Sword Art Online 05

YAY MORE ASUNA!

What an episode, I’ve actually seen this one three times now and am watching it again as I write this. Yes it was that good, I love murder mysteries and SAO has delivered what is too me a really good one, despite what will inevitably be it’s short length.

First off what I am most fascinated about is the way all the top guilds come together to clear each floor, this is something you wouldn’t see today in an MMO. In fact you’d be more likely to see all the top guilds at each others throats trying to clear the dungeon first and claim all the glory. I really like how SAO is trying to smash these currently accepted gaming norms, yet others namely PKing have survived even in this twisted version of an online game.

This week however the PK problem is combined with a good ol’ murder mystery and as we’ve come to expect by this stage the shows uses yet another common issue found in nearly all MMORPGs and uses it as a plot point in SAO. That being rare item drops and the drama it causes. ‘Golden Apple’ (the guild who’s members disbanded after a rare item drop) may have tried to resolve it civilly by putting the items fate to a vote, but rare items do funny things to a player especially if they’ve been seeking it long or hard enough.

Of course, this sort of murder mystery could only really happen in SAO, since so many people still seem to think it’s a game and even for those who don’t killing someone in SAO probably won’t have the same emotional scars that killing someone in the real world would have. Primarily as they just disappear, there being no corpse or anything would be the main contributor to that.

Number 1 – 8 (left to right) who do you think it is?

As in any murder case, we have our victims, our suspect, and plenty of panic. With the fundamental rules of the game at stake it’s no surprise that competent fighters such as Yoruko and Schmit are afraid of being PKed and it’s no doubt Asuna and Kirito are taking this so seriously as if they can’t find out how to combat this method then no where in game will be safe. If the rules which as Kirito says himself are there to make the game fair can be broken, what’s to say that any rule can’t be broken or bent? Would levels even matter? Who knows how this could affect the safety of the players in gone unchecked.

So as to who it is, I’m still not sure myself. I think it’s either going to be Grimrock or Griselda following one of two senarios. #1 Grimrock PKed her for the agility ring and now he is exploiting it to kill the others. #2 Griselda snuck of with it with Grimrock and is now getting her revenge for them wanting to sell it, having now left enough time that most of the guild will have forgotten about her. But I guess we will have to wait until next week.

Finally I’m going to leave you with an extract from Moomba from Randomc.net who once again uses his knowledge of the novels to explain the Asuna and Kirito stuff:

Unlike many other readers of the Light Novel, I was not left unsatisfied by the interaction between Asuna and Kirito in the second episode. Why exactly? Because for me, that was never the important meeting between the two. The romantic in me was always much more interested in the meeting under the tree which the novels originally implied to be the most important of their early interactions. And I felt it was perfect. A-1′s portrayal of it, combined with the choice of music from Kajiura Yuki more than realised the hopes I had for the scene. Asuna fans should be pretty glad too!