Forum - View topicSword Art Online (TV).
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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I did not specifically say it was not intellectual, nor did I subjectively say that intellectuality makes it good or bad. My point was, for a show that has qualities of a kids' show, which defines who it's likely to attract initially, it doesn't make much sense to put a lot of effort into complex, intellectual writing. Since the source material Light Novel is also apparently complex in storytelling, it seems like it would have made more sense to visually direct the show to the audience who it would most likely appeal to; older teens and adults. OR simplify the storytelling a bit in the adaptation so theres a closer match to how they are presenting it. What I think we're actually seing is they unintentionally failed to tone down the intellectuality of it but gave it a presentation that is too young for the awesomeness that it has going for it. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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As per Key's appeal to get back on topic, this will be my last post on Log Horizon in this thread.
---------- Past, I don't want to get into a long-winded post, so I'll try and keep it short. Log Horizon is not a "visually pokemon-ish show". I don't know where you got that from, but simply looking at a single episode or any of the promo art would clue anyone in that this is not on a kiddy level of visual presentation. Everything you write seems to be based on this false assumption.
I'll take that as a compliment. Log Horizon is indeed good. In fact, recent episodes have been so impressive that I haven't even had the inclination to nitpick. I just want to sit back and appreciate the show. If that's not high praise from me then I don't know what is. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Oh god yes! I remember my frustration at your nitpicking. |
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maxlance
Posts: 50 |
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We mustn't forget that the Japanese government and corporations (even the world) was overseeing these 300 like hawks and would've long learned the difference between their being in coma or VR (I liked Kazuto's mom's cool calm regard of his situation by his hospital bed -- Better in VR than coma!!) and instantly would've hopped on them like white on rice once the game cleared. So I just chalk up Asusa waking up all alone and unnoticed (at least a half hour??) as an understandable dramatic device "oversight" by the producers and creator. No bad foul. To all in general: I'm seeking any good SAO fanfiction out there (I don't nose down on FF; many pop mangakas cut their teeth that way!), so if you have any to recommend please hail me!!! I'm hungry!!! Peace & Stay Safe! A KxL fan |
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maxlance
Posts: 50 |
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LOL! Just saw a situation that made me chuckle and finally get Kirito's reluctance in the Extra Edition when Klein was chiding a timid Kirito from not helping out looker Leafa who was getting swim lessons on the beach from Asura instead. You have to think, whoa, Klein doesn't get it. You're helping out a stacked bikini-bouncing babe who doesn't look squat like your sister but you're expected to touch and treat her like that? Illusion can be a bitch!
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5824 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Even comatose people need human levels of sustenance during the day. They need to be bathed daily, their other sanitary needs have to be taken care of daily, they need to be turned daily to prevent bed sores, and their limbs need to be manipulated to prevent muscle wasting and atrophy. Still, despite all that care, they still will lose body mass, there will be muscle loss, and limb atrophy. Here is a quote from a medical board: ASHLEYC ASHLEYC is offline Guest Join Date: Feb 2013 I was in a coma for about 2 weeks 15 years ago. Let me tell you that its not AT ALL like its depicted in films and tv. After I woke up, I was in bed for about 3 weeks 24/7 until I started Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy. It was probably 2-3 weeks before I could walk unassisted for short periods of time (say 5 minutes). About 3-4 months before I could walk for short-medium lengths of time (say 20-30 minutes without a break) about 6 months before I was 'normal'. I was gymnast before and I was very flexible and I never got all of my flexibility back. unquote With regards to vitals monitoring, since we do not have people hooked up into virtual reality games for extended periods of time, we have no real idea what brain activity is like during linkage and playing for extended periods of time, much less body vitals. But I think it would be safe to say, that after two years dealing with hundreds to thousands of victims, the medical system would have developed and standardized a monitoring system that would have been able to detect changes during the VR connection. Not to mention, that the actual Nerv Gear could have been safely monitored by physical indicators (lights and LEDs on the equipment), and passive software monitoring changes with the internet connection. Due to the sheer amount of SAO victims, there would have be a national mandate on the level of care required, especially since mistakes made by medical and technical personnel may lead directly to their patients brains frying. If Asuna was in private (affluent) care, as some have suggested, her medical oversight and vitals monitoring would have been even greater than those with standard medical care. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18187 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Actually, we don't need to suggest that Asuna was in private care; I believe that's either directly stated or at the very least strongly implied by episode 15. Otherwise some good points.
