing a high. In the real world, she is a pop star and one who has just finished an exhausting tour. Instead of resting, she has joined a high-stakes tournament that has required her to be running at 100% to get the results she desired. Knowing this was dangerous, she had purposely logged in using a NerveGear instead of an AmuSphere to bypass all the automatic safety features that would have forced her to logout.

While it's doubtful Pitohui's life is on the line this time, her immediate health most certainly is. She's currently nearing her mental limit where we see her on the edge of passing out more than once in this episode. Unlike last time, where Llenn was doing her all to protect Pitohui, this time she is focused solely on her own anger. And with no one looking out for Pitohui, there's a good chance her self-destructive nature will cause more than a little actual harm.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• Ah, I see Pitohui understands the old maxim: “Why have one when you can have two?”

• I bet both Fukaziroh and M had figured out that Llenn was the real traitor from the start and just wanted to see how things would play out (one just for laughs and one because he's completely loyal to Pitohui and her wants).

• Pitohui racked up one heck of a body count this episode by ramming the ship into one team and electrocuting another—and that's not even counting her up-close-and-personal photon sword kills.

• If Llenn really wants to hurt Pitohui, all she has to do is deny giving her the fight she wants—though, at this point, it looks like Llenn wants the fight as much as Pitohui does.

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Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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