Sword Art Online - Episode 14 Discussion / Poll

[Wintersun]

mind = blown.

so many unexpected things happened for me.

[LKK]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

I'm surprised the nurses didn't come rushing when the leads were ripped off his body and the machine flatlined because of it. Usually that gets people running to the room.

Yes, they would have unless perhaps the patient had a no extreme measures order.

Also, there were some patient-machine connections missing. (Where was the catheter for body wastes, for example?) But again, I'll give them poetic license because all the realities of long-term hospital bed rest would have killed the emotional impact.

[Endless Soul]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

I'm surprised the nurses didn't come rushing when the leads were ripped off his body and the machine flatlined because of it. Usually that gets people running to the room.

I'm fairly certain that after two years, wherever Kirito is stationed at, has minimal staff. Also, with the "flatlining" whoever might be on duty could be figuring "Oh, another one dead" and probably isn't in much of a hurry to check.

EDIT: In the case of my own month-long hospital stay back in '07, hospital staff usually come running when you least want them there (e.g. when you're just about to fall asleep), and they don't show up right away when you DO want them there, mainly because they're busy with other patients. Murphy's Law of hospitals I suppose.

Endless "Slow heartbeat" Soul

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

I'm surprised the nurses didn't come rushing when the leads were ripped off his body and the machine flatlined because of it. Usually that gets people running to the room.

Usually in fictitious hospitals, which admittedly it was.

[Solafighter]

Dead by the system or dead by something else. Reanimation and everything would be usualy tried.

See is from a film maker perspective. Nurses would have ruined the mood.

[blakstealth]

Originally Posted by karuroso

I asked my sister who is studying medicine about this (and made her ask her friends about it too) and the concensus was that it's possible but highly improbable, so I guess Kirito used all his willpower to move, believable if we consider his reason...

And love. Don't forget the love. :3

[Utsuro no Hako]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

Even if she did, Heathcliff said that you can't remove paralysis by yourself - and everyone except him and Kirito were down. Anyway...

Then again, Kayaba gave the programmers enough autonomy to create Yui even though she served no purpose in the game, so maybe one of them slipped in a power-of-love override as one of the secret benefits of marriage.

Originally Posted by LKK

Long-term coma patients become thinner because their muscles atrophy from disuse. Even if therapists regularly come in and work the patient's muscles, there's some muscle loss. The walking away was highly unrealistic though. Personally, I forgave the writers that because it made for such an uplifting scene.

Bah, that's no excuse! They should've shown Kirito trying to crawl on the floor while his catheter tube leaked urine on the floor.

[Rising Dragon]

Maybe the catheter bag was tied to his leg? I've seen that done before.

[Krono]

Originally Posted by Endless Soul

I'm fairly certain that after two years, wherever Kirito is stationed at, has minimal staff. Also, with the "flatlining" whoever might be on duty could be figuring "Oh, another one dead" and probably isn't in much of a hurry to check.

EDIT: In the case of my own month-long hospital stay back in '07, hospital staff usually come running when you least want them there (e.g. when you're just about to fall asleep), and they don't show up right away when you DO want them there, mainly because they're busy with other patients. Murphy's Law of hospitals I suppose.

Endless "Slow heartbeat" Soul

Actually, in this case the hospital likely had other SAO patients, all of which would have woken up a few minutes before Kirito. What staff was available was likely already busy in rooms dealing with them. Some of them probably pulled off their monitors as well. So one more waking up wouldn't draw a rushed response, even if they did remove their monitoring wires.

[kaizer63]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Them being alive after it all is the one thing that I can't find unrealistic because we actually have no idea how long it takes to really kill someone after they disappear from the SAO game world. You might just assume that they physically die the very moment they disappear... but that's never actually confirmed. It's just a guess. So for us to find out now that death doesn't happen the very instant you disappear is new information that wasn't previously available because we stayed focus 100% on what was happening in the game.

