Sword Art Online - Episode 12 Discussion / Poll

[Gearhead]

SAO is, at the end of it, a story about making the best of a bad situation. All Asuna had to go on at that point was that she was dealing with a child who was very obviously disturbed on a deep level.

And said child had decided she was her mother.

Do you tell the kid 'No, I'm not your mama!' and potentially cause her to come unglued again.. or do you play along and try to find out who the kid really belongs to? (Which is, in fact, exactly what they did.)

[Adigard]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

If by "casual viewer" you mean anime-only viewer, I don't think it's really that hard.

We've got tons of 'anime only viewers' (yourself included) who have no interest in the novels, who are perfectly capable of picking up what's happening. Some of whom see things even more clearly than the novel readers who are rather constrained by what they know. Again, show don't tell doesn't get used very often... I'm assuming this is why. I'm not defending a thesis here, I'm just saying that as much as people complain about show's "telling" them everything... it's possible there's a reason that tired olde trope exists.

Originally Posted by Quadratic

I think people call this a straw man? How many of these applied to Yui's development that ahelo was raising. And by development, we're talking about the connection between Kirito + Asuna & Yui which didn't connect with/convince a few viewers, not just ahelo.
It was love at first sight for Kirito and Asuna, therefore viewers were expected to follow suit. And that's it. Either you played along or you didn't.

Hmmm... absolutely none of them? Didn't you read the bits of my post you linked? I mentioned it in that very paragraph. He didn't enjoy what he saw of the connections... why should I defend the connections when I can defend the rest of the episode? I'm not going to tell him he's wrong for not enjoying something I enjoyed... that'd be dumb of me.

I'm just going to point out that a lot of other 'world-building' things happened, so it's not the end of the world if you don't enjoy the 'character-building' things that did happen.

[Quadratic]

Originally Posted by Adigard

Hmmm... absolutely none of them? Didn't you read the bits of my post you linked? I mentioned it in that very paragraph. He didn't enjoy what he saw of the connections... why should I defend the connections when I can defend the rest of the episode? I'm not going to tell him he's wrong for not enjoying something I enjoyed... that'd be dumb of me.

I'm just going to point out that a lot of other 'world-building' things happened, so it's not the end of the world if you don't enjoy the 'character-building' things that did happen.

Exactly right, none. You can defend the rest of the episode, ie. world development, but no one attacked it, hence the straw man.

I will provide the entire paragraph that you selectively quoted:

Originally Posted by ahelo

I never said her development was wasted-- it was more of that it totally wasn't enough for them to pull something like this. Yui getting resurrected or not later on is completely beside the point. My complaint on this episode was not just that Yui died; I'm complaining that an episode like this needs way more buildup for it to work.

It didn't matter whether world building was equally important or not, the context was Yui's development.
Why you took needs way more buildup to imply a lack of world building, I don't know.
Until someone attacks the world building aspect, your whole "show, don't tell" argument falls flat on its face because you cannot apply it to the context of said argument.

You can make an argument about the balance (or imbalance) between character development and world building, but again, the "show, don't tell" works against you if you believe the character development is lacking (ie. a lack of "show, don't tell" in the character development aspect).
Again, you shouldn't use the "show, don't tell" argument if you don't know how to use it.

[ahelo]

Originally Posted by Adigard

why should I defend the connections when I can defend the rest of the episode? I'm not going to tell him he's wrong for not enjoying something I enjoyed... that'd be dumb of me.

I'm just going to point out that a lot of other 'world-building' things happened, so it's not the end of the world if you don't enjoy the 'character-building' things that did happen.

The only reason (and it's a pretty huge reason for me) for not liking this episode is solely the "connections" you speak of. The other parts of the episodes, relatively, are good world building but SAO is more, and should be, than just plot. I don't even hate SAO; just this episode. In the end aren't you defending something I didn't even have problems with -___-?

It's exactly as Quadratic pointed out . . . I didn't even mention or complain that much of the plot (besides the deus ex machina which relentless clearly explained) so I don't recall ever having an argument about terrible plots and all. I'm just merely concerned (and frustrated) at how things are being handled character-wise (and I'm sure most of the gripes people who aren't warming up to SAO lie there).

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by ahelo

I'm just merely concerned (and frustrated) at how things are being handled character-wise (and I'm sure most of the gripes people who aren't warming up to SAO lie there).

