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Originally Posted by Triple_R
To answer your question, let me draw a comparison between the first three episodes of Sword Art Online, and the first thee episodes of another famous anime called Madoka Magica.
Spoiler for Major Madoka Magica spoilers for comparison purposes:
Mami Tomoe doesn't last long in Madoka Magica. Roughly two and a half episodes, if that. She was killed by a witch in Episode 3.
But that was long enough for me to truly feel some sadness at her death. Perhaps more importantly, it was enough for me to identify with Madoka and Sayaka's sadness. I could feel their devastation at Mami's sudden and very violent death, because I previously felt the gradually growing camaraderie between Madoka/Sayaka and their new, beloved mentor/senpai.
The sense of lost and tragedy was palpable. When Episode 4 came around, Mami's absence was truly felt by me. The aftermath of her death was leaving a dark shadow that felt almost suffocating. You could feel the heavy weight on Madoka and Sayaka's shoulders. You could feel the proverbial ominous clouds in the air.
I don't think that would have happened if Mami had died in less than a episode's worth of on-screen time. It just would have been too quick. It would have been harder for me to relate to Madoka and Sayaka being so devastated by it. Likewise, I'm not really emotionally there with Kirito in this episode. Oh, I intellectually get it, and I feel sorry for him, but the emotional connection just isn't the same. And that lack of emotional connection can hurt down the line, given that this is the male lead we're talking about here.
Giving the viewer a little bit of time to get attached to Mami (and also to show how attached Madoka and Sayaka were getting to Mami) really, really helped.
The same would have been true of Kirito and Saichi here if we had been given a little bit more time to get attached to Saichi.
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Long story short, I really think it would have been better if this episode had been spread out over two.
Imagine if this episode had ended on a relatively happy, upbeat note, and then you were hit with a ton of bricks as the guild was decimated in the first half of Episode 4.
It also doesn't help that we already had named character death in Episode 2. People can get accustomed to named character death if it happens frequently. It starts to yield diminishing returns, emotionally.
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In terms of emotional impact, yes, it definitely would have. No argument there. The problem is that, as I've pointed out a few times before, there just isn't enough material to make it span 2 whole episodes. The studio could've created some filler scenes to make up for the lack of material, but fillers usually do more harm than they do good. In my experience, anyway.
Ahh, that's right; I had completely forgotten Diabel bit the dust back in episode 2. And yes, that's very true.
In the end, I guess it all comes down to how easily each person gets attached to characters; one episode is enough for some, and it isn't for others.
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Clannad made me cry a few times, and I certainly don't mind saying that. But Clannad did that, in part, because I was given a chance to get attached to its characters before anything all that bad happened to them.
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Mhm. That's the formula for tragedy; get the viewers successfully attached to a certain before letting something horrendous befall them.
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Originally Posted by noobita
Wow...Kirito just solo'ed an event boss. How could this even possible?
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Who's to say the event boss is so much more powerful than the other bosses? Plus, it's more than likely that Kirito's level was much higher than the Nicholas'.