I agree with this completely. We actually knew pretty early on that death wasn't instantaneous since the revival item in Red Nosed Reindeer allows for revival up to 10 seconds afterwards. It isn't a stretch at all to assume that the game waits 10 seconds for a res and then sends a signal to the Nerve Gear to kill. And since the Nerve Gear isn't actually designed to kill people, the process of building up enough power to fry the brain likely takes another few seconds. Add in the fact that microwaves don't flash-fry anything and take another few seconds to start doing any real damage to the human body and there's probably a good 30 second window between in-game death and actual death. Anime time might have stretched things out a bit, but the novel implies Kirito killed him almost right away once Asuna died. Now I have no clue why those delays couldn't be used to simply remove the NerveGear in the first place, but I can forgive it.

[justinstrife]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

True, but wouldn't having operations and injuries contribute to that kind of weakness? Unlike in your situation, Kirito and the others weren't undergoing surgeries or suffering from injuries that they need to recover from. I agree that there's no way he should be up that fast, but a lot of people do crazy and stupid actions when they're upset--and Kirito likely thinks that he survived because he beat the game, and figures Asuna didn't get that same kind of reward, having been killed before the game was cleared. That kind of grief is probably fueling his actions.

The injury had nothing to do with my taking hours to get out of the bed. They placed my crutches on the other end of the room to keep me from walking, and I still used the wall as a crutch to get to them. Several hours later. My blood pressure was very low, and my entire body was weak. Just sitting up in the bed would cause my head to spin and me to fall back onto the pillows to catch a breath. For the first week after I got out of the hospital, just travelling from the living room to the bathroom, on crutches, and I was out of breath and had to sit down. Again, nothing to do with the injury itself. But strictly to do with my entire body's health and how much it had fallen those two weeks in the hospital.

And I was in WAY better shape when I was put into the hospital, than Kirito. I was playing 3 different sports, and mountain biking on weekends. He's a game freak, who probably spends very little time outdoors. So his muscle and lung capacity are already lower than any athlete's. Also, I was able to eat solid foods during that entire visit, Kirito was being fed through a feeding tube. I still lost 25 lbs during my short stay. They got his look right, but he is going to need days to recover enough to do any moving around...

That whole scene, as emotional as it tried to be, was just a major face palmer for anyone who has spent significant time in hospitals...

[Revan21]

A terrible ending to an overall weak and rushed arc.

I sincerely hope the next one will be better

[ThereminVox]

I had a bit of a giggle fit at the expense of poor Lisbeth. I love how her swords suffer from an inanimate version of the Worf effect, where they exist almost exclusively to shatter in order to put over how awesome something else is.

I made my peace with SAO a few weeks ago when I finally just accepted that most of the various plot threads that get picked up simply aren't going to go anywhere, and were never intended to. Now that I'm watching the episodes as loosely connected mini-stories all set in the same world rather than trying to watch them as a cohesive narrative, I'm getting a lot more enjoyment out of them. Taking the show as it as it is rather than as I had hoped it would be has made a difference.

What we watched was not so much the story of Sword Art Online, but rather a compilation of selected short stories about a gamer named Kirito, who happened to be a player in SAO. Watching it with that in mind from the start would have saved me a great deal of head-desking and disappointment.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by ThereminVox

I made my peace with SAO a few weeks ago when I finally just accepted that most of the various plot threads that get picked up simply aren't going to go anywhere, and were never intended to. Now that I'm watching the episodes as loosely connected mini-stories all set in the same world rather than trying to watch them as a cohesive narrative, I'm getting a lot more enjoyment out of them. Taking the show as it as it is rather than as what I had hoped it would be has made a difference.

I don't think you're wrong in what you're saying in one way of looking at it. But I just wanted to say that, for me personally, I've actually been quite pleased at how the events from previous episodes did in fact come back to be relevant in future episodes in both subtle and non-subtle ways. For example, we saw in Episode 14 why it was important that the concept of Yui's "Immortal Object" status was important to introduce in Episode 12, because it sets the foundation (combined with the dual in Episode 10) of Kirito's realization. Most of the other episodes shown earlier were referenced similarly in later episodes to show why they mattered.

