Sword Art Online - Episode 12 Discussion / Poll

[FlareKnight]

Originally Posted by GenjiChan

A robot daughter.. not bad.

I'm now just going to assume that's what Kirito does. Has to do something extreme for their first child. Either making a server for her to live in or making a robot daughter so she can live in the real world. Either way not bad .

[Metaneo]

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

I'm now just going to assume that's what Kirito does. Has to do something extreme for their first child. Either making a server for her to live in or making a robot daughter so she can live in the real world. Either way not bad .

Could he make a small portable device that she could "live" in? One for him, one for Asuna, linked together so they could take her wherever they went?

Considering she knows that she's an AI, and in end, didnt seem to be troubled by it, I dont think she'd have a hard time dealing with living in a device.

I can see her jumping back and forth between "mommy and daddy's" devices all day long.

[aohige]

My idea of parenthood is not a super-Tamagocchi.

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

I think it's not really that people "die off" literally, it's that this isn't really a "group show". It's a show that, to this point, is basically about Kirito and Asuna only. They encounter other people along the way, and they take the focus for a while to deliver the story in question, and then those introduced characters fade into the background. That's pretty much the way the anime is structured so far. That doesn't mean that it'll always stay that way, but so far each encounter is rather standalone rather than some other stories where the characters introduced are more interwoven within the narrative. Personally that doesn't really bother me, but it's a different kind of storytelling that feels a bit more fragmented than the typical plot-driven anime. But, as we've seen so far, the earlier fragments do seem to come back later, so I think it's mostly a matter of being patient and seeing where they're going with all this.

Let's cut to the chase, and I'll get a lot of flac for saying this, but let's be honest.

This is a geek wish fulfillment story. Nothing more or less.
In essense, it's not any different from multitude of "little sis who loves her oniichan" anime, just in a different theme.

This is not meant to be critique, there's nothing wrong with one.
I find watching or reading "wet dreams come true" quite entertaining, in fact.
Hell, otherwise why would I play eroge.

[Esebian]

Originally Posted by Metaneo

Could he make a small portable device that she could "live" in? One for him, one for Asuna, linked together so they could take her wherever they went?

Considering she knows that she's an AI, and in end, didnt seem to be troubled by it, I dont think she'd have a hard time dealing with living in a device.

I can see her jumping back and forth between "mommy and daddy's" devices all day long.

Ehm, why actually invent one? I think even today everybody has at least one small portable device always with himself/herself and because of WLAN it's connected nearly world-wide with the internet. ^^

[Ascaloth]

Yui still beats the hell out of the Weighted Companion Cube, though.

[Archon_Wing]

These last two episodes were a missed opportunity. Sad lonely lolis are always a potential for emotionally compelling stories in fantasy especially when you have a couple like Kirito and Asuna that just got into a major relationship. If done well it can help strengthen the relationship. And if there was a strong aspect of it, it would definitely be the Kirito-Asuna relationship.

Unfortunately it was just going way too fast and I wasn't really given any time to really feel for Yui and them and it just came across as a bit emotionally manipulative. And being a Key fan, I don't mind a story being manipulative to force a few feelings of sadness and joy out of me. But it was still too much and it flew over my head. I was presented with a concept I should really like and I frequently too, but they honestly dropped the ball here and the chain of events was just not really credible to me-- the last part sorta reminded me of AnoHana in its final turns, and that unfortunately is not a compliment.

5/10

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

I'm now just going to assume that's what Kirito does. Has to do something extreme for their first child. Either making a server for her to live in or making a robot daughter so she can live in the real world. Either way not bad .

I think the normal progression would be server -> hologram body -> solid robot body -> organic body with maybe a robot brain.

[aohige]

Or Ressentiment ending where "Moon" literally reincarnated into a human girl, in pinoccio tradition.

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

I think the normal progression would be server -> hologram body -> solid robot body -> organic body with maybe a robot brain.

Ascension!!!

[Mich666]

I don't know why but I like this ep, for me, one of best ep ever. I guess I watched it when I was in right mood for it.

Though at first I thought that Yui will stay with them, with them leaving her later when returning to real world again (or not) that would be also a great dilemma.

