[Clarste]

Originally Posted by Wild Goose

Spoiler for Spoilers for in-depth thoughts:

Honestly? While I liked the relationship upgrade in volume 1, that was mostly because the author had the balls to get the Official Couple sorted out in the first book. Taking volume one alone, there are hints of their prior relationship - Asuna and Kirito's familiarity with each other, her cooking for him, other little things - but it always had undertones of the fact that they went through an intensely traumatic experience together and ended up in bed because of that. It had a feeling of coming out of... well, not nowhere per se, but still a bit of a swerve. (And I rolled my eyes at 16.5. )

The sidestories and Fairy Dance flesh out the relationship a lot better, showing that they've known each other for years and there's mutual like and respect, and then builds things up to the point where then it is clear that yes, their friendship has turned into love. Fairy Dance then cements the progress that has been made, simultaneously sinking [REDACTED] and Kirito.

So by doing things in a chronological order, you get to see the relationship bloom.

I do wish they'd had that convo on how Asuna was powerlevelling and only sleeping about 3 hours a day, suffers from terrible nightmares, and this was the first time she'd actually gotten a good night's (well, day's) sleep.

Honestly, I've always felt like the relationship development was a bit too one-sided. We get lots of stuff about how meeting Kirito changed Asuna and made her appreciate life and all that, but from Kirito's perspective I don't think we ever got anything more than "she's a pretty girl, so why not?" I mean, I guess you could say he respects her battle skills too, but it's never indicated that she was important to him before they got together. And afterwards it's more like protectiveness of what he already has.