Well, Yui's character is not the primary one being developed; Asuna and Kirito are being developed. The purpose of Yui's character is to provide a push to help them both have "someone waiting for them on the other side", thus giving them more motivation to clear the game. This is motivation that they may have had in the earlier days, but has been slipping as more time passed and they became more and more contented with "living in the world" (as they fell in love with each other). It may be a bit ironic that it takes an AI to bring them one step closer to reality, but considering their situation I don't think it's that surprising.

Personally, I didn't have a problem relating to the affection Kirito and Asuna showed to Yui even in the short time they knew her -- they left the front lines primarily searching for the sort of warmth and closeness that the battle system could never provide. They found that in each other, and they found that in Yui -- a lonely AI who was programmed with emotions that she was never allowed to show. Even if you felt nothing for Yui personally, I think it's quite defensible how Kirito and Asuna fell for her in light of their circumstance (and this emotional connection is very much shown in the story). And based on the emotions portrayed, you should be able to deduce logically the impact this will have on them going forward. I guess it isn't as good as falling in love with Yui yourself, but I suppose it's hard to control how you feel.

[Gearhead]

You know, it dawns on me that there was a hidden reference in this story.

'A boss from somewhere above the 90th Floor' and it just happens to be Death.

Yeah, that guy's the 99th Floor Boss.

[Rakshasa]

Originally Posted by Gearhead

You know, it dawns on me that there was a hidden reference in this story.

'A boss from somewhere above the 90th Floor' and it just happens to be Death.

Yeah, that guy's the 99th Floor Boss.

Ehm, I was under the impression that Kirito knew the thing was on the level of a 90+ boss from the lack of health bar information and such, which Kirito would be too low-level to see.

[n120cky]

Originally Posted by Catsy

Yup.

Let's assume--no, let's not even assume, let's acknowledge the canonical fact that Kirito is something of a prodigy who has extensively studied not just programming in general, but the APIs and previous applications written for the NerveGear hardware and the books written by the person who designed SAO.

Now he's been given elevated privileges at a GM console with an interface that it's entirely possible he's either studied from Kayaba's books or actually used before.

So let's say Kirito types something like this:

> show -f system.entities|grep yui
1 line(s) matched: //sys/ents/admin/yui.entdata
> copy -r -s //sys/ents/admin/yui.entdata -t //self/local/yuibackup
1 folder(s) copied recursively to local storage.
> gm.spawnGameObjectAtPlayer -u -n "Yui's Heart" -t player.Kirito -a //res/items/appearance/bluecrystalheart.pak -i //self/local/yuibackup
Usable item [Yui's Heart] spawned successfully at player.Kirito - linked to //self/local/yuibackup

Takes all of five seconds. And then he gets forcibly logged out.

Problem solved.

Note: I pulled all of that out of the nether in about 5 minutes based on 20+ years working with command line systems. I would have so much respect for anime/movie producers if they'd just call up one of their hacker/geek friends and ask them to make up some convincing-looking actual commands for what they're trying to portray rather than this lazy Matrix stuff.

Spoiler for Yui file name:

Well it's not mentioned in the anime but I have read it some where in thread, she has something like *MHCP* on her file name which is (Mental Care Counseling Program)

[ronelm2000]

Originally Posted by n120cky

Spoiler for Yui file name:

Well it's not mentioned in the anime but I have read it some where in thread, she has something like *MHCP* on her file name which is (Mental Care Counseling Program)

You're wrong on one thing:
Yui DID say her real name in the anime... around near the end, I think.

[n120cky]

Originally Posted by ronelm2000

You're wrong on one thing:
Yui DID say her real name in the anime... around near the end, I think.

Hmm yes she did, I guess I missed it.

[Gearhead]

Originally Posted by Rakshasa

Ehm, I was under the impression that Kirito knew the thing was on the level of a 90+ boss from the lack of health bar information and such, which Kirito would be too low-level to see.

The joke here is that the boss before Dracula is ALWAYS Death.

[kitten320]

Sigh, will there ever be any other relevant characters except Asuna and Kirito.

Their connection to Yui was way too strong considering that they knew her only for few days... rushed once again.

Nice episode over all but it also bugs me how Kirito knows everything and was able to create that crystal.
Is he a programmer? Because in all honesty, after 12 episodes we barely know anything even about main 2 charas =/

[chaos_alfa]

Originally Posted by kitten320

Sigh, will there ever be any other relevant characters except Asuna and Kirito.

Their connection to Yui was way too strong considering that they knew her only for few days... rushed once again.

Nice episode over all but it also bugs me how Kirito knows everything and was able to create that crystal.
Is he a programmer? Because in all honesty, after 12 episodes we barely know anything even about main 2 charas =/

In the first episode you can see a few books about programming and a few books written by Kayaba in Kirito's room.