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EP. REVIEW: Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online


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Hiroki not Takuya



Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2501
PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 1:11 pm Reply with quote
Well, there we have it. Can't wait for Elza's song to be translated (no subtitles, Crunchyroll!), but from what little Japanese I know it sounded like a love song for spoiler[Goshi]. However, I'm a little sorry that they portrayed Elza as being ~10 years old, sure to cause pedophilia concerns. My daughter gave me an ear-full on that. Still glad she and spoiler[Goshi will be together].
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Kendra Kirai



Joined: 18 Jan 2015
Posts: 187
PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 3:40 pm Reply with quote
Hiroki not Takuya wrote:
Well, there we have it. Can't wait for Elza's song to be translated (no subtitles, Crunchyroll!), but from what little Japanese I know it sounded like a love song for spoiler[Goshi]. However, I'm a little sorry that they portrayed Elza as being ~10 years old, sure to cause pedophilia concerns. My daughter gave me an ear-full on that. Still glad she and spoiler[Goshi will be together].


There is NO way she's only around ten. That would have put her at seven when SAO came out, and they said she had been playing the beta for AGES beforehand.

She's just small.
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Cam0



Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Posts: 4884
PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 4:52 pm Reply with quote
Well it was a fun show. Kinda dumb at times, but consistently entertaining. M's backstory was funny and the humour of that scene was elevated by LLENN's and particularly Fuka's reactions. Honestly I didn't think much of Fuka when she was first introduced in the show. Maybe her early interactions with LLENN didn't really highlight her personality or something. But when she became LLENN's partner for the 2nd Squad Jam, she started turning into my favourite character. Her cheerful, silly and kinda nerdy personality ended up being one of my favourite things about the show, probably.
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Meongantuk



Joined: 03 Jun 2016
Posts: 353
PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 8:13 pm Reply with quote
Hiroki not Takuya wrote:
Well, there we have it. Can't wait for Elza's song to be translated (no subtitles, Crunchyroll!), but from what little Japanese I know it sounded like a love song for spoiler[Goshi]. However, I'm a little sorry that they portrayed Elza as being ~10 years old, sure to cause pedophilia concerns. My daughter gave me an ear-full on that. Still glad she and spoiler[Goshi will be together].


The anime cut some details about Goushi and Elsa's meeting. She was already in collage when she met Goushi. And their meeting was few years before the SAO incident. Elsa is mid-twenties at the youngest.
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Hiroki not Takuya



Joined: 17 Apr 2012
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 9:17 pm Reply with quote
^^Interesting, but I was going on the height relative to Karen and the gymnasts. Elza looks about the same height as the gymnasts which were short for being in middle school. I know the math relative to SAO and her career didn't seem to add up, but she would have to be about the shortest 20-something in the world. While I ship Elza-Goshi and the story definitely didn't portray a child abuse situation, I can see criticism that the show legitimizes romance between 20+ year old guy and 10 year old girl through the visual presentation on this episode. A little disappointing that they did that when they portrayed LLENN and Fuka not exciting sexual/romantic interest from the other guys save one in Ep 9 and Fuka got him good for it. The publicity photo Karen Ep3 had made her look closer to the age you describe (but for the guitar case in the background), but can we really chalk it up to a model error? Otherwise I absolutely loved the show and ending. I also found it interesting that the P90 and Fuka's M32A1 grenade launcher are real and accurately portrayed. I would love my own P-chan!

Last edited by Hiroki not Takuya on Sat Jun 30, 2018 9:42 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Meongantuk



Joined: 03 Jun 2016
Posts: 353
PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 9:34 pm Reply with quote
Hiroki not Takuya wrote:
^^Interesting, but I was going on the height relative to Karen and the gymnasts. Elza looks about the same height as the gymnasts which were short for being in middle school. I know the math relative to SAO and her career didn't seem to add up, but she would have to be about the shortest 20-something in the world. While I ship Elza-Goshi and the story definitely didn't portray a child abuse situation, I can see criticism that the show legitimizes it through the visual presentation on this episode. Just like all girls are 14 in anime. !


The gymnast girls are in high school. Even if they're short, having 140s height is not in anyway shortest in the country's standard. They're in Japan, not America, their average height is shorter.

Hell, even in RL we have Aoi Yuuki whose height is 145 and looks like middle school girl despite being 26.
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#844391



Joined: 09 Sep 2015
Posts: 517
PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 9:45 pm Reply with quote
Yea Japanese are on average shorter than Americans. Karen is 6 feet tall according to her profile online, and she's bigger than most characters in the show, such as in the first episode where she's talking to the sales clerk and it's pretty funny when M first meets her and she's up against the wall but he's looking up at her instead of down as is the cliche with men and woman in that situation. I'm 6 foot but its far less noticeable in the states. And never judge an anime character by their appearance in anime, loli adults aren't that rare in shows.

