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 WELCOME TO THE SAO II THREAD! This thread is mainly for discussion of the upcoming anime tomorrow, but it can also be used as an SAO general discussion thread. Just be cool and we should all be good friends. Sword Art Online II is the sequel to the somewhat popular original series. It is also based on the light novels (Volumes 5 and 6) and follows the "Phantom Bullet" storyline. What does Wikipedia have to say about it, you ask? Wikipedia posted:After putting an end to the SAO incident in the year 2022 and rescuing Asuna in ALfheim Online (ALO), Kazuto Kirigaya finally returned to the real world to resume a normal life with his friends once more. However when a string of deaths begin occurring in connection to a virtual reality game called "Gun Gale Online" (GGO), Kikuoka Seijiro of the Ministry of Internal Affairs enlists Kazuto to once again don his character "Kirito" and enter the virtual world to investigate the cause of the deaths. While meeting new allies, Kirito may be faced with his most dangerous challenge yet—a player known only as "Death Gun" with the ability to kill a person in the real world by killing their virtual avatar. It's a whodunnit with GUNS! The same staff that did the previous season is doing this one again, so it'll be in good hands. I've heard from many people GGO is much better than ALO, so if anything we probably won't have two insanely awkward and sexual scenes again. Who knows though? The premise seems fine, but getting into the finer details of this makes it seem more insane. Staff Director: Tomohiko Ito Music: Yuki Kajiura Studio: A-1 Pictures Opening: "Ignite" by Eir Aoi Ending: "Startear" by Luna Haruna Streaming Services: Crunchyroll  SPOILERSOkay so, these light novels have been out for quite a few years now and I know everyone who's read them totally wants to get in on discussing some SAO stuff, but please show some restraint. Anything that has been covered by the anime is fair game to talk about. Basically that means, no spoiler tags for anything in the first series, first four light novel volumes (Unless there is like a missing arc from one of those in which case you can all decide upon that yourselves), and promotional material. Everything I am about to post is either from promotional material or basic story synopsis' of what SAO II is going to be about. Nothing following this paragraph will contain story or character spoilers, but if you want to go in like pure and fresh, I recommend skipping past the next section or just not reading the OP. Also I wanna also say the new game coming out should also be spoiler tagged if discussed in story stuff. I honestly don't care, but I know that game has a character from SAO II in it and it could have potential backstory for her that SAO II plans to use as well, so watch out. Main Characters   Kazuto Kirigaya/Kirito (VA: Yoshitsugu Matsuoka/Bryce Pappenbrook) Women want him and men want to be him, Kirito is back after being called upon to solve everyone's problems in a video game... once again. This time he's helping to stop Death Gun from murdering more people. You might notice a little change this time though as his in-game avatar is no longer a dude or elf. Yes, Kirito through some contrived series of events ended up with the incredibly rare female type character model. His weapons of choice are an 5.7mm FN Five Seven handgun and Kagemitsu G4 photon sword. Kirito got the sword specifically because he was more comfortable with fighting with swords thanks to SAO and ALO, no doubt this will hinder him quite a bit in this gun based MMO.   Shino Asada/Sinon (VA: Miyuki Sawashiro) Sinon is a master sniper and the first person Kirito meets in GGO. She essentially becomes Kirito's guide through GGO as he tries to figure out both the game and what exactly is going on in it. She seems to be to GGO what Asuna was to SAO and what Suguha is to ALO. Her weapon of choice is the PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II, which is just a long range anti-material (Able to penetrate buildings and vehicles) sniper rifle.  