Forum - View topic

REVIEW: Sword Art Online II Blu-Ray 2

] and also Asuna's mother, I can't stand Asuna's motherspoiler[, she is so nasty and controlling to Asuna and meddlesome regarding which school Asuna can attend, who she can go out with, whether or not she can play VRMMORPGs, etc].

Miyuki Sawashiro and Michelle Ruff are too good for this show, IMO. This show had some good voice actors. Their talents were wasted for a mess like SAO. It's like an Ivy/Russell League Student who is stuck in community college. You can only make the best of the situation.

Having said that, this show is scored by Yuki Kajiura, which is always a plus and the visuals are above par. That will not save this show, however.

The Gary Stu is cranked up to nauseating levels, Sinon starts out as reasonably independent but still winds up falling into the inescapable good little waifu trap in the end

I don't get why the reviewer said Kirito's PSTD was "unconvincing"? I was thoroughly convinced that it was always part of his character.

And once again, nobody in this effing thread even knows how to use "Gary Stu/Mary-Sue" properly.

Mother's Rosario tops it.

(Admittedly, though, that may not hold true if you are primarily focusing on the action component of the franchise.)

Unlike typical harem shows, the girls falling for Kirito is a bit pointless because he hooks up with Asuna pretty early on.

Like please someone hook up with that poor sod Klein.

I found it unconvincing as well. To me it seemed like a cheap trick to help Kirito connect with Sinon. We never saw the raid on the Laughing Coffin's base in the 1st season.

...............you're kidding.....right? How did you even.....um, NO.

Sinon starts out as someone who wants to be strong and overcome her trauma but she kept failing until she learned that it's okay to rely on others and show her weaknesses to them. That some goals cannot be overcome by one person alone; it takes support from friends, it takes understanding from other viewpoints and working together; MOST importantly, it takes accepting and forgiving yourself.
Which she was able to do. She got help from Kirito, yes, but she was the one who took the final steps to begin her own healing process.
She's nobody's "good little waifu".

And once again, nobody in this effing thread even knows how to use "Gary Stu/Mary-Sue" properly.

People accuse Kirito of being one ridiculously so, and the main reason seems to be "because all the girls end up liking him". Yet.....the same applies to ALL harem protagonists and compared to Kirito, they do practically nothing compared to him. The things Kirito does are things that EARNS admiration and respect; I mean duh, most girls WOULD totally fall for him.

There are plenty of things about his character that save him from being an actual Mary Sue though.

Sinon's moments of doubt essentially reduced her to a blubbering mess

wholly reliant on Kirito to pull her through it.

Hell, in two instances, both in-game and in the real world, she's reduced to utter physical helplessness, and Big Strong Kirito needs to swoop in and save the day.

But the real "waifu" bit comes into play when despite already having a (horribly ill-advised) romantic prospect, Sinon winds up crushing on Kirito all the same, because of course everyone does, and then slotting neatly into his little pseudo-harem, never to escape.

Trust me, I know exactly what the phrase means, and Kirito is perhaps the best example of one I've ever seen besides Bella Swan.

And for a third, I have a few female friends who have suffered through the show, and they've told me in no uncertain terms that they can't see how anyone would fall for the sort of arrogant, self-absorbed little prick that Kirito so often comes across as.)

Yet Kirito manages not only to immediately excel at it, but even goes so far as to use a freaking lightsaber, a weapon type which has no right to even exist in that game

If automatically being the best at everything he touches doesn't make a character a Gary Stu, then there's no such thing as one in the first place.

(Also, I have no idea how the hell the studio wasn't sued by Lucasfilm, given that they blatantly ripped off actual lightsaber sound effects.)

Hell, in two instances, both in-game and in the real world, she's reduced to utter physical helplessness, and Big Strong Kirito needs to swoop in and save the day. (The second of which, as Theron mentioned, is almost as odious as the all-time terrible end of Fairy Dance.)

I can almost give a pass to him retaining most of his skills in ALO, given that it's a similar style of MMORPG to SAO, even though it's patently absurd that just because the games share the same basic engine he can automagically convert his character data over when there's no other relation between the games. . . . But Kirito making the jump to an FPS like GGO, a genre he's never even played before, and immediately being absolutely god-tier at it is ridiculous beyond words.

And are you really not getting the sword example? Yes, Kirito isn't all that great with a gun. But then he picks up a weapon that absolutely no one in GGO uses because it's utterly worthless by design...and proceeds to beat everyone effortlessly with it.

Yet Kirito manages not only to immediately excel at it, but even goes so far as to use a freaking lightsaber, a weapon type which has no right to even exist in that game, and miraculously defeat seasoned professional FPS players with it.

And are you really not getting the sword example? Yes, Kirito isn't all that great with a gun. But then he picks up a weapon that absolutely no one in GGO uses because it's utterly worthless by design...and proceeds to beat everyone effortlessly with it. Sword does not beat gun. Period.

(Also, I have no idea how the hell the studio wasn't sued by Lucasfilm, given that they blatantly ripped off actual lightsaber sound effects.)

Ah yes, the "sweet selfless gentleman" who on THREE separate occasions essentially leads a girl on to get something that he needs, while conveniently neglecting to mention the fact that he already has a girlfriend, one of which caused a hideous amount of completely-unnecessary drama.

You will cease right there, because I neither said nor implied anything of the sort about that scene. You are reading way too much into my use of the word "ugly" and clearly didn't bother to pay attention to the rest of what I wrote in that paragraph. You're welcome to have a dissenting viewpoint, but don't drag me into your hate for the series.

The series has established that GGO, like the new versions of ALO and Aincrad, are all based off of the World Seed, and I believe it's been clearly said that character portability between different games is a result of that. Where there are equivalents in skills, etc., they can convert.

And if that wasn't the case, then how would Sinon have been strong enough to adventure with Kirito's party (who would have dramatically outleveled a newbie character to the point that it would have been unsafe for her to join them) when she joined them in ALO?

First of all, that was hardly "effortless;" against tougher opponents he still needed help. Second, I don't recall the weapon ever being referred to as "worthless by design." It was just considered difficult to use and, well, GGO is a gun game, not a melee game. Besides, other comments made in the series suggest that GGO has little player cross-over with fantasy RPGs, so the number of players in the game who had sword skills good enough to make it useful were probably very small. Hence no one would have been used to dealing with someone who actually knew what he was doing with it.

Lolwut.

Kirito and Asuna didn't become boyfriend and girlfriend until episode 10 of the Aincrad arc. So the only time the situation you're attempting to describe happened was during the Fairy Dance Arc. And he only teased Leafa a bit, he didn't actually "lead her on". Same goes for Sinon who didn't even hint to him that she wanted a relationship with him before being introduced to Asuna.

If you have to resort to using one in serious play, you've probably done something wrong. Kirito's beam sword appears to be just what it says on the tin, and any FPS player worth their salt wielding a hitscan weapon should be more than capable of dealing with such a basic attack, especially with how wide-open GGO's environments appear to be.