After having been more than 2 years since I got into the series, yet having passed enough time for the hype to wear off and start seeing not only the bright side but also the negative points, I simply feel like putting my thoughts about something I've invested so much time into in words. I must say that reading the series added (rather unexpectedly for a supposedly lighthearted show about teenagers beating the snot out of each other in a videogame) a lot of insight into my own life, understanding myself and the reason why it's only natural to seek bonding with others, not as much in the romantic sense as rather as the need of having people you can speak 'true words' with. When we talk to our parents, to our not so close friends, to our classmates, more often than not we do not speak the truth or spill out the root of our problems. It is only when we speak to someone we trust enough, when we face our moments of crisis and adversity that we spill the beans and we get to really understand each other.
I feel that the author captures and depicts the essence of human conflict and thought far better than any other piece I've read on accident. For a show that sells itself as lighthearted comedy with a harem, I believe the message that it delivers in certain volumes is as powerful, if not more, than things written in the past that recieve universal acclaim, and thus deserves rightful praise with the best words I know of.
The story is blindingly simple from a conceptual standpoint. Our protagonist is a social pariah, the lowest of the chaste: a fat, not particularly intelligent guy, who meets a stupidly hot, smart, and overall 10/10 chick who doesn't even use her real name a.k.a. WOW MYSTERIOUS WAIFU who shows an uncanny and at first, uncomprehensible interest in him.
This guy later on goes on to become the only guy in the story who can attain true flight.
Allright, sounds like your typical fairytale. But guess what? It's totally not. This story, which at a first glance seems something we absolutely cannot empathize with and seems out of this world, is actually way closer to us than we can imagine, and for me this comically short, fat guy hits more home as a protagonist than the slimmer, taller, smarter at a first glance protagonist of the author's other series, Sword Art Online.
I won't dwelve in the in-story game's mechanics, but there is one interesting point. When you start out, you do so encased on a suit of armor, some kind of human-sized robot with human features known as 'Duel Avatar'. Right on. Said Duel Avatar's characteristics, features, and most importantly, the skill that puts it on par with the rest, it's defining ability or weapon is based, essentially, on what you wish for the most or what is most important for you. At first, most people handwave it as our protagonist being a coward and wanting to fly just to evade himself away from the world, but he has one hell of a story behind him, if you will excuse the spoilers for some of you.
Haru was actually a pretty normal kid until his parents had a divorce, and his mother started completely ignoring him. Therefore it makes sense he's overweight. One of the main sources for obesity and improper growth is parental neglect. The reason why we don't hear about this until much later is because he has subconsciously repressed said memories, and learning about this is a major breaking point, both for the reader and for himself. Why is that? Because the reason why he wanted to fly wasn't because he wanted to get away from the world. It was because he felt lonely, and wanted to close the distance between himself and others because he had trouble relating to others.
The way this story is delivered, in a completely organic way, and how awfully simple it is make Haru, or most of the core characters' Duel Avatars are actually pretty close to what we'd end up being if we put a real human being of the ages shown, or even above that. As a student in the field of medicine, I've had the chance to listen to many classes, seminars, and most importantly, stories of human beings including mine and they all get pretty close to this. Things don't happen just because, and what matters isn't how we percieve the trouble to be, but how it affects the person. It's very easy for someone to say 'ugh he's fat, he looks silly and he's a beta', but you probably have problems of your own to solve just like everyone else, it's just you disguise it better, lie to yourself or don't know about it, and acknowledging them and growing with them is part of being a human being.
This story also delivers another equally powerful message of my liking: allright, you have a sad story behind you, but so does everyone else and unless you work for it, you don't get jack shit. Many people, inside and outside the world, complain how stupid Silver Crow's Aviation, Haruyuki Arita's duel avatar ability is in comparison to the rest of people inside the game. However, there is a rule of that game that is as important, said to be 'Same level, same potential'. Meaning that at the same Level, all Duel Avatars are technically meant to have the same powerlevel. Yet, why do some people like Cyan Pile/Takumu and other hopeless not progress at all while Haruyuki faces adversity and comes out, sometimes winning others losing yet always stronger than before?