Asuna Yuki/Asuna (VA: Haruka Tomatsu/Cherami Leigh) Ex-Central female protagonist and still Kirito's girlfriend/internet wife/what the gently caress ever. After the events of ALO Asuna is no longer shacked up in Dio's rape cage and now she just sort of functions as support for Kirito. She's still far more significant than basically every other side character, but do not expect her to do anything in GGO, she's pretty toned down for the most part since the previous two storylines.  Seijiro Kikuoka (VA: Toshiyuki Morikawa) The guy who called in Kirito for this job. He's an investigator in the victims cases for the SAO incident and led Kirito to Asuna's hospital room. He's the one who pulled Kirito in to have a session about everything that happened in SAO and ALO. He seems like a sketchy guy.  Death Gun (VA: ???) The big bad guy that starts off the events of Phantom Bullet. He murdered several high-level players and his weapon killing you means you die in the real world. It's due to him that Kirito is called out of retirement to find out what is up with this dude and put him down. He's a mean guy, looks rad as hell, and probably even kicks puppies. No one really knows much about him though, so it's up to Kirito and Co. to solve the mystery. Series Characters NOTE: I do not know if any of the characters being listed below are even in GGO, they are being listed for the sake of semantics.   Suguha Kirigaya/Leifa (VA: Ayana Taketatsu/Cassandra Morris) Kirito's cousin-sister who is super in love with him. Is responsible for the uncomfortable incest storyline in ALO. She's a nice girl if a bit dense, but she's also a super good swordsman because she's been practicing most of her life at it. Her entire character arc was never really resolved despite all of the build up for it, but to be honest it's probably better off that way.   Ryotaro Tsuboi/Klein (VA: Hiroaki Hirata/Kirk Thornton) Everyone's favorite character, Klein was one of the rookies that Kirito showed the ropes before SAO became life or death. Klein ended up separating from Kirito to form a group with his own friends, Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan. Klein is mainly notable in that he led his clan to the highest part of Aincrad before it ended and NO ONE DIED, a feat even Kirito could not accomplish. It is still unknown to this day if he ever got his pizza.   Rika Shinozaki/Lisbeth (VA: Ayaha Takagaki/Sarah Williams) In love with Kirito, Lisbeth is the resident blacksmith and good friends with Asuna. At the start of SAO she was mad crushing on Kirito and despite the rejection she managed to take it pretty well. The adventure she and Kirito went on led them to a dragon which pooped out crystals so she could make the ultimate crystal poop sword.   Keiko Ayano/Silica (VA: Rina Hidaka/Christine Marie Cabanos) In love with Kirito, Silica is a dragon tamer who reminded Kirito of Suguha. Your guess is as good as mine on how that is. She never really brought her feelings forward to Kirito, instead she just seems to be in love with him and talks with Lisbeth at the end of the first season about how they're gonna get him. Her adventure with Kirito were to save her cute dragon, Pina, and led to what was one of the funniest parts of SAO.   Andrew Gilbert Mills/Agil (VA: Hiroki Yasumoto/Patrick Seitz) Resident shop keeper and token foreigner, Agil is just a chilled out dude who passes on wisdom to the other players. His cafe in real life is generally a gathering place for SAO players and he's married. There's not really much to his character beyond this, he's kind of just their informant.  Yui (VA: Kanae Ito/Stephanie Sheh) Kirito and Asuna's... ugh, daughter. Yui is a rogue computer program that basically came into existence because of Kirito and Asuna's love for each other. They literally found her in a forest and decided to adopt her. She's got the super cool powers to basically gently caress the game's poo poo up, but can't really do this in ALO. She's been turned into a fairy and now at most she can only scout locations for others. Known as Huey to some.  Sachi (VA: Saori Hayami/Xanthe Huynh) Maybe in love with Kirito? She's been confirmed by Kawihara as his first actual love interest, but she dies early in the story. She exists more as a character who influenced Kirito's character a lot and as such she will sometimes show up in games as a cameo or something, it's really strange. Nonetheless, Kirito ended up getting her killed because he didn't reveal to the group that he was super good at games and this guilt trips him for quite a bit. He even went on a quest to try and save her but it turned out to be for nothing.   