Some chocolates are picked from animal droppings. =P

Also, I feel bad for Lizbeth...not entirely upset about it, but it is difficult seeing someone, even a fictional character, unable to say how they feel about someone.

Decent ep.
It was way too rushed to take Lizbeth's feelings seriously or to even care about her character but it wasn't as bad as ep3.

Kirito = HAREM
Rito = HAREM

See the similarities?
Now, where's the LOLI character that I'm waiting for (that girl in the OP scene).

No. I don't. ;p

Hint... Kirito isn't building a Harem... we're not adding harem members who you'll need to fall for. Kirito is meeting friends. It's a different dynamic.

Just watched, Liz is blown away and a path, which players follow, just conveniently leads to a giant hole? Might have been better if the hole was somewhere in the crystal field.

Run up straight the wall at what looks like an angle of 90? Kirito must've forgotten about gravity.:heh:

Say a couple of lines to a girl and she falls for him, Kirito must have used all his points from levelling to boost his charisma stat. Her wanting to hold his hand was way too sudden, at least add some monologue, ~2 minutes of monologue would have been enough to reflect her inner feelings.

They escaped from the hole, enjoying some free fall, but how did they land? Falling onto crystals hurts more than falling on snow.

A-1 really leaves a lot of stuff to the imagination of the viewers, but the dragon was pretty decent:heh:

This is roughly the same deal as what we got in episode 4. I found this one better though because even if episode 4 did give us details on the game's systems and touched upon PK'ers a bit whilst this episode gave us nothing in that regard, I much preferred Lizbeth as a character opposed to Silica. Seems that unlike Silica we may actually see her again in the series too since she's a blacksmith.

Only real problem I had is that her romantic attraction to Kirito seemed way too spontaneous. Funnily enough it's making me appreciate Asuna more and more for not succumbing to this sort of thing. :)

Aside from that not a bad episode. The few Wile E. Coyote stunts in this episode were amusing, and who knew that dragon fecal matter was so lustrous? :heh:

So in this episode Kirito becomes even more of a Marty Stu this episode and SAO lurches towards becoming a full-on otaku wish-fulfillment anime.

Liz decides to wander off alone with the poor-looking asshole who broke her best sword and then didn't offer to pay for it, when she still has no idea who he is or if he has any money, because um ... plot! Oh, and dragons are nocturnal, except when they attack you in broad daylight when you first show up, because, um ... plot! Oh, and to locate Liz, Kirito decides not to use his tracking ability, decides not to ask Asuna, who is friends with Liz and can tell him where she is, but rather decides to stand on a bell tower from which it is physically impossible for him to see her, because umm ... I don't even know about this one!

Most laughably, remember in the first episode where 90% of the cute girls turned into dudes? Because SAO sure as hell doesn't.

It looks like an imminent harem to me. :P

Actually coffee beans ;)

I knew it was something of that sort...I mix chocolate and coffee so often that I trip up on that. Thanks for the save, however odd it might be. XD

here's hoping you've never dropped chocolate into a coffee maker and turned it on... it's probably be messy.

Hmm, I guess.

Ah well, in the end it didn't matter because the dragon just dropped the item it's own away :heh:

Marty Stu. Really? :heh: As much as I've to hear why you consider him one, this issue has been beaten to death in his character discussion thread.

Alright, let's go with that. If 10% (10% of 1,000 is 100) of the players in the first episode were girls, and we've met less than 10 girls in the first 7 episodes. And while we're at it, let's say that half of those 100 died. We have around 50 left, then. Yeah, that's completely laughable to think that Kirito has run into, what, 5? 7? girls? :rolleyes:

Best girl, best episode.

Honest to God I really wouldn't have minded if these side stories had more time allocated to them than just single episodes. They're just so good it's such a shame.

Let's see, Kirito is impossibly talented at a wide variety of skills. He's a great figher, very intelligent, has an encyclopedic knowledge of Aincrad, has the nose of a dog, and is exceptionally empathetic (for a loner no less!).

Every girl that is not obviously unavailable has fallen, or is falling for him.

His only "flaw" is that he blames himself for bad things that happen to his friends, but as presented, neither the Black Cats' nor Diabel's deaths were his fault, so this is actually comes out as "tortured soul"/bearing the weight of the world, which is a positive.

He's completely a Marty Sue.

I notice you cherry-picked my statement - run the numbers again for "cute" girls.

Out of the named characters so far, that Kirito actually interacts with, we have the following:

Guys: Agil, Diabel, Klein, Keita, Kains
Girls: Asuna, Lizbeth, Silica, Sachi, Rosalia, Yoruko

Hmm, that's one more cute girl than all the male characters combined!

A better way to look at it though, is to ask ourselves, who was the deuteragonist of each episode?

Ep1: Klein
Ep 2: Asuna/Diabel
Ep 3: Sachi
Ep 4: Silica
Ep 5: Yoruko/Asuna
Ep 6: Asuna
Ep 7: Lizbeth.

So that's 1 for the guys, 1 tie, and 5 for the cute ladies! :rolleyes: indeed.

A character is only a Marty Stu/Mary Sue if they're so perfect that you simply can't empathise with him/her. I've never felt that's the case with Kirito. I've always been able to empathise with him thanks to way they've fleshed out his character. Even if a character is perfect in every way, you can still make him relatable.

You're right in that some of those things are noticeable and don't need to be that way, but I'm not nearly as bothered by it.

Episode 7 was a simple episode.
I enjoyed it much better than the 2-parter mystery last time which ended up having a boring conclusion.

@Trajan: Calling Kirito a Marty Stu...where is he perfect?
He's skilled and intelligent. He has flaws. He makes mistakes. He dislikes some people, likes others. I could go on.
He is not a Marty Stu.

Attracting 4 girls that he's met? Please get over yourself. That isn't even a factor in what determines a character being Stu-ish. :/