Anyway, the show wrapped up pretty nicely, they didn't delve into Pito's past or anything to see if there was any traumatic event that caused her to be like that, but that's fine. For a seasonal show it was better than most. I wouldn't mind see more side stories like this in the SAO universe.
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Hiroki not Takuya



Joined: 17 Apr 2012
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 10:04 pm Reply with quote
Sorry, I thought they said middle school but they were 2nd year HS at SJ1. I get between 120-135cm tall since Karen is supposed to be 183cm which, according to Japanese school height charts http://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Girls_Average_Height_and_Weight_by_Age_in_Japan puts the age at 7-9 years and even 145cm is average for about 11years. So yes, Aoi Yuuki is a legit short-short woman and maybe the inspiration for the character. However, I'm not trying to make a case for the show being pedophilic just that my estimate of the character age based on height isn't wrong. If someone else comes up with that angle, it isn't just me. However, I'd be happy that it didn't come up and that people would just assume Elza was believable as an idol singer. I also hope they do more SAO shows like this if the writing is as good. This was my favorite this season slightly ahead of MHA.
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Jose Cruz



Joined: 20 Nov 2012
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Location: South America
PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 12:00 am Reply with quote
Thing is that she is psychologically an adult, she certainly acts in more mature than Karen who is 20. So she looks 10 but she is like 30. It's common in anime for many years now to have characters look like children but are adults.

For example, in Three Leaves Three Colors there is a character who looks around 13 but she is in her mid 30s.
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NeverConvex
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 7:20 am Reply with quote
The action scenes and visuals in GGO:A were pretty decent. I particularly liked the beginning of the scene where Pito emerged from the shadows of her convalescence chamber, with the swirling dust revealing only her light saber at first. Fuka also had some nice repoire with LLENN in the last few episodes -- wish they'd brought her into the main cast earlier.

However, I had a lot've trouble following the tone GGO:A seemed to want to set. Here's an example that kept bugging me: why does everyone in this show behave like Pito enjoying GGO is monstrous? Most of the players have no idea she has a weird videogame-specific death wish, but whenever anyone meets her they freak out that she would take joy in fighting and killing them, in the middle of a GGO event literally dedicated to killing one another.

The guy hanging off the cliff at the end of the 6-squads extermination acted like Pito killing them was some kind of grave sin. The girl who ran off after Pito et al reneged on the "gentlemen's agreement" started ranting about how Pito's inhuman vermin and emotionally embraced an exception of her already strange kill-no-one-in-a-videogame principle. The guys who Pito lightsaber'd to death outside of the room she recovered in ranted about how she was a psycho, and literally yell "Is this fun for you, damnit?!" as she kills them (you'd hope it is fun for them and for her, given it's the point of the event!). These all seem like comically over-the-top, hyperemotional reactions to someone killing your videogame character, as if attempting to infuse it with all the emotion of these players actually dying, despite that this is quite pointedly GGO and not SAO (maybe this is all actually a long-form way of mocking how absurdly childish & emotional trash-talk actually gets in PvP videogames?).

Granted, the show went out of its way to portray her as having the disposition of a giggling serial killer, and to take particular joy in slow, torturous kills, but that stuff all kind've lacks impact when you know this is just a videogame and everyone's going to log out at the end of the day. I guess I feel like the show couldn't quite figure out how to make me buy that the other characters uniformly (sans LLENN) viewed Pito as an evil monster, given that GGO:A never had any real-world stakes for anyone outside of her and M (and that even those stakes were farcical and their connection to LLENN unclear), and she was just doing exactly what the Squad Jam called for her to do.
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Alternative Ice



Joined: 07 Jul 2016
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 8:56 am Reply with quote
The anime had to cut most of the explanation for Shirley's character.

As for the other players, their complaints wasn't that Pito was killing them, but in the sadistic way she did it. Griefers aren't particularly liked in mmos.

Them playing it up as much as they do can just be put down to the sense of immersion in playing vr.

I wouldn't say the stakes are meant to be taken seriously at all. When M's explaining to Karen Pito's situation he's planking at her and she's making funny faces. 10 minute massacre makes it pretty clear that there is little chance Pito is going to die in this game barring a run of bad luck like with that headshot.

The show was more depicting Pito as just an asshole than evil. LLENN is still friends with her after all is said and done.
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Meongantuk



Joined: 03 Jun 2016
Posts: 353
PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 9:18 am Reply with quote
NeverConvex wrote:
The action scenes and visuals in GGO:A were pretty decent. I particularly liked the beginning of the scene where Pito emerged from the shadows of her convalescence chamber, with the swirling dust revealing only her light saber at first. Fuka also had some nice repoire with LLENN in the last few episodes -- wish they'd brought her into the main cast earlier.

However, I had a lot've trouble following the tone GGO:A seemed to want to set. Here's an example that kept bugging me: why does everyone in this show behave like Pito enjoying GGO is monstrous? Most of the players have no idea she has a weird videogame-specific death wish, but whenever anyone meets her they freak out that she would take joy in fighting and killing them, in the middle of a GGO event literally dedicated to killing one another.