Akihiko Kayaba/Heathcliff Kayaba: (VA: Koichi Yamadera/Marc Diraison) Heathcliff: (VA: Toru Ohkawa/Kevin M. Connolly) The central antagonist of the first half of SAO I. He created SAO, the VR gear, and in general was a super genius that could even program his will into the game. He's the cause behind the thousands of deaths that occurred in Aincrad, but it's all cool because he had a dream. Is now a literal Deus Ex Machina in the coding of ALO, handing off control of the whole game's coding to Kirito whenever he feels like it. He cheated against a 16-year old kid in a game of his own creation and then went on to talk about how awesome he was, Kayaba and Kirito are basically BFFs.   Nobuyuki Sugo/Oberon (VA: Takehito Koyasu/Todd Haberkorn) The central antagonist of the second half of SAO I. He's a super scumbag that wants to marry Asuna while she's in a coma for her wealth, kept her consciousness in his new game that basically just rips off the code from SAO, tried to use other brains to sell to Americans for army experiments, attempted to rape Asuna, nearly killed Kirito in ALO until Kayaba stepped in, attempted to kill a 16-year old with a knife after he was beaten in a video game, and was overall quite unpleasant. Other SAO Stuff  Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment The latest Sword Art Online game is for the Playstation Vita. It's being localized by Namco Bandai and coming to the states on August 19th and to Europe the day after, it is subtitles with Japanese audio only and only available for digital download. The game plays like an MMORPG with elements of a dating sim. Half of the game is the previous PSP game, Infinity Moment, where you just cover the last 20 or so floors that were left undiscovered in Aincrad by taking on quests, gathering allies, and general just dungeon crawling while beating up monsters to beat it. The game has multiple endings depending on the team you use before the final boss. The second half is the new stuff, with now multiplayer based missions, new story scenarios featuring Laughing Coffin and a new character, Philia. The story functions the same as the Infinity Moment stuff for the most part with some changes here and there. Now let's talk about the most important feature that is actually garnering attention for this game, the dating sim. You can date the girls, you can hold the hands, make the kissy faces, and even get a bit more intimate. You can also hang out with the dudes and make best buds to your hearts content. There's apparently about 100 characters to recruit, although I'm certain only the story characters have the dating sim stuff.  Light Novels If you wanna read the original stories in all of their web story glory, then they are now available in English! Well... one of them is. The rest are being released steadily over a course of four months for each volume with Volume 2 being released on August, 26th.  Sword Art Online I Yes! Maybe you too want to go back and experience all of the magic of SAO I! You'll be happy to know that you can find the series available for purchase on Aniplex's website. DVDs go for about 40 bucks per volume of 7 episodes (4 volumes in total) and Blu-Rays go for the low, low price of 89.98 per volume of 7 episodes (4 volumes once again!) But hey, maybe you don't want to spend most of your income on SAO and wanna just watch it for laughs again. Well it is currently available on Netflix and Crunchyroll. Trailers and other videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLb0ZF08b7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZRFHZzGAno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEjPJTpyMtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB_uxUtzOl4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkTVCskdkW8 It starts on July 5th, so get ready for what will hopefully be another "exciting" adventure. Captain Baal fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 07:55
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I really really hope this is even half as dumb as the last season was.