So even though the events in the narrative don't follow each other from a strict time and action perspective (and I suppose that some elements are introduced just to support the primary element), I think the episodes are still deeply connected in terms of theme, character development, and world-building. In that sense, I believe that even the plot threads opened in this episode are likely to come back later, because that has been my observation of the story so far.

Just my own perspective, anyway... I think you're right when you say that this isn't the "Story of Sword Art Online", but rather Kirito's story, and we see limited extracts (like a "highlight reel"). But I guess I'm just saying the extracts we do see are still important and connected.

[Rising Dragon]

Originally Posted by ThereminVox

I had a bit of a giggle fit at the expense of poor Lisbeth. I love how her swords suffer from an inanimate version of the Worf effect, where they exist almost exclusively to shatter in order to put over how awesome something else is.

Still, you have to admire how much punishment a sword made from dragon shit took before breaking. Gotta give Lizbeth props for that.

[Trajan]

Poor Sachi. It was bad enough when Kirito focused his short time at the GM terminal trying to save a program instead of you. Now you don't even get a spot in the end card

Ah, the power of love. If I know anything from watching anime, it's that the greatest love of all is the love between two teenagers who have been together for a few months.

I'm really looking forward to Kirito using his Neo-esque power of love in the real world. Using it to will himself down the hospital corridor when he shouldn't be able to walk is nothing! I look forward to Kirito using his love power to save a school club threatened with disbandment, defend the world from extra-terrestrial mecha, and turn around run-down onsen in these next episodes.

[ThereminVox]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

I don't think you're wrong in what you're saying in one way of looking at it. But I just wanted to say that, for me personally, I've actually been quite pleased at how the events from previous episodes did in fact come back to be relevant in future episodes in both subtle and non-subtle ways. For example, we saw in Episode 14 why it was important that the concept of Yui's "Immortal Object" status was important to introduce in Episode 12, because it sets the foundation (combined with the dual in Episode 10) of Kirito's realization. Most of the other episodes shown earlier were referenced similarly in later episodes to show why they mattered.

I may be overstating my case here, then. The world remained consistent, so the mechanics did come back to play a role, and I appreciate that. I would however say that from my perspective, aside from a few mechanics that were not only consistent, but indeed built on, I didn't find much of a through-line (aside from Kirito himself) in how the events within the world of the series played out up to now. I understand that much of the anime was adapted from side-stories, but that makes it sound as if I'm making excuses for it, which I don't mean to do.

Regardless, I have a habit of being flippant even when I have good things to say about the shows I watch. I certainly don't mean to take anything away from the clever way that object durability played a role in the story, and that is a good example of the kind of thing I would have liked to have seen more of.

[Dengar]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Personally, I find the "Cardinal did it" explanation to conflict with the "surpassing the rules of the game" explanation Kayaba gave, so I can't quite buy that one (though it is also plausible). And you are right, though -- there are "Gods" in this story, so that does need to be kept in mind.

How about you look at it this way: Kayaba may have intentionally designed the game to have some unpredictable loose ends that may or may not be influenced by "willpower" and the like. Seeing how Kayaba seems to have this "Make things fair" justice thing going on, creating a playing field that allows things to happen that even Kayaba doesn't expect.

[Tenchi Ryu]

LOL, feel bad for relentlessflame and the rest of the mods, must suck to have to clear all the spoilers, especially if its a series you were interested in and didn't read prior novels or manga.

[LKK]

Originally Posted by justinstrife

That whole scene, as emotional as it tried to be, was just a major face palmer for anyone who has spent significant time in hospitals...

Sorry, but I have to disagree with your statement. My personal history of multi-month stays in the hospital make me well aware of the unlikelihood of Kirito's actions. But I didn't face-palm in the least. Cheered him on, I did. Of course, some of that may have been due to me wishing that I could have been that way. I tended to faint & go splat. Hospitals made me wear the purple standing hazard bracelet, put the standing hazard warning sign on my door, and made me swear not to get out of bed without assistance.