Forum - View topicSword Art Online II (TV).
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15485 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 20
What I took away from the episode was that the outside stuff is not for Asuna to grow during them, in fact Asuna is clearly avoiding that side of her life. What is happening is that improving that side of her life will be the goal of what she learns through the game. She needs to take the dedication and how together she is inside of the game, and use it to show her mother that it is important. That VR tech which allows her to socialise with real friends who are really important to her, is just as good as meeting face to face. Even if chances are low and you can't be sure something good can come from it, she just needs to have that fight/confrontation. She needs to show her how important the environment is to her, and that there is meaning to VR and relationships gained through it. I doubt she could get her mother to try it, or if that would have an effect. But introducing her mother to her friends so they can show how they saved each other, how they have recovered from trauma, and maybe even introduce her mother to her surrogate AI daughter. If Asuna is really brave, maybe come clean on how Kirito and her were, that it is not just some fake thing. |
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GrayArchon
Posts: 393 |
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New Aincrad does some reuse of the old bosses, but the difficulty has been adjusted upwards to account for people having magic and worthwhile ranged attacks now, and getting wiped out being something that's ok to do and a learning experience, rather than a tragedy that sets things back months.
I'd have to double check, which I can't at the moment, but I'm reasonable sure that the Log Horizon anime did mention it's Legion Raids at some point. Which are 96 player events. |
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Ohoni
Posts: 3421 |
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Always.
Her mother is undoubtedly cold in personality (one might more kindly say "reserved"), and she certainly doesn't understand Asuna very well, but I don't believe anything she's done would be "cruel." She's trying to instill proper manners, which she believes is important. I don't agree with her mother, I think that she could be doing a better job, but I see no evidence that anything she does comes from a bad place. I don't know, perhaps if I were still a teenager myself I could view her as a "villain," but as it is, I can only view her as an "antagonist," someone who's reasonable motivations happen to conflict with those of our main character.
I'm curious, like what? ALO seems to have a very robust magic system and benefits from having direct brain control over the avatars, but I really didn't note anything that would be out of the question for a game of that type.
It wouldn't be a "rule," but it could definitely be done in a PvP MMO. They weren't able to actually seal off the room, they just got in the way of entering. They are basically standing in the way and threatening with numbers. They are saying "if you try to pass us, we will fight you, and we will beat you, so don't bother." Of course if the other party is willing to test that, they're welcome to. But typically the result would be that even if the smaller party did manage to win, they would be so depleted that they couldn't challenge the boss anyway. In some MMOs this would be considered "griefing" and you could call GMs on them, but others just don't care, and ALO seems a fairly hands-off moderation game.
It's been updated. Remember in SAO ep2 when Kirito noticed that the L1 boss had changed to use tactics from a l8 boss or something? Same deal, Asuna might have a bit of a leg up, in recognizing a few moves as something another boss did, but the ALO/SAO bosses are new combos.
Yup, and so does Wildstar now. Some players love that and pine for it. The real challenge wasn't in making that work mechanically, but in making it work logistically, as in getting 49 people that want to spend hours raiding at the exact same time. The smaller raids are more for convenience than difficulty. Certain GW2 world bosses are designed to require 150 players at once.
They solo-partied an ALO boss, not an Aincrad boss. The cabin boss fight was a much larger party that Kirito's group only formed the core of. You mostly just got "hero shots" of the character we know, because they have well defined character designs and all, but in wide shots you can see a bunch of generic players too. The shot of Asuna casting has 17 grunts in it (hard to tell, they blend in so well), there were another 4 in the shot right after, an unknown mage next to Asuna, five more fire mages on artillery, etc. That's at least 27, plus their group of 8, and potentially more that just stay off camera, so 35 minimum.
Did EQ even have raid parties (with limited sizes)? I thought it was more like GW2, where a "raid" was just a dungeon that was impossible for a small group, and as many people as wanted to show up could do so.
Two things to remember about Calibur. One, as I noted above, that was a story dungeon boss, not an Aincraid floor boss. They were likely on different levels. Two, as Calibur was part of a story mission, the mechanics of the fight were bent to the "story" being played out by the intelligent AI, it was essentially scaled to their level. Note that they had significant NPC support in the fight. If not for that, they likely would have lost badly, but the point wasn't for that to be a punishing raid, it was to be a difficult but achievable challenge to the group that took it up. There actually are similar encounters in GW2, in which a boss fight can be doable by a relatively small group of 3-5 players, and yet scale up to be challenging for even dozens.