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Jul 4, 2014 07:59
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It's guaranteed twice as dumb. Just in that preview video, we see that Kirito has paid real world dollars to someone to painstakingly recreate the coat he wore in a video game for 3 years, and he now wears it around in real world Japan. The society that can't stand nails that stick out will tolerate this one though, because Kirito is the sugoiest speedbrain that ever lived and if you can't see that, then you're already dead EDIT also to address your falsehood in the OP: quote:Everyone's favorite character, Klein was one of the rookies that Kirito showed the ropes before SAO became life or death. Klein ended up separating from Kirito to form a group with his own friends, Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan. Klein is mainly notable in that he led his clan to the highest part of Aincrad before it ended and NO ONE DIED, a feat even Kirito could not accomplish. It is still unknown to this day if he ever got his pizza. In the final episode when they are having the big party in Agil's bar, there's a clear shot where you can see some idiots talking about plot in the back of the shot with the focus, and in the foreground you can see Klein chatting up 2 people while eating pizza. He finally got his pizza party 
Paper Lion fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 08:00
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GGO is better than the previous stuff because it embraces the dumb and runs with it, instead of actually expecting you to take it all seriously. It is also twice as likely to make your head explode if you take Kirito's abilities completely seriously, which makes reactions much more amusing to watch. GGO anime blogging is going to be a fun spectator sport. Also Kirito's GGO avatar is supposed to be a androgynous dude, but yeah it is very definitely in the "draw a girl, call it a guy" school of androgynous.
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Jul 4, 2014 08:15
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Just chiming in to comment about this.Beef Waifu posted:Asuna Yuki/Asuna (VA: Haruka Tomatsu/Cherami Leigh) If they animate Mothers Rosario which is the next story then Asuna will get to be the main character and Kirito will be an OP side one. Also I hope that after SAO 2 they animate some of the ALO side stories including Calibur, I thought some of them were rather cute.
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Jul 4, 2014 09:05
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I didn't watch SAO beyond episode 1 or 2, but I like that every girl's description has them in love with Kirito at some point in time, except the AI.
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Jul 4, 2014 12:45
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Schubalts posted:I didn't watch SAO beyond episode 1 or 2, but I like that every girl's description has them in love with Kirito at some point in time, except the AI.
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Jul 4, 2014 13:56
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Great OP. Been meaning to read the LN before the anime starts but haven't had time, maybe I'll get into it when the anime starts and I can't wait for next week like last time.
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Jul 4, 2014 14:39
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At 24 episodes there's no way this is only going to adapt the two volumes covering Gun Gale. At that length four similar to the previous season is the most likely outcome as the latest Arc in the Light Novels seems to be the longest so far and is still ongoing. So it's a pretty safe bet we'll spend the first half of the series in GGO and the latter half back in ALfheim Online (Volumes 7-8) like Myurton mentioned earlier. Tomorrow can't come soon enough. SAO may be a rather stupid series in many ways, but it's certainly entertaining nonetheless.
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Jul 4, 2014 14:52
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I hope we get Mother's Rosario. It is actually a legit great side story about Asuna.
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Jul 4, 2014 16:08
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Getting in on this before it gets too crowded with anime-only goons and to parrot that Mother's Rosario was a great story and I'll be really disappointed if it's not in series 2. I can tell it likely won't and the GGO arc could easily be done in 12 episodes, possibly even 10 
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Jul 4, 2014 16:34
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HiveCommander posted:Getting in on this before it gets too crowded with anime-only goons and to parrot that Mother's Rosario was a great story and I'll be really disappointed if it's not in series 2. I dunno, there are shots of Asuna in ALO which really wouldn't happen unless they were going to adapt Mother's Rosario and some of the ALO side stuff.
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Jul 4, 2014 16:37
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The first arc was enjoyable and watching people react to the twist was pretty fantastic. I would agree with whoever suggested people skip the second arc all the way to the last episode and then all their questions can be answered with "1. Asuna is finally freed after a bug is fixed." and "2. Kirito is attacked by a crazed hobo but survives because of his SAO trained sword skills." One of the problems with the second arc (besides the obvious) is that way too much is focused on just outright breaking the system entirely. It's acceptable when that happens once at the end of the first arc and doesn't diminish things much, but it felt like the entirety of the second arc was "lol none of these lovely rules can hold me because I'm the protagonist" and if there's no constraints it's pretty hard to have any tension and thus no reason to root for the hero. I honestly can't remember if GGO has that same amount of bullshit or not since it's been years since I glanced at the LN so here's hoping it's not terrible.
