[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Utsuro no Hako

Any time she tries to do something, the author slaps her down, humiliates her and returns her to being an object. Even if you don't think that makes her a pure damsel in distress, it's still pretty bad.

Because if she succeeded in doing something now the story would end. It was pretty obvious that as soon as the escaped captive was discovered, they'd be punished and returned to captivity. That itself has nothing to do with gender, but with the way the story elements need to converge.

Now, of course, the two twisted scientists were treating her as an object, but that shouldn't be surprising since they referred to all the people they were experimenting on as "dolls". They don't have an ounce of respect for human life, which makes sense given the experiment they're doing. It's not inconceivable that they could have chosen that sort of avatar because they like the fetish you find offensive (which is, of course, about power). The very theme of Sugou and his "scientist" team is having power over others and abusing that power. So this sort of fetish, displayed in that context, is par for the course. (Of course, it was shown before in the story outside of that context too.)

Originally Posted by Tsukiyomi

i was hoping that Asuna would just escape on her own femme fatale style and no need her dark knight in shining armor

Well, it would be a bit odd for the story go this far and not have Kirito play some role in the denouement. But Asuna having retrieved that access card will certainly play a role as well. There was always a limit to what she could realistically do given her situation; she's up against system administrators. If she just walked out of there and destroyed anyone who stood in her way (even if they're Administrators!), she'd be "badass" but it'd make even less sense than the various oddities that were already pointed out.


Continuing in the "Advice to Evil Overlords" series, if you're doing evil experiments, don't call the room the "Experiment Room". Give it some some netural/boring sounding name like "Waste Processing" or "Power Distribution" or something that a curious escaped captive will never find suspicious. And also, even if you've never had a security incident ever, still don't leave security cards next to (or in) their console; this is just a Bad Idea (TM).


Edit:
Other things I was going to say:

• Someone mentioned in last week's thread that they didn't know if what was happening with Asuna was in "real-time", and I'm still not sure, but I think the insinuation was that if Asuna had been able to logout at that console, it would have been at the same time as Kazuto and Suguha were visiting her at the hospital. Another example of "so close yet so far".
• Speaking of the Hospital, it was sort of funny how Kazuto just of casually decided to completely ignore Sugou's warning about not visiting her. Screw that!
• The way the content kept flipping back and forth between the two perspectives during that section was a bit hard to follow, but I think it made sense if they were trying to synchronize the timelines.
• The servers go down for maintenance and all the players are asked to logout, but somehow all the players that are being experimented on (like Asuna) clearly stay. So it's not like they're shutting the game down or rebooting the servers at least.
• What exactly is the purpose of having objects that represent each player (with representations of their brains) in the game anyway? I guess everything connected to the game has to be represented by an object (ref: Yui), but you'd think the scientists would do their experimenting in the real world. If the people were represented in the game, you'd think they'd be like people in a prison or something (like Asuna). Perhaps having them all represented as inanimate objects and represented in the game makes it easier for the scientists to not feel guilt when experimenting on them?
• If all the former SAO students will be attending a school together, I guess that's how everyone will be re-united once this whole whole arc is over. Sort of an odd little tidbit to throw into the middle of this episode.
• Someone also mentioned in last week's thread about whether the other scientists knew about Asuna, and I guess this episode answers that too -- they know about her (vaguely), but she's off-limits to anyone but him.

Edit 2: Oh yeah, this also addresses a comment from a long time ago where people said that if the 5-person-tower didn't work to get to the top of the tree, why didn't they just try with more people: Because it was considered an exploit and blocked.

Now that Kazuto/Kirito knows for sure that Asuna is in the game, Kirito's sense of urgency is certainly spiked. Perhaps he was able to keep cool and be rational before because of the uncertainty, but hopefully he'll be able to stay rational now. His dash to the top of the tree is totally pointless (because she just said they put a wall), but I suppose he can't help himself.