[Unknown Soldier]

This episode made me think of Zegapain. If you've seen that show, you know what I mean.

I'm guessing that the typing on the keyboard is just the visual representation of what is actually happening to someone watching. SAO is a VRMMO, so Kirito was probably just thinking of what he wanted to do and having admin access for just a moment was enough to make it happen. It's still too convenient, like how The Matrix had an Explainer to Explain to Neo what was happening just when he needed things Explained. But I guess virtual worlds don't need to obey the laws of sensible plot moments, amirite?

Lucky for Asuna, she doesn't even have to experience the nine months of carrying a bowling ball strapped to her stomach and then the agonizing pain of childbirth to have a perfectly formed AI child!

Spoiler for Comparison to Dusk Maiden of Amnesia ending:

The ending of this episode was annoying like the ending of Dusk Maiden of Amnesia. I hate it when they ruin a perfectly crafted bittersweet moment with a sudden ass-pull happy ending. In this case I guess it's how it was written in the novels though.

[Dengar]

As far as I can tell, SAO actually -isn't- thought operated. You control your character by physically moving your limbs. The pulse that actually makes your real body's limbs move never reaches the limbs itself, it's like, "intercepted" by the nerve gear. But the bottom line is, moving around in-game is exactly the same as moving around irl. Menus and stuff seem to be summoned by making certain hand gestures, rather than "thinking about them".

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Dengar

As far as I can tell, SAO actually -isn't- thought operated. You control your character by physically moving your limbs. The pulse that actually makes your real body's limbs move never reaches the limbs itself, it's like, "intercepted" by the nerve gear. But the bottom line is, moving around in-game is exactly the same as moving around irl. Menus and stuff seem to be summoned by making certain hand gestures, rather than "thinking about them".

It's probably easier to teach people how to use that way, honestly. They just get in the VR world and start "walking" and it just works even though their body never actually moves in real life. So it is intercepting "thought", but -- as you say -- it's the thoughts that your body would normally respond to physically (the kind that come so naturally that you don't even think you're thinking it...)

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by Dengar

As far as I can tell, SAO actually -isn't- thought operated. You control your character by physically moving your limbs. The pulse that actually makes your real body's limbs move never reaches the limbs itself, it's like, "intercepted" by the nerve gear. But the bottom line is, moving around in-game is exactly the same as moving around irl. Menus and stuff seem to be summoned by making certain hand gestures, rather than "thinking about them".

Your physical body in the real world limits how fast you can do things, though. If you weren't limited by your own body, you could definitely 'move' faster in a virtual world. At the speed of thought, as it were. In the case of Kirito, who supposedly has ridiculous reflexes, he could definitely be moving faster in SAO than he could in real life. He is, after all, Batman!

[Dengar]

Actually the speed at which you move is determined by an in-game stat.

[Catsy]

Originally Posted by Adigard

Considering he knew the EXACT name of the program / subsystem he was looking for... I'd imagine it'd be fairly easy? Ctrl + F in a program list would probably narrow things down fairly easily? And again, we're dealing with a physical interface for poorly paid customer service grunts... I'd imagine it'd be a terribly easy interface to work with.

Occam's razor suggests that he likely simply copied Yui's programming code to his NervGEAR, and then spawned a physical item and gave it to Asuna. We technically didn't SEE the item's name in the standard in-game screen for every single other item of importance. Heck, he could have simply created an item, named it such, and downloaded Yui's code to his NervGEAR.

Yup.

Let's assume--no, let's not even assume, let's acknowledge the canonical fact that Kirito is something of a prodigy who has extensively studied not just programming in general, but the APIs and previous applications written for the NerveGear hardware and the books written by the person who designed SAO.

Now he's been given elevated privileges at a GM console with an interface that it's entirely possible he's either studied from Kayaba's books or actually used before.

So let's say Kirito types something like this:

> show -f system.entities|grep yui
1 line(s) matched: //sys/ents/admin/yui.entdata
> copy -r -s //sys/ents/admin/yui.entdata -t //self/local/yuibackup
1 folder(s) copied recursively to local storage.
> gm.spawnGameObjectAtPlayer -u -n "Yui's Heart" -t player.Kirito -a //res/items/appearance/bluecrystalheart.pak -i //self/local/yuibackup
Usable item [Yui's Heart] spawned successfully at player.Kirito - linked to //self/local/yuibackup

Takes all of five seconds. And then he gets forcibly logged out.