The guy hanging off the cliff at the end of the 6-squads extermination acted like Pito killing them was some kind of grave sin. The girl who ran off after Pito et al reneged on the "gentlemen's agreement" started ranting about how Pito's inhuman vermin and emotionally embraced an exception of her already strange kill-no-one-in-a-videogame principle. The guys who Pito lightsaber'd to death outside of the room she recovered in ranted about how she was a psycho, and literally yell "Is this fun for you, damnit?!" as she kills them (you'd hope it is fun for them and for her, given it's the point of the event!). These all seem like comically over-the-top, hyperemotional reactions to someone killing your videogame character, as if attempting to infuse it with all the emotion of these players actually dying, despite that this is quite pointedly GGO and not SAO (maybe this is all actually a long-form way of mocking how absurdly childish & emotional trash-talk actually gets in PvP videogames?).

Granted, the show went out of its way to portray her as having the disposition of a giggling serial killer, and to take particular joy in slow, torturous kills, but that stuff all kind've lacks impact when you know this is just a videogame and everyone's going to log out at the end of the day. I guess I feel like the show couldn't quite figure out how to make me buy that the other characters uniformly (sans LLENN) viewed Pito as an evil monster, given that GGO:A never had any real-world stakes for anyone outside of her and M (and that even those stakes were farcical and their connection to LLENN unclear), and she was just doing exactly what the Squad Jam called for her to do.


Remember that GGO is a first person VR game where all your senses are replicated (including sense of pain to some extent). Sure, it's a video game, But Real or not 'experiencing' yourself getting blown in half or getting stabbed in the eye by sword isn't exactly pleasant, especially if the other party is laughing like maniac. The pain might be not as painful and your real body is fine, but the terror and fear is still there.

The other has no idea what Pitohui's like sure, but they sure as hell can see that she's far from normal. Other players aim for more clean and instantaneous (even LLENN) kill while Pito certainly enjoy playing with her target,

For Shirley (and her team), She isn't a gamer mostly. She's playing to train her IRL hunting skills as GGO has some monsters that acts similar to RL animals, as well as realistic terrain (her gun is also similar to the gun she used in real life), The reason why she dislikes shooting people was because her real life self shoots. SJ is the team's first PVP event. And betraying your promise is pretty scummy thing to do even in a game.
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NeverConvex
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 10:34 am Reply with quote
Alternative Ice wrote:
As for the other players, their complaints wasn't that Pito was killing them, but in the sadistic way she did it. Griefers aren't particularly liked in mmos.


Sure, but to the extent that she was griefing other players, it was pretty mild, and certainly didn't warrant the visceral reactions it got from her victims. Pito made a lot've goofy faces, but she didn't sit on some poor person's bind point for 3 days straight, de-level someone from max level to level 1, or otherwise directly rip apart hundreds of days of another person's invested time. She just killed peoples' characters in a very distant, toothless imitation of torture.

I'd be willing to put those reactions "down to the sense of immersion in playing vr" if that level of immersion in GGO had been established as an important plot point, but instead the show goes out of its way to undermine that idea, as it constantly highlights how very different playing the game is from real life (constantly contrasted with SAO/ALO; real vs laser-game aiming; exploitable game mechanics like all the immortal object stuff; etc), how the most reasonable characters in the show carefully make that distinction (while the central antagonist is deeply confused about it), and how some players even happily commit character-suicide just to act as immortal objects for their team (with no over-dramatic show of pain or regret involved).

None of that suggests to me that GGO induces a sense of immersion so deep that people would start roleplaying as their characters in their characters' death sequences. Instead it just seems like that was an arbitrary narrative choice made because it felt dramatically standard, and because it was familiar from similar titles, despite that there wasn't much in-world justification for it here exactly because there's no 'real death' here while there was in each of the prior isekai titles in this brand.


Last edited by NeverConvex on Sun Jul 01, 2018 10:44 am; edited 1 time in total
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Alternative Ice



Joined: 07 Jul 2016
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 10:42 am Reply with quote
I don't mean immersion in the sense that everyone's role playing all the time, just that they get caught up in the moment when there is a lightsaber inching it's way towards their face and into their brain.
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NeverConvex
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 10:47 am Reply with quote
Right, I mean the same thing. By 'roleplaying' or 'immersion' I meant in the limited sense of 'viscerally feeling your character's fear of death in the moment of your demise,' not pretending to be your character and abiding by their backstory in all of your dialogue at all times or something. I think if GGO is so realistic that someone photon-blading you or grenade-exploding you or whatever is legitimately terrifying, then the story needs to go out of its way to establish those as important elements of the game. I never really got that sense from GGO:A's storytelling, though; instead I got the impression that most people make a perfectly fine distinction between GGO and reality, and that that general principle only disappeared whenever it was dramatically convenient.
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