Because it all depends on how much effort you put behind your shit, son. Can't get any simpler than that. I feel the Incarnate System Kit Arc delivers a powerful message too, in that direction, about how complaining consistently on how everyone else just has X that makes them way better than you and there is nothing you can normally do about it is not going to fix your situation, and rather it will only make things dramatically take a turn for the worse. Again, we are talking about a story about a show where kids beat the stuffings out of each other, yet we see something that happens every day.
Window opportunities. I bet that if Silver Crow had not been raised by the way more experienced and educated Kuroyukihime, but someone else with far less knowledge and less adversities faced, he would have turned out to be another Cyan Pile frustrated on how the game did not give him what he wanted. Similarly, if Cyan Pile could have had someone who understood his issues and instead of half heartedly teaching him the stuff of the game had properly guided him, not to simply win fights but to become satisfied with his Duel Avatar he would probably have ended up being the main character of the story, with little to no difference in how awesome the story would be. This, as naive as it might seem, completely accidentally highlights the importance of education in society! Depending on how you handle people around you, they can turn out to be the next genius who improves the world around you, or another deadbeat who works a minimum salary wage just to have a house and a car they didn't even know they wanted!
Another aspect I feel that's delivered in a particularly simplistic, yet due to its simplicity in a powerful manner are the importance of emotion and feeling in us. I believe that the arc that delivers the most in this regard is the Chrome Disaster arc. A few volumes ago, they'd fought a cursed armor that posesses whoever tries to put it on to attain strength yadda yadda yadda. Your typical run of the mill cursed shit. Yet at the start of the arc, when the other about a space race (which I am totally cool with, we need more stories with races on space elevators) we get a glimpse at what is to come.
The reason for the existence of that armor, the reason possibly hundreds of kids lost their access and priviledges to the game, is that years ago someone's waifu was brutally murdered time after time in front of his face.
Now, you might not quite have someone you love, but if you ever do and if you saw said person being brutally eaten time after time by a giant worm monster thing, with everyone watching with a mix of fear and awe and standing by doing absolutely nothing about it, I'm pretty sure you'd hate everyone too. That hate transferred to the armor, and years later results in one of the most wide upon agreed best arcs with stupidly flashy battles against incredibly strong foes and is the source of major conflict. Well done, Kawahara, well done.
Not only that, but you can even dissect major personality traits that exist in real life people. Some psychiatrists have come to believe there are three major kinds of troublesome people, and all people fall within any of those 3 categories without fail. Neurotics, who are all about their culture and control. Perverts (not in the sexual sense only) who for one reason or another don't want to go along with the cards they've been handed, and funnily take advantage of neurotics. And then, Psychotics who aren't quite fitting in society for a number of reasons. Now, let's look at the 3 main characters. Chiyu is stupidly obsessive about controlling both Haru and Taku; what do they do, where do they go, what kind of funny shit are they up to. Taku abuses Brain Burst to get supidly high grades and to cheat kendo, pushes Chiyu to become his girlfriend and alienates Haru all for the sake of his own pleasure; doesn't take a genius to know he's a pervert (again, not in the sexual sense despite what his weapon might imply), and Haru is well, the gamer guy who's in his own world, spends too much time alone, and is sometimes (all the time) too damn awkward and strange.
So we've got all this awesome shit going on, with flashy battles and teens being teens. So, how the fuck can you mess this up? How is this selling less than SAO: the unholy self insert fanfiction crossover written by a 14 year old that at some point mixes .hack, call of duty, final fantasy and star wars and fails to get any of the good points of any of these series?
