Sword Art Online II

Episode 22

When writing about last week's episode, I expressed serious misgivings about the direction it seemed this arc was going. With us only having spent two episodes getting to know Yuuki, it seemed like the show was already aiming to pull some serious heartstrings - and with that little time invested in a character, it's easy for attempted drama to either fall flat or come across as too blatantly manipulative. In this week's episode, all those fears were realized in the most ridiculous possible way.

The episode started off in a way that set the tone for the whole, with Asuna desperately trying to reach Yuuki in order to maintain a friendship we'd only just been introduced to. Siune's dramatic “just forget about us” just got a groan from me, and Asuna's followup “even if the guild ended, I thought we could stay friends forever” an eye-roll. If the show wanted us to care this much, it would have had to do significantly more work defining these characters and relationships than it had - when our total knowledge of these relationships is two fight scenes and the opening credits montage, it's hard to buy into the drama at the level it's being presented.

From there, we jumped to the real world, where Asuna slowly discovered the truth of Yuuki's condition. It turns out Yuuki was one of the first experimental users of the “Medicuboid,” a medicine-focused Full Dive system used primarily for patients in terminal care. And Yuuki's condition is indeed terminal - she was infected with AIDS (or HIV, given the time frame and descriptions presented, though the show's medical explanations are wonky at best) as a baby, and now exists almost entirely within a clean room. I actually liked how this twist made for a very stark reflection of SAO's overall fascination with how life in virtual worlds can actually be more “free” and “real” than life in the physical world. But I certainly didn't like the way this episode tried to make me cry without doing any of its emotional investment homework.

The majority of this episode was essentially one long expository monologue, relaying the Saddest Story That Ever Was Told. Yuuki's immune system collapsed when she was in fourth grade, and now she has to live in a clean room. Yuuki used to have a twin sister that Asuna reminded her of - she's dead now. Oh, and her parents, her parents are dead too. Plus, the Sleeping Knights? There used to be more of them, but they died, and now the rest of the Sleeping Knights are also going to die. There's heavy-handed, there's ineptly melodramatic, and then there's whatever this was - as the sad story dominoes fell one after another, my reaction shifted from hesitance, to frustration, to disbelief. And when Yuuki put the “two of us have only three months to live” cherry on this episode's sad-sack sundae, I actually laughed out loud. This is not how you create emotional investment, Sword Art Online. This is cheating, and you're not even cheating well.

Absent the emotional investment this episode was apparently banking on, there just wasn't much to this episode. It was talk-heavy, full of conversations designed entirely to convince you to feel things the show hadn't naturally earned. It wasn't ineptly constructed, but its construction was destined to fail - though I'm panning this episode with a very low grade, I consider this grade more a reflection of the overall arc's failure to earn this episode than a strict evaluation of this episode alone. Sword Art Online has had problems with unearned drama in the past, but I can hardly imagine a more over-the-top or poorly conceived grasp for instant sadness than an episode like this.

Rating: D

Sword Art Online II is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Nick writes about anime, storytelling, and the meaning of life at Wrong Every Time.