(L) Sword Art Online - Light Novel Discussion

[AKAAkira]

To everyone here who had a part in posting summaries and spoilers - especially Flere821 - thank you for your contributions. SAO is one of the more interesting stories I had the pleasure of reading. I'm glad that there were dedicated fans who had taken the time to kindly post information here. If you don't mind one more selfish request - please, keep it up.

Though I feel strangely obligated to give grief over the fact that when I started devouring the spoilers from page ~130, I did so in the belief I'd finally sate my desire to know the Alicization plot in its entirety. Needless to say, that belief persisted only until it ran headlong into this page.

[Flere821]

Originally Posted by AKAAkira

To everyone here who had a part in posting summaries and spoilers - especially Flere821 - thank you for your contributions. SAO is one of the more interesting stories I had the pleasure of reading. I'm glad that there were dedicated fans who had taken the time to kindly post information here. If you don't mind one more selfish request - please, keep it up.

You're welcome

Originally Posted by AKAAkira

Though I feel strangely obligated to give grief over the fact that when I started devouring the spoilers from page ~130, I did so in the belief I'd finally sate my desire to know the Alicization plot in its entirety. Needless to say, that belief persisted only until it ran headlong into this page.

Some people have access to the full Japanese raws. I haven't gotten around to get a copy of that (not that I can read those), mainly living off Chinese translations that I can read. And the Chinese translations haven't finished yet, unfortunately

[mucen]

I may have missed it, but what is the significance of Alice in the underworld (Project Alicization) that Gabriel's searching for her?

[Flere821]

Originally Posted by mucen

I may have missed it, but what is the significance of Alice in the underworld (Project Alicization) that Gabriel's searching for her?

Alice being the first Fluctlight to successfully and deliberately disregard the laws of UW, despite how it seems to be intrinsically impossible for them to be able to do so. America wants to shut down Project Alicization to prevent Japan having a way to threaten their military monopoly, and so they want to make sure Alice cannot be recovered by Japan's researchers. Them being able to steal Alice away would be a bonus, using her to develop military AIs for themselves.

[Javiersansano]

Originally Posted by mucen

I may have missed it, but what is the significance of Alice in the underworld (Project Alicization) that Gabriel's searching for her?

Originally Posted by Flere821

Alice being the first Fluctlight to successfully and deliberately disregard the laws of UW, despite how it seems to be intrinsically impossible for them to be able to do so. America wants to shut down Project Alicization to prevent Japan having a way to threaten their military monopoly, and so they want to make sure Alice cannot be recovered by Japan's researchers. Them being able to steal Alice away would be a bonus, using her to develop military AIs for themselves.

Then, we can't forget Gabriel's agenda, in which he wants to kill Alice because of the same reasons she is high regarded by the project staff and the US army.

Spoiler for reason:

If I remember right, he killed his fiancé, in a way in which he managed to see the fluctlight, or the soul. From then on, he is interested in finding the most "beautiful" souls to kill them, Sinon being his soon to be target before he heard of Alice; Gabriel won the last BoB of GGO, and he was who said Sinon's sould would be... delicious I think? Anyway, the army is looking for Alice for her value as a AI for military purposes, while Gabrield, being an official of the squad that invaded the facilities of the project, is following his own agenda in secrecy

[Awrya]

Originally Posted by Javiersansano

Then, we can't forget Gabriel's agenda, in which he wants to kill Alice because of the same reasons she is high regarded by the project staff and the US army.

Spoiler for reason:

If I remember right, he killed his fiancé, in a way in which he managed to see the fluctlight, or the soul. From then on, he is interested in finding the most "beautiful" souls to kill them, Sinon being his soon to be target before he heard of Alice; Gabriel won the last BoB of GGO, and he was who said Sinon's sould would be... delicious I think? Anyway, the army is looking for Alice for her value as a AI for military purposes, while Gabrield, being an official of the squad that invaded the facilities of the project, is following his own agenda in secrecy

Spoiler for reply:

Was it written like that in the web novel?
In the summaries it was mentioned Gabriel wants to find the way to make the fluctlight shine the brightest, though he himself wants to take Alice as his wife in a VR world?

Since Flere is translating from Chinese to English, was there a mistranslation from Japanese to Chinese?

