[Kaoru Chujo]

Asuna, for all her smarts and skills, is being portrayed as the damsel in distress that the hero has to rescue. That can't be denied, but it is just part of this kind of shounen story, so maybe we can not feel too bad about it and simply enjoy it and admire the stuff she does accomplish. And when the climax comes, I hope/suspect everyone will have a role to play: Kirito, Yui, Suguha/Leafa, and Asuna.

Actually, I blamed Asuna for (a) going through the tunnel rather than trying to fly down bit by bit on the outside, (b) choosing to go to the lab, which is the most likely place to meet Mr. Evil. There was a "system" room that might also have held a console. There are some little anomalies in the story, but not bad enough to ruin things, for me.

I thought the slug-like scientists were a joke about slimy fat otaku.

I've been away from this show for a while and have just caught up with the last ten episodes or so over the past few days. I have to repeat what an excellent show this is. Good animation, good characters, good adventure, good romance. And Matsuoka Yoshitsugu is outstanding as Kirito. Perfect voice.

With the abundance of bro-con situations in anime this season, this is the most interesting. Very inventive and high-class way of giving the show a bit of acceptable incestuousness.

Girls und Panzer has jumped up to be the most popular show on 2channel right now, with well over a hundred posts an hour right now. But SAO -- the most popular show of the summer season -- is holding its own, with big runs of posts after every new episode. So far, over a bit more than a cour and a half, it has received 257,000+ posts, about twice as many as GuP has right now.