You can some up with a lot of options on a Google search for "Sword Art Online fanfiction." I'd link to the biggest such archive that the search turned up (had nearly 1k entries), but some ninny put Japanese characters in the page name, and they don't copy well to forums. 
Lots of doujinshi out there for the series, too. Not quite on the level of Madoka Magica, but not far south of its numbers. |
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Newbie9
Posts: 38 |
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Hey,I just found out that Kevin Spacey's first big TV role long time ago was on a cop show called Wiseguys where he played all year a genius mob boss who only did his genius hot sister! Wincest was even cool back then! ('
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Anybody got any idea if Sugou volunteered to do any of that? His tongue would save the hospital loads on sponges!...('  ')
I think Maxlance means any SAO story we already read ourselves. I read a really good one called Crystal Wolf in Animeboy but there's way too many to read yourself. I would Google for reviews for any good stories.
Kirrto's right. Like helping my own sisters swim wearing bikinis plus looking way different and nicer then they are? That would be totally rough. I like my sisters but I couldn't do that. I won't have any face left to slap!(' ')
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maxlance
Posts: 50 |
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A few films have quietly done that (and the loli thing) since and soap operas been into it, and watch out for coming teen movies with sexy sisters and even girlish-looking moms passing off as stand-in dates. Re: Anybody got any idea if Sugou volunteered to do any of that? His tongue would save the hospital loads on sponges!...(' ')
Good one! I gotta write that one down! It's funny tho' that SAO/ALO fans were more creeped out over slugs giving Asuna a tentacle feel-up instead of Sugou tongue-raping her like lots of IRL creeps do. I bet SAO fem fans had a different of those scenes than guys did. Re: I would Google for reviews for any good stories. Lots of SAO fanfiction but too few reviews to steer you right, and some of the stuff is really good. Seems to me over the years some of that quality FF stuff just had to've been quietly ripped by some unscrupulous anime producers. I'm sure that's crossed the minds of lots of manga lawyers in Japan/China/Korea. An anime web site could go big just hosting fanfiction reviews and constructive critiques and series feedbacks, doing what fanfiction.com and Crunchyroll and others pass up. But this VR game subject also has me hunting for sites that just deal in discussing and speculating the nuts and bolts and possible scenarios of future VR games and the people most likely to build it. The people who will be creating real SAO games and the technology are at least already in junior high right now. Anyone who comes across any please ring me! Peace & Stay Safe Your friendly neighborhood Kirito x Leafa fan |
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Newbie9
Posts: 38 |
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Try https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/JustLeafa/conversations/messages |
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iSuckAtWriting
 Posts: 7 Location: Location: Location |
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Three. I’ve watched this show three times. Two. I’ve written two reviews for this show but didn’t post them because I didn’t like them. One. This show deserves the one review it has coming to it, to cover the good and bad beyond the visuals and music. After watching this show thrice, can I truly say what makes this show tick?
God help me, let’s begin. Let’s look at Sword Art Online. The story begins with the launch day of a virtual reality online game called Sword Art Online. But as the day draws to a close, the players find that they can’t log out. Their minds are trapped in the game, and the only means of escape is to clear all 100 floors of Castle Aincrad where the game takes place. And death in the game means death in real life. From here on, it’s worth noting that the concept of a “death video game” is tossed in the sense that there are gameplay mistakes that might be better suited to an alternate world fantasy show. In fact, the show mostly IS an alternate world fantasy show. That doesn’t entirely excuse the mistakes, but bringing focus to them would be missing the bigger picture. Mistakes are only bad when nothing distracts from them, and for the most part the show is able to distract from them through world building and immersion. It achieves this world building by greeting viewers with believably strong visuals. It’s not just how vibrant and fluid the visuals look, but the design choices to reflect practicality, to look less like a fantasy and more like something that could really happen. Save for one villain, the designs look at least well armored or fully clothed all over; it’s easy to believe sword and shield users like Heathcliff can charge the frontlines, or why a speedy fighter like Asuna can dance around a fight. There are no skimpy outfits tanking hits or heavy suits zipping all over the place. It looks as practical as it is. The setting itself is often as down to Earth as a fantasy can get. The 18th century flavor to most of the towns and the undeveloped locales such as the lakeside forest don’t serve to remind the viewer the show is a fantasy, but as a glimpse into the past. It’s a fantasy with the illusion of reality, and avoids being too fantastic to be believed. That is, except for the dungeons and monsters. More mundane