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Jul 4, 2014 16:56
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Finding it really hard to believe people think Mother's Rosario is actually good, and not just "Better written than what's around it but still definitely Sword Art Online." Honestly it being elevated to mediocrity just makes it boring. A trainwreck is much more enjoyable than watching paint dry.Mo_Steel posted:I honestly can't remember if GGO has that same amount of bullshit or not since it's been years since I glanced at the LN so here's hoping it's not terrible. Oh, it's terrible alright, in all the best ways.
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Jul 4, 2014 17:09
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As long as the soundtrack is as good as the first series', I'm planning to keep up with this.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:43
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Adelheid posted:Oh, it's terrible alright, in all the best ways. GGO just kind rolls with the "surviving SAO made Kirito a martial arts master" premise and takes it even further. I find it a bit more tolerable though because the story's not actually about him being overpowered this time, it's just a thing that happens to be part of the setting.
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Jul 4, 2014 22:59
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Schubalts posted:I didn't watch SAO beyond episode 1 or 2, but I like that every girl's description has them in love with Kirito at some point in time, except the AI. I think the author himself acknowledged that he went overboard there.
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Jul 4, 2014 23:05
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Beef Waifu posted:
Aw, man! And here I wanted to listen to The Emperor play another rear end in a top hat, larger-than-life villain.  Good OP, by the way. SAO was basically my K-On! show in that I basically watched it to turn my brain off when doing stationary bike.
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Jul 4, 2014 23:35
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Xeiros posted:At 24 episodes there's no way this is only going to adapt the two volumes covering Gun Gale. At that length four similar to the previous season is the most likely outcome as the latest Arc in the Light Novels seems to be the longest so far and is still ongoing. So it's a pretty safe bet we'll spend the first half of the series in GGO and the latter half back in ALfheim Online (Volumes 7-8) like Myurton mentioned earlier. Oh I didn't know it was 24 episodes then we probably will get all the ALO side stories including Calibur. edit: Yeah to reiterate what others have been saying SAO is pretty terrible in a lot of ways but it does do some stuff pretty decently which is better then some series this past season have done *cough*Mahouka*cough*. Also at this rate they should end up animating Alicization seeing as SAO is pretty popular and that has to be my favorite of the arcs so far. Myurton fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 00:58
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GGO owns because Kirito is beating the poo poo out of CS nerds with a lightsaber.
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Jul 5, 2014 02:09
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Yasser Arafatwa posted:GGO owns because Kirito is beating the poo poo out of CS nerds with a lightsaber. That's... actually the best possible description for the GGO arc.
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Jul 5, 2014 03:30
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Beef Waifu posted:
Also because it allows me to make the joke that Kirito's Stand is Cars.
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Jul 5, 2014 09:49
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I'm looking forward to another anime where the person who put the least amount of effort into the project was the original author. Oh well, at least this time we can't have our hopes and expectations dashed.
