Recap: Our heroes find themselves pitted against the Floor Boss unprepared.

Iro’s Thoughts:
When I was reading the novels in preparation for covering this show, this is the point where I realized that I was going to have… problems with this series, as Aquagaze so eloquently outlines below. Keep in mind that all the side stories (so, episodes 2-7) were included in subsequent novels and such, so this was happening pretty quickly: a bit less than halfway through the first novel. As a result, this episode is still paced oddly and there are a few lines that don’t make much sense in the anime’s context.

Picking up from last week’s cliffhanger, Kirito and Asuna see the floor boss and run like hell, deeming it unwise to get involved so early. They take a break at the dungeon’s entrance and discuss strategy for beating The Gleameyes, and Kirito gets called on his strange character build: he uses one sword without a shield, and it isn’t even the sword Lizbeth forged for him. Dismissing it as a character quirk, Asuna whips out lunch prepared with her level-1000-cooking-skill-instead-of-practical-combat-skills-for-a-front-liner. She’s spent the last year or so testing every single food ingredient in Sword Art Online, trying to recreate tastes from real life as a bid to retain her connection to reality. She’s managed to recreate mayo and soy sauce, and gives Kirito a taste.

Their romantic rendezvous is interrupted by Klein and his guild entering the dungeon. They’re all surprised to see the infamous solo player Kirito hanging out with anyone at all, let alone a girl, and let alone Asuna, the most famous girl in all of Aincrad (you can groan now). A few unnecessary introductions are passed around before another group of people enter the dungeon – this time, a task squad from The Army, the largest guild in the game. Their commander demands the map data from Kirito and orders his men forward despite their obvious fatigue.

Rightfully wary of The Army’s intentions, our heroes follow them through the dungeon and find them being wiped out by the boss. The boss room has an anti-crystal field, preventing them from warping out or healing with crystals – just like the trap room where Kirito’s former guild was killed. Asuna charges into the fray, unable to stand by and watch the army be murdered one by one, with Kirito and Klein’s guild in tow. They are unable to make any headway until Kirito breaks out his secret skill: Dual Blades. Using a sixteen-hit technique, he kills the boss singlehandedly and saves everyone. Woohoo.

Once everyone is recuperating back in town, the leader of the Knights of Blood guild, Heathcliff, challenges Kirito to a duel. If Kirito wins, then Asuna can take a break from the guild and party with him, and if he loses, then he has the join the Knights of Blood.

In the novels, The Army was mentioned much earlier, and made an appearance when Kirito and Asuna were heading towards the dungeon last episode. When Asuna lets Kirito taste her cooking, instead of pouring the sauce on his hand, she puts it on her finger and lets him taste that way. If that sounds somewhat creepy, that’s because it is. As for Lizbeth, when she first made the sword for Kirito in the second volume, he demonstrated his dual wielding for her. She didn’t appear at all during the first novel, so her appearance here amounts to delivering a couple of tacked-on lines when it doesn’t really make much sense for her to be there.

Aquagaze’s thoughts: … Wow. I literally cannot believe the anime fandom is not raging at this pathetic excuse for a show like there is no tomorrow. Are we honestly allowing Sword Art Online to get away with all the offensive, heartbreaking, senseless dinosaur dung it tried to pull on us this week? Kirito is the only person in the game who can dual-wield and he can do so… because? Asuna leaves her guild to become Kirito’s personal cook? Are you having a laugh with me?

This entire episode showed that Shitty Abomination Online is a joke. A sick, twisted, unfunny, Heath-Ledger-as-The-Joker joke. It’s not an epic. It’s not an adventure. It’s not even anything that comes remotely close to a “story”. It’s a natural disaster of megaton scale in which the plot literally consists of a guy massacring creepy old men — who are actually nice dudes because God forbids we accuse otaku who obsess over cute girls of being creepers! — to have a pretty girl play video games with him. It shoves its make-believe sense of danger and thrill down your throat like its smarter than you. Please. I have fought level 20 enemies in RPGs that look ten times more intimidating than that oversized smurf satyr Kirito deemed worthy of unleashing his ultimate Mary Sue skill upon.  There is nothing, nothing exciting about a show in which all enemies are instantly reduced to mincemeat by a main character without any character.

I don’t care if you have cool visuals, badass speeches and swelling Yuki Kajiura choirs chanting in Latin, Stupid-Ass Online. You cannot polish a turd. You can make something look epic, but that won’t make it epic. You can dress Kim-Jung Un up in a fancy suit, but he’ll still be a loser. Even if you play Two Steps From Hell in the background, allot a billion-dollar animation budgets and raise William Shakespeare from the grave to have him write the lines, a scene in which an unlikeable prick effortlessly beats up a giant monster on his own with a skill pulled straight out of his backside is and will always be an insult.

Kirito is by far the worst abomination of a character to have ever been allowed to exist and Screw Acuity Online is slowly moving upwards on the ladder of things I despise the most in the entire world. Don’t waste your time on loving this show, anime fandom. I know you can do better than this. Animation studios have the duty to use their talents and intellect to enhance our spirits and entertain our senses, but what we get here is an torrent of spit in the face of the two values that make entertainment a foundation of our society. This show is the product of arrogant pillocks who do not deem us worthy of being treated like intelligent people and viewers capable of enjoying the talent and effort of others. When creativity goes through the drain, all of mankind goes. So if you, for some insane reason, want Show Ass Online to be real one day, you had better stop watching it. Or else, you will, one day, look your children in the eyes with tears streaming down your face, and tell them that Humanity Has Declined.

Which is a great show, by the way.

Lifesong’s Thoughts: We are at an interesting turning point in Sword Art Online. So far the episodes have been contained in very short one-offish plots, leaving any overarching plot brewing in the background out of reach and disconnected from us. Personally I felt like this episode was a very welcome change of pace. Ever since episode 3 I have kind of felt like this anime is slowly going down hill while what charm it has just fades away. This episode did a lot to change that.

Frankly I thought this last episode was pretty fantastic. We got a bit of development from the characters and more importantly, the setting. Sure the characters are a little bit Vanilla and that wont be changing any time soon, and sure Kirito is AWESOME, but uh yeah, that’s the point. The setting is the real selling point here and there is always more going on than meets the eye. Why doesn’t Kirito want to show off his abilities for example? The politics of gaming add a lot of flavor to an otherwise very vanilla mechanics at the core of this story. It’s basic, but it works.

We also got some character development this week. If this anime has one fatal adaptation flaw it is that as of episode 8 I haven’t been given much of a reason to care about Asuna. She is hot and good at video games? Fuckable and skilled might be two of the top traits an MMO gamer looks for in a woman, but an interesting heroine it does not make. For me Asuna’s logic in picking up cooking was a positive thing for her character. Kirito was also given a little more depth with his reluctance to use his second sword and the logic behind why. I liked that.

One last thing in closing that I feel really needs to be said, that boss fight was cool! The animation staff deserve a hand for that fight. Maybe I am the lone sane man in a crazy world here, but hey someone has to play that role right?