For starters there's the waifu wank, starting with none other than ms black special snowflake aka Kuroyukihime (means Black Snow Princess in japanese). So, let me think about this. It's not an alias, it's not a nickname. She makes a point out of everyone to call her that. No one mentions her name, no one has ever seen it. It's a complete mystery, just like everything about her except that at some point in life she made a terrible choice, ended up killing a 10/10 dude and somehow fought 1 on 5 just fine, when it's shown that she struggles one on one to beat up a single of the other Kings.
Oh wait we know something. That she is insanely pretty, to the point where it makes one wonder if it's still illegal if she looks like an adult. That's all we know. For someone who has an incredible amount of trust in Haru and someone who is smart, she has demonstrated the same capability for insight as the 'best' blog writers on the internet; little to none. Unlike the former characters, who feel and act like normal human beings and thus one can empathize with them, the only thing we know about this person is that she's stupidly obsessive, narcissistic, and again emphasis on being very pretty, to the point where she takes more spotlight on the damn covers than the fucking protagonist of the show.
At this point of the story, I'm not entirely sure anymore if Kuroyukihime is a character who lives in the same world as everyone else or if she is just waifu fap material for the author just like Asuna in SAO. And wait, because waifus get even worse. Almost every girl shown for more than 10 scenes ends up eventually wanting the protagonist, also known as 'the gland power'. Jesus christ.
There is one series called 'Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon' that pulls off the relationships aspect, and the entire spotlight aspect outside of waifus and husbandos way better off. The protagonist has about 2 chicks other than his waifu wanting his dick, but that is allright because I am completely heterosexual yet I know that if I was a girl I'd totally dig Aoi Toori. Yet, there are more characters besides him who get a share of the action scenes, he needs other people's assistance to win in battle because he lacks any offensive skills whatsoever and he is not the goddamn center of the universe. This, at the beginning is not so prominent because there is a backstory our guy clearly has had no part in, and up let's say til volume 9 it's just shit happening to him.
Yet now, volume 17, I can affirm positively that this story is rapidly taking a turn for the worse, with our little guy being the center of the known universe and everyone else being his sidekick and all the girls lusting after his dick. I've already read this story. Many times. The reason why I liked this was because it did shit no other story did, and in such a simple manner the message delivered was way more powerful than stories that actually try do. Those avatars based on shiny colours and metals in volume 1 tell a story of the adversities faced, on what they wish for, what are their hopes and aspirations. By volume 17, the author has added shit from a 'make your own Duel Avatar!' competition into his volumes, and as it's to be expected, most of the descriptions don't tell any story at all, or if they do it's as close to a human being as KYH is related to Kirito x Asuna (that is, nothing at all).
Up to this point, more or less the story made sense. Sure, sometimes you had infodumps that if someone dropped them on you in real life you'd get bored and catch a snooze or two, but the argumental line could be more or less followed. But at this point I feel the author completely gave up on that shit and is just all for dressing up his waifus in skimpy maid costumes for no good reason (why didn't my school back in the day make that kind of shit god damn it, why) and bringing back [SPOILERS] just to have the poor bloke die in the stupidest way possible. If you're gonna pull that card, you should be aware that by doing that it feels like at some point you felt lazy and didn't feel like dealing with the consequences of the reveal which would have been otherwise the hottest shit. Waifus keep on piling up as if they were some sort of collectable, argumental lines are never solved, and we're already 17 volumes into this shit yet absolutely nothing of interest happened after the Chrome Disaster arc. As a writer, you can't afford to make such a powerful arc and then just fuck up.
So, to summarize, a little message to the author Kawahara Reki:
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FUCK YOU YOU BASTARD. How dare you make something so awesome in concept yet fuck it up with side stories that make no sense, your waifu shits and bullshit plot. Fuck you and fuck your tendence to look up shit on wikipedia you don't even know what means and slap it on your stories like nothing.
And that's all I wanted to say. It's been a wild ride on the Accel World train, but I feel that it's gotta end soon or it'll lose all the appeal it had.
2015-02-16, 05:02