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Jul 5, 2014 10:52
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i can't wait to watch kirito become a pretty anime michael jackson and go on neato gunz online adventures
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Jul 5, 2014 17:56
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Well that was a pretty slow start. Also, best part of the episode: 
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Jul 5, 2014 18:14
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Cmon where are ma guns 
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Jul 5, 2014 18:17
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Paper Lion posted:It's guaranteed twice as dumb. Pretty sure he's just wearing a black jacket. The coats in SAO/ALO were all longer.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:06
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I like SAO a lot as it hints at or references a lot of upcoming real world future tech developments, and as a gamer SAO offers a lot in terms of those interests. today's episode actually referenced a lot such as Augmented Reality Games. I was also amused at how Kirito seems to be referencing the future tech developments that in universe lead up to Accel World. At least until Qualia the Purple is ever animated we just got the closest I think to anime discussing how things feel to us in conscious reality.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:32
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Raenir Salazar posted:I like SAO a lot as it hints at or references a lot of upcoming real world future tech developments, and as a gamer SAO offers a lot in terms of those interests. today's episode actually referenced a lot such as Augmented Reality Games. I was also amused at how Kirito seems to be referencing the future tech developments that in universe lead up to Accel World. He's not just referencing, Kirito is a pretty big part of Accel World, just behind the scenes as he's not been met by anyone. After all this SAO stuff when he grows up, he does work on a bunch of reality stuff that ends up creating what everyone uses in AW, along with being responsible for the hack that the bad guys use in it. It's also heavily implied that he's Kuroyukihime's dad, and also outright stated that he's the one that taught her how to fight in the game as Black lotus (uses Aincrad method, dual wields, finishing attack is star burst stream, ect ect). Last time I saw any AW stuff he'd given up on playing the game because he was stuck in infinite kill mode, hence having not been introduced in those novels yet.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:55
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It's mildly amusing how much Xexzeed looked like that guy with Gai Shishio's va from the first arc. Actually, seeing Kirito and Asuna being a bunch of dorky lovebirds is always great 
ConanThe3rd fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 20:19
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ConanThe3rd posted:Actually, seeing Kirito and Asuna being a bunch of dorky lovebirds is always great
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Jul 5, 2014 20:44
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Darth Vader kills a dude with his internet gun by shooting at a TV (when apparently he's not even technically in the game???) and then there's 20 minutes of people sitting and talking and talking and sitting. Even loving evangelion, THE anime of people sitting and talking about things, knew to start out with nukes and robot fighting and to save most of the exposition for episode two. What the hell. new female sniper girl being introduced with a lingering rear end shot is pretty much SAO.txt tho
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Jul 5, 2014 21:48
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Was the  at the start going on about how agility sucks supposed to be a setup for kirito to go OH NO MY BEST STAT SUCKS before winning anyway because he has hanzo steel?
darealkooky fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 21:50
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darealkooky posted:Was the
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Jul 5, 2014 22:08
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darealkooky posted:Was the I always took it to show the guy as an rear end in a top hat who deliberately gave bum advice so he'd be noted as deserving of the Death Note act. I can't remember if Kirito being a agility based fighter was ever noted in book as a disadvantage given he's basically Raiden in this. Of course if we got something like RULES OF NATURE blaring out over the course of the series that'd be swell
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Jul 5, 2014 23:01
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darealkooky posted:Was the The guy in the beginning talked how strength is needed for bigger, better guns, Kirito obviously isn't going to use guns. I think it's the setup for motive why someone wanted him dead - he was saying agility is the way to go before then did 180, switched to strength and won the tournament. So some people are mad and that's why he got killed, so is the other guy, the killer is just going around killing everyone famous with strength builds. At least that seems sufficiently dumb murder motive for SAO.
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Jul 6, 2014 00:06
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A slightly renamed version of a real world product and a pun, oh Japan...
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Jul 6, 2014 00:09
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Einander posted:Also Kirito's GGO avatar is supposed to be a androgynous dude, but yeah it is very definitely in the "draw a girl, call it a guy" school of androgynous. 
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Jul 6, 2014 00:16
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achillesforever6 posted:Really if you want to go for androgynous, they should have made him look like Ziggy Stardust era David Bowie Listen man, there are only two manga/anime characters with enough swagger/style/class up the rear end to pull-off David Bowie properly, and they sure as hell ain't appearing in this show, though (spoilers for those exclusively following the JoJo anime) the VA for Sugou basically played a proto-version for one of those two characters in the first season. Speaking of Kirito's new look: Is it just me or does he really look like Yuri Lowell? 
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Jul 6, 2014 00:32
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Eh, as a first episode for SAO vets it's fine. It covers the basics of what you need to know: New game, Death Gun, Kirito's got a job investigating, and he explicitly didn't tell Asuna about it. For those of us who've seen SAO season one it's fine. It's a poo poo introduction for anyone who hasn't seen SAO1 though.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:05
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