[Flere821]

Originally Posted by Javiersansano

Then, we can't forget Gabriel's agenda, in which he wants to kill Alice because of the same reasons she is high regarded by the project staff and the US army.

Spoiler for reason:

If I remember right, he killed his fiancé, in a way in which he managed to see the fluctlight, or the soul. From then on, he is interested in finding the most "beautiful" souls to kill them, Sinon being his soon to be target before he heard of Alice; Gabriel won the last BoB of GGO, and he was who said Sinon's sould would be... delicious I think? Anyway, the army is looking for Alice for her value as a AI for military purposes, while Gabrield, being an official of the squad that invaded the facilities of the project, is following his own agenda in secrecy

That too. WEB 6 (and my WEB 8 summaries) detailed Gabriel's personal motives, my post above only outlined US's motive.

Spoiler for Gabriel:

He wants Alice and the STL technology to find out what he can do with souls, after seeing how his fiancee died her soul flew away. The Sinon bit was just his sociopath side coming up with his hobby of killing people to show he's powerful, and Sinon had a good reaction after being blown up in GGO. Gabriel's not going after Sinon IRL.

[Wild Goose]

...

Spoiler for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot:

Great, so the Americans are the bad guys this time?
I find it a bit annoying that Japan's go-to bad guys are always American, but then I recall the bullshit and the douchebaggery the CIA has gotten up to over the years, so reluctantly I have to agree that they have a point.

Which was something I liked about Muv-Luv - for every bit of CIA douchebaggery, you had guys like Walken and the Pit Masters. For every trolling chessmaster Sandek, you had decent soldiers like Latrova.

[Flere821]

Originally Posted by Wild Goose

...

Spoiler for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot:

Great, so the Americans are the bad guys this time?
I find it a bit annoying that Japan's go-to bad guys are always American, but then I recall the bullshit and the douchebaggery the CIA has gotten up to over the years, so reluctantly I have to agree that they have a point.

Which was something I liked about Muv-Luv - for every bit of CIA douchebaggery, you had guys like Walken and the Pit Masters. For every trolling chessmaster Sandek, you had decent soldiers like Latrova.

Spoiler for *shrug* - Mahouka & Hidan no Aria series spoilers:

Well not always, in Mahouka and HnA they had the Chinese as villains. Then again, these series also had Americans as villains as well so...

[waffler]

how does alice fall in love with kirito?

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by waffler

how does alice fall in love with kirito?

Because he's Kirito. She doesn't need a reason.

[waffler]

lol so alice tried to molest kirito? o.o

[Tusjecht]

Because he's Kirito. She doesn't need a reason.

Aw come on. There's always some reason why the girls fall for him. Even if it's silly. Even if it's logic-bending. Even if it's absurd. Even if...there's no reason.

Hmm.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by tusjecht

Aw come on. There's always some reason why the girls fall for him. Even if it's silly. Even if it's logic-bending. Even if it's absurd. Even if...there's no reason.

Well, she said that she began to feel... whatever she's feeling (probably lust ) when she saw Kirito using his black swordsman character IIRC. So you could say she "felt in love" due to his cool factor.

But really, the reason is so shallow that you may as well say she likes him just because he's the protagonist, which is the real reason in the end.

[waffler]

sorry im not really familiar but whats iirc?

[Tusjecht]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

Well, she said that she began to feel... whatever she's feeling (probably lust ) when she saw Kirito using his black swordsman character IIRC. So you could say she "felt in love" due to his cool factor.

But really, the reason is so shallow that you may as well say she likes him because he's the protagonist, which is the real reason in the end.

That's from the web novel, right?

Even so, I'm amazed and somewhat letdown by it: author can design dozens of girls to fall for Kirito, but the romance in Accel World is so one-sided it's come to a standstill.

Originally Posted by waffler

sorry im not really familiar but whats iirc?

If I Recall Correctly.

[waffler]

o thanks i thought it was some kinda sao term xD

[Kleeyook]

I find it hard to agree with Kirito's opinion about flunctlight is equal to human. It's just an advanced AI and it's kind of his own damn fault for releasing SEED platform in the first place. I'll never accept AI to be the same as us, after all, we can just copy and paste, making how many backup of AIs as we want.