Is Crusty on one of those? |
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HaruhiToy
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Her mother could be handling it better but overall she has been pretty reasonable. Asuna is acting like a spoiled brat. |
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Unicorn_Blade
 Posts: 1153 Location: UK |
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A few people mentioned it before, but I do not think that there is just one type of a 'real mother' that you can get. And to be quite fair, I am not that surprised she is not happy with Asuna spending hours gaming. I know a lot of people who are 'real parents' and who would not be happy with their children alienating themselves from reality and spending hours in a fantasy world. We see both sides of the story, but the parents see one, and the side they see are prospective jobs, partners, family's honour. Asuna might not give much attention to those, but they are important in the society whether she wants it or not. Hanging around in an imaginary house in the game is all cool, but then you have to pay your bills and put some food on the table, and that is something hanging around the virtual world will not do. I think Asuna's parents are still quite understanding letting her spend a lot of time online anyways. Not that I appreciate the mother's coldness and harshness, but I sort of know where she s coming from. |
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ChibiKangaroo
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I don't recall seeing an indication that Asuna is slacking in her RL duties or going down the drain due to her virtual adventures. The only thing we have seen is her being late for dinner, and her mother acts like this is some great offense for which there can be no forgiveness. That is so ridiculous. Again, her daughter just almost died TWICE. On of those times was arguably the mother's own fault. And she's becoming all crazy over her being late for dinner? I just don't buy it, sorry. |
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Yttrbio
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She's also staying at a crappy school to hang out with her friends. The dinner thing is just a proxy for how she's letting her obsession interfere with her life.
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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I and I am sure many people reading this have met families that would react exactly that way. You don't need to "buy it" it happens all the time. Nothing in the script so far indicates that Asuna's mother doesn't feel some level of guilt for what nearly happened to Asuna. But if she is the type who takes her parenting duties seriously, understands her role is to be a parent and not a best friend, and is fumbling through the job as best she can with the tools she knows just like all the rest of us parents do, then she is depicted nearly perfectly but just from Asuna's point of view. She gives a damn about what Asuna's future is even if neither you or she agrees with it. No matter how awesome she is in the virtual world, Asuna is acting emotionally retarded in the real world. She is not disastorusly dysfunctional but if I were her parent I would be concerned as well. I give her mother much more credit than her father, who is nowhere to be seen and that is probably a good thing overall. |
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13230 |
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You seem to have forgotten that she's let Asuna off the hook at least twice before threatening punishment should it happen again. Being in time for dinner is a simple matter... Which makes it all the worse when Asuna can't meet that expectation. If Asuna can't follow such a simple rule, how can she be expected to follow more serious ones?
She made it pretty clear the thing with Sugou was the father's doing. |
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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It didn't come across to me as "letting her off the hook." She berates her and treats her like garbage because one time she wasn't to dinner early, and the next time pulls the plug on her her VR device and again talks to her like she's some kind of idiot while threatening to take away her time with her friends, again simply for not being at the dinner table on time. I haven't met good parents who act like that. Bad parents? Yes, but not good ones.
Yea, so again that just makes her seem like a bad parent. She allows her daughter to be engaged to a psychopath and then tries to shove it all off on the dad. She takes no responsibility and then tries to punish her daughter for the slightest infraction. Mother of the year. |
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13230 |
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No one's calling her mother of the year, but she's certainly not as bad as you make her out to be.
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18210 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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My impression is that CK's main beef is that she's bad as a character because she's unrealistic.
I don't agree with that, mind you, and I entirely agree that we're seeing a negative slant on the mother because this is Asuna'a perspective. While she is being strict (the "five minutes early" thing is, admittedly, ridiculous), there's nothing unbelievable about it to me; denying phone, computer, and/or game system access are quite common punishments for teenagers these days, and denying AmuSphere access would be the equivalent in that era. And I think the mother has every right to be concerned about Asuna spending so much time in VR given what's happened to her in the past. I also get the impression that Asuna has never truly and fully explained her VR experience to her mother, presumably because they weren't getting along that well before, or how Kirito fits into that. (And almost certainly she's never explained Yui, because how could anyone in the real world actually understand that?) That's on Asuna, and presumably that will be resolved by the end of the arc. |
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Ohoni
Posts: 3421 |
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Yeah. I mean, Chibi seems to be saying that her reaction to SAO would be to be a clingy and supportive mother, and that is certainly a way a mother could react. Instead, her reaction is to sort of block SAO out for the most part, and focus on getting her child back on track to a successful future, and also being critical of the online games that caused her daughter's drama in the first place. I think both reactions are quite realistic, depending entirely on the personality of the mother. It's not how I would parent, but I don't think she's a bad person just because that's her way of parenting. |
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Bugnin
Posts: 575 |
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Just because it isn't how you would react does not make it out of character.
Given that we know almost nothing about Asuna's mother at this point, calling her reaction OOC is just ridiculous. |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5505 Location: Mexico |
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This being Japan, and Asuna's family being of a high social and economical status, it's not hard to believe that they adhere to traditional values, one of them being that the husband gets to make all the important decisions. It's not even stretching reality to think the father didn't even ask the mother for her opinion on Sugou and rather made the decision all by himself. This is especially easy to believe because Sugou was the father's choice to be his successor as the head of their company. If the mother had tried to butt in before Sugou's true nature was revealed, it could've been considered inappropriate or even disrespectful towards her husband. Not taking responsibility for something that wasn't her fault doesn't make her a bad parent. |
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