[Hagoshod]

It's not even the fact that the massive reveal just abruptly happens. The problem is the massive reveal just abruptly happens, and then the final battle and the conclusion of the Aincrad arc immediately follows it. When you're watching the end of episode 13 and the guild starts to fight the slightly more threatening than usual bone dragon boss on floor 70whatever, there's no build up whatsoever. There's no indication that you're watching the big penultimate episode. There's nothing to establish the story is in ****ing endgame territory. They can reveal who Heathcliff is on floor 70 something, but they should have had him make his crafty escape and keep going from there, at least until the main characters were closer to floor 100. All of this stuff just happens at once and your brain doesn't want to believe that that's it, that that's supposed to be the grand finale of the story arc.

The entire set up of "fufufu you've discovered my plans, now I challenge you to a duel!" wreaks of one of those fake-final-boss-that-you're-scripted-to-lose-so-you-can-come-back-when-you're-stronger-and-defeat-them-for-real plot twists JRPGs love to do. Tales of Symphonia does it well in that when you're about to take Colette to the first tower, they're really acting like the game is almost over, and then it ends up continuing when something even more huge happens. Tales of the Abyss takes it a step further because the first time you face Van, the game really treats it like its own separate final boss battle with its own battle music and endgame dungeon and ****. I get that SAO was trying to do that by having Kirito and Heathcliff spar in the guild first, and then fight FOR REALZ in episode 14, but it doesn't get you invested in it. There were no stakes or sense of urgency behind the first sparring match. When SAO goes for the big twist, when 1) the twist just kind of happens out of nowhere to begin with and 2) Kirito actually wins on what's essentially his first attempt against the fully-realized final boss, it doesn't leave you with the sense that you just watched the ending to a strong overarching story with years of character growth. It just leaves you going "...are you serious?"

And I kind of get how the whole point is the Kayaba/Heathcliff thing is intentionally not supposed to be the ending because the plot keeps going in the form of that elf game, but god that entire concept is so stupid. It just kills all suspension of disbelief and throws everything good about the survival plot out the window. I'm just going to ignore that part.

What the story desperately needed was more Kayaba-as-Heathcliff stuff.

How do you feel about this interpretation of Trainwreck Art Online, Animesuki forum?