Seriously, I found most of all this to be bullshit. Japan can't have their own army and has to rely on the USA, but it's their goddamn own fault they went wild in WWII and lost to the USA. They should thank the USA for occupying their land before the Red Army and Chinese came to take revenge on them like how Germany got. At least they got it easy compared to Germany.

Japan killed at least 16M Chinese civilians but no one cared to point that out, the USA dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (these two harbor cities where manufactured of ships and weapons located at btw) killing 100 thousands and more with direct blast and radioavtivity (back then the USA didn't know much about radioactivity and almost sent soldiers to the wasteland directly too) and it's so horrible.

And after half a century, what we got here? the USA is evil and unreliable partner, Chinese is the villain and invader.

And in Mahouka, the Yotsuba's general idealism is "the strong devour the weak" with Chinese as the evil invader and American as traitorous ally, the Yotsuba also doesn't allow anyone to mess with them despite the fact that they did the same horrible things to others.

^^ To hell with that!

Although I'd have to say that the villains in SAO is outright evil, unlike the Chinese from Mahouka when they were just doing their duty.

[Tusjecht]

Originally Posted by Kleeyook

I find it hard to agree with Kirito's opinion about flunctlight is equal to human. It's just an advanced AI and it's kind of his own damn fault for releasing SEED platform in the first place. I'll never accept AI to be the same as us, after all, we can just copy and paste, making how many backup of AIs as we want.

Seriously, I found most of all this to be bullshit. Japan can't have their own army and has to rely on the USA, but it's their goddamn own fault they went wild in WWII and lost to the USA. They should thank the USA for occupying their land before the Red Army and Chinese came to take revenge on them like how Germany got. At least they got it easy compared to Germany.

Japan killed at least 16M Chinese civilians but no one cared to point that out, the USA dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (these two harbor cities where manufactured of ships and weapons located at btw) killing 100 thousands and more with direct blast and radioavtivity (back then the USA didn't know much about radioactivity and almost sent soldiers to the wasteland directly too) and it's so horrible.

And after half a century, what we got here? the USA is evil and unreliable partner, Chinese is the villain and invader.

And in Mahouka, the Yotsuba's general idealism is "the strong devour the weak" with Chinese as the evil invader and American as traitorous ally, the Yotsuba also doesn't allow anyone to mess with them despite the fact that they did the same horrible things to others.

^^ To hell with that!

Although I'd have to say that the villains in SAO is outright evil, unlike the Chinese from Mahouka when they were just doing their duty.

...I believe we're discussing Sword Art Online, not Sword Art Offline.

But to rebut the first two points:

-AIs will never be truly human? That's only because our technological capacity is limited and we're not making much progress on the neural mapping part, IIRC. Give it a few years, we will probably have the foundations for a dumb AI. I say a dumb AI, because humans will still be involved in teaching it, but once a dumb AI has been made the next step, a sentient 'smart' AI is not very far away. And who said they will identify themselves as human? With a bottom-up approach, to create an intelligence capable of synthesising its own information and acting by itself, the answer we'll get can't be predicted.

-Japan can't have their own army, relies on US, it's their retribution for going wild in WWII. I don't even...

The clause about 'no army of our own' was offered by the Japanese themselves. They handicapped themselves. That says something about their humility.

-They should thank the US.

Oh, and the US is all-powerful, ne'er-do-wrong, strongest of 'em all, model for everyone, right? They have a lot of regrets about the Middle East, let me kindly inform you. Or the Vietnam War, which terrorized their own soldiers. And I won't even touch their current state of affairs regarding domestic politics.

-Germany had it harder, therefore they should be happy.

...seriously? Everyone suffers in war because people die. And then there's the lost pride, men sacrificed, money wasted on war and its tools, the list goes on...

You have a pretty warped idea of history, I'll give you that. And, let's keep it off this thread. Feel free to PM me.

[blackwhite67]

Hey. Hey. First of all, I object to calling the Fluctlights mere artificial intelligence. They are basically human souls that have been copied and cultivated through technology, allowing them to develop their own distinct personalities. Going by the technical explanations, I believe the barriers between machines and humans have been essentially broken.

Second, it can't be helped that the U.S. and China are enemies in the works you referenced. I mean, someones got to be the enemy and this book attempts to mimic the real world so making up some fictional country is not an option for the authors.