Sword Art Online: Alicization WoU - Episode 2 Discussion / Poll

[Kairin]

Welcome to the discussion thread for Sword Art Online: Alicization WoU, Episode 2.

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[Frontier]

It was nice to see Alice finally reveal herself as an Integrity Knight and use her position to save the village, on-top of getting her father to acknowledge and listen to her in the process .

Gobins! Where's Goblin Slayer when you need him ?

Man, those Integrity Knight dragons are like walking WMD's. If they could make more of those, I don't think the Dark Territory would be much of a threat .

I guess all Alice truly needed to fight was a proper motivation, and protecting her village, family, and the world Kirito tried to save is more then enough on that front .

And I guess her eye...recovered over time ?

It was nice to see Selka see Alice off as she goes to properly rejoin the Integrity Knights and the fight against the Dark Territory. Alice may not have her memories of her childhood, but she was still able to find her family and home again and a place for her to return to once the fighting is over, and Selka got to see her sister grow up to become a strong, noble, night .

Asuna man-handling Kikuoka for how badly he screwed this up felt well-deserved .

So who are our new villains? They don't seem clearly Japanese but they seem to have some influence with the Japanese government...and their leader sounds like he's voiced by Akira Ishida, which makes them even more suspicious .

Kirito has basically lost his ego and is stuck in his memories with no way of properly functioning. I guess that explains why he's so obsessed with his and Eugeo's swords. And yet he's still probably their best chance at saving Alice from the bad guys nabbing her Fluctlight .

They couldn't be more obvious about the next step being Asuna finally going into Underworld to help save Kirito. It's about time .

The new Ending is a bit of a departure from the usual LiSa themes, and is obviously Alice-centric, showcasing her own unsure emotional state as she chases after Kirito .

[Applehell]

Pretty solid episode although Alice's dramatic development moment felt it like it was missing something. Maybe due to the VA being too stoic?

[Frontier]

Originally Posted by Applehell

Pretty solid episode although Alice's dramatic development moment felt it like it was missing something. Maybe due to the VA being too stoic?

She is very stoic, although interacting with her family and taking care of Kirito seems to have unlocked her softer side .

[BloodyKitty]

Originally Posted by Frontier

And I guess her eye...recovered over time ?

Spoiler for not spoilers, just an UW mechanic that wasn't explained properly in anime:

Alice can heal her eye by using the Resource of Solus (the sun), but because it was night during the final Cathedral fights, so she can only keep eye bandage. That's also why Administrator didn't heal her cut arm and turned it into sword instead.

Originally Posted by Applehell

Pretty solid episode although Alice's dramatic development moment felt it like it was missing something. Maybe due to the VA being too stoic?

I think it lacks some fire in her voice.

[GDB]

Originally Posted by BloodyKitty

Spoiler for not spoilers, just an UW mechanic that wasn't explained properly in anime:

Alice can heal her eye by using the Resource of Solus (the sun), but because it was night during the final Cathedral fights, so she can only keep eye bandage. That's also why Administrator didn't heal her cut arm and turned it into sword instead.

To add to this, remember that even someone like Eugeo's teacher was able to heal his eye. Alice, who was a gifted spirit artes user (or whatever it was called) and trained in the cathedral itself, would more than be able to do the same.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Frontier

They couldn't be more obvious about the next step being Asuna finally going into Underworld to help save Kirito. It's about time .

Yeah, when the camera clearly showed Asuna looking over at the dive unit contraption and the camera clearly paused on it for a few seconds I'm like... I don't think they could make the foreshadowing any more obvious if they tried.

The interesting thing about the explanation they gave about Kirito's condition (though it's clearly well into sci-fi/fantasy territory at this point) is that he's still being affected by his residual memories. So I assume they are setting the stage here for the arrival of Asuna to be something that helps to further push his memories and helps him somehow reconstruct his sense of self somehow. The more interactions he can have with people from his memories, the more things might start reconstructing, but so far he has mostly been limited to Alice and Selka (which is only just a small fraction of his actual life).

In the end, the turn regarding Alice in these last two episodes was obvious (they wouldn't have a plot if she stayed mostly locked in a cabin for 23 episodes) but at the same time I feel like it moved a bit quickly to really help us relate to what she was thinking. I guess in composite we're to take it that Alice didn't really want to go war and was hoping to just live a quiet life with Kirito (who she feels sacrificed everything for their world only to be entirely underappreciated by everyone around them), but by the underworld bringing the war to her hometown she had no choice but to fight back and accepted that she couldn't just hide away from it -- basically her duty as a righteous knight compelled her to choose both the world and Kirito, not only him alone. (And, in fairness, it what's he would have wanted anyway, as we see from him trying to grab at his swords when the town was in danger.)

I'm not too sure how I feel about the lack of resolution regarding the Administrator and the church; they've tried to keep this weird sort of status quo without really addressing the Administrator's death, and even the other Integrity Knights aren't really informed of what happened and why. It seems like more problems waiting to happen... but I guess, here too, if it were all resolved right away there'd be no plot. Obviously at this point they have bigger things to worry about, particularly if the next episode's title is anything to go by, but it seems like sooner or later they're going to have to address this somehow. I suppose telling people they're all just part of a simulation isn't something that goes over easily.

I'll also say the status quo regarding the invading force on the Ocean Turtle is a bit odd too. It seems like we're going to have some sort of weird stalemate for a while where both command rooms are somehow "fighting" over who can eject Alice's fluctlight first, which will mean trying to advance the simulation to its end stage? I suppose we can probably infer from the OP that our terrorist is also going to try to inject himself into the simulation as well to lead the "bad guys" and that may in turn be what pushes Asuna to enter on behalf of the "resistance". And all that probably leads back to... who is the terrorist's mastermind and what connection do they have to SAO and Akihiko... but I guess time will tell.

[Frontier]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

I'm not too sure how I feel about the lack of resolution regarding the Administrator and the church; they've tried to keep this weird sort of status quo without really addressing the Administrator's death, and even the other Integrity Knights aren't really informed of what happened and why. It seems like more problems waiting to happen... but I guess, here too, if it were all resolved right away there'd be no plot. Obviously at this point they have bigger things to worry about, particularly if the next episode's title is anything to go by, but it seems like sooner or later they're going to have to address this somehow. I suppose telling people they're all just part of a simulation isn't something that goes over easily.

I feel like if we're going to see any of how the Integrity Knights are coping in a post-Administrator world it will probably be when we see Alice reunite with them and see what they've been doing since then.

Granted, I don't expect some will take it well seeing Kirito riding alongside her .