Problem solved.

Note: I pulled all of that out of the nether in about 5 minutes based on 20+ years working with command line systems. I would have so much respect for anime/movie producers if they'd just call up one of their hacker/geek friends and ask them to make up some convincing-looking actual commands for what they're trying to portray rather than this lazy Matrix stuff.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Catsy

Let's assume--no, let's not even assume, let's acknowledge the canonical fact that Kirito is something of a prodigy who has extensively studied not just programming in general, but the APIs and previous applications written for the NerveGear hardware and the books written by the person who designed SAO.

Well, this may be a "canonical fact", but at least consider that this is only very loosely implied in the anime. You have to be paying a rather unhealthy amount of attention to the books on his shelf in the first episode to come to that conclusion, and even that is a real stretch. Perhaps it was more obvious to novel readers because of the way things were explained there.

Originally Posted by Catsy

Note: I pulled all of that out of the nether in about 5 minutes based on 20+ years working with command line systems. I would have so much respect for anime/movie producers if they'd just call up one of their hacker/geek friends and ask them to make up some convincing-looking actual commands for what they're trying to portray rather than this lazy Matrix stuff.

And yes, this was the part that I personally was trying to comment on in the first place, because as a programmer the way it was portrayed was just funny to me, but absolutely -- it's certainly no worse than countless TV shows, movies, and other forms of entertainment. With the information above that clarify Kirito's abilities, and imagining that that the true interface Kirito sees is not the same as what we saw, I agree that it's not really improbable.

Spoiler for Author's episode tweets:

The author even made a comment himself, regarding the anime, that even though Kirito looked all "hacker' in that scene, all he basically did was find a folder and copy it, so yeah. The item may have even spawned itself as a result (to represent the data he copied).

[Catsy]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Well, this may be a "canonical fact", but at least consider that this is only very loosely implied in the anime. You have to be paying a rather unhealthy amount of attention to the books on his shelf in the first episode to come to that conclusion, and even that is a real stretch. Perhaps it was more obvious to novel readers because of the way things were explained there.

Fair enough. Sometimes it's really difficult to separate the context that you already have from what you see. I've read the novels, so when I saw that scene it instantly clicked with the additional level of detail you get there about Kirito's technical aptitude.

The author quote you provided is very interesting, and confirms my suspicions. I really should pay more attention to Twitter.

(I can't believe I just wrote that sentence.)

[ahelo]

SAO is so frustrating. I can see what it was trying to do and I appreciate it. I mean Yui's character could've been handled so much better. She could've had more episodes so that this episode would work. This as me going back to the side stories in the first few episodes. You never really need it in the first place SAO did you. You could've gave more time for Kirito and Asuna to actually develop their romance rather than "oh hey let's get married" and two episodes later poof our first child died. I kinda get that this is gonna be used later on as Kirito and Asuna's motivation to beat SAO but uggggh.

The characters of SAO. . . now I understand. . . this isn't a "what if people went to a game where their lives are at stake?"and this is really more of a "what if anime stereotypes went to a game where their lives are at stake?".

This episode is just . . . arrg.

[zRichard]

Originally Posted by ahelo

The characters of SAO. . . now I understand. . . this isn't a "what if people went to a game where their lives are at stake?"and this is really more of a "what if anime stereotypes went to a game where their lives are at stake?".

You are gonna love MuvLuv's VN adaptation. /offtopic

I don't think SAO fails to do what it tries to do as a story. The problem is that the trailers teased something different to what we got, and the fans hyped it above the heavens as something it was not.
Of all the possibilities there are to work with such a good premise, SAO took the easy road. But can you blame an author that wrote this on his late teens?* I can't, on the contrary, it's quite impressive.

It's been 12 episodes already, people should have lowered their expectations a bit by now.

*This is a very likely rumor. The author is rumored to be in his late 20s and SAO was written 10 years ago