creatures tend to lurk the normal fields, with the lizardmen, ogres, and reapers showing up in more and more dungeons that remind viewers this show is indeed a fantasy. A fantasy the players want to wake up from. All the players, the characters, are simple but personable. I couldn’t describe the well-meaning but perverted Klein or feisty Lizbeth beyond just that, but taken together all the characters give the setting a personality to match how down to Earth it is. It’s simple, but lively. The characters themselves are unexplored, but their stories come to life by expanding on everything the setting has to offer. From the carelessness of low level players in a treasure chest room to a journey for a rare mineral to craft the finest sword, the setting gives action to the characters, and the characters give life to the setting. There are two certain characters who form the crux of the story, where the viewers see most of the action from. They are Kirito and Asuna, two of the strongest players in the game, but still only a slip away from death via sleep PK, defending a weaker player, or tricked into a bad state. Like the side characters, they’re simple, but the draw here is a couple on equal ground. Their behavior behind closed doors is charming if cheesy, but as they defend and rescue each other from fights, it’s hard not to stare in awe at them as they fight. The fights themselves are loud, with music going with it that ranges from the energetic and nearly hopeful to the ominous and almost hopeless. But while the battle music makes fights entertaining, it’s eclipsed by the calm and unnoticeable. The town music gives a sense that it’s just another ordinary day in this fantasy world, while other pieces go from nostalgic to ambient. The ambient tracks are used especially well during moments of silence where the dialog becomes the focus. This helps to bring life to the show where it is uneventful, and uneventfulness does happen often. This is because while the show starts as an action fantasy, it turns into a slice of (fantasy) life. As the days trapped in the game turn to months, more and more players stop trying to clear the game for fear of death, and yet with so few people trying to clear the game the odds of winning begin to slim. It’s this strong subtext of safety VS sacrifice that dampens a holiday celebration or someone going fishing, and makes the move into calmer episodes believable. But whether the show is calm or intense, there are often small reminders that the setting isn’t real beyond some of the monsters and dungeons. Sometimes a relationship from real life will change in this virtual reality, one character will remind another character of a sister they have in real life, and another character still may scoff at the idea of players really dying if killed in the game. It’s reminders like these that always give the show a sense of weight, to pull viewers—and the players—out of any good feelings that might have been starting to build for the game, where what they might cherish is only a dream. For better or worse, the show is immersive, but not as immersive as it could be with the way the show is paced. Often times the show will have time skips between episodes, which hurts the immersion like a level select cheat in video games; the more levels one skips, the more disjointed the game feels. From a storytelling standpoint, each time skip goes to something important or at least different from the hours a character might have spent going from level 40 to level 75. And yet, the time skips are still often misused. Some episodes would have been better showing more of the events leading up to it, another episode actually seems to forget the plot point it started with entirely, and Kirito and Asuna’s relationship can feel rushed. With the immersion being hurt, the mistakes begin to show. So the show is far from perfect. The characters are simple and the pacing and mistakes make the show stumble. But though it trips, it keeps going forward. The world building covers for the characters, and the characters give life to this setting where the show might have skipped over. The setting and characters are fairly down to Earth, where the strength of this fantasy is an illusion of reality. Glued together by strong visuals and music, and the show is very much worth watching. Of course, this is only talking about the first 14 episodes. Episodes 15 to 25 is where Sword Art Online changes a lot for the worse. It brings in a new character who’s as personable and simple as any character from the show’s first half. Now, the show’s first half could get away with its simple characters because it had so many and most were only around for one or two episodes at most. They left before wearing out their welcome, but not in the case of this new character. Much of the show focuses on this new character’s feelings for Kirito, but with almost no other characters to cover for her simplicity, she can’t even give the image of being a compelling character. But while this new character is just decent, Kirito goes from decent to offensive with a lack of sincerity on his character. At the start of the show’s second half, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him as a certain plot point becomes his driving motivation. And yet, for much of the show’s second half, he has almost no sense of urgency despite how devastated he initially is, until the plot demands it. There is actually a scene where he says he’ll get revenge on the villain, only for another character to remind him of his actual reason for fighting, to where Kirito says “oh, right” as if he were running an errand. I’m not joking. It’s easy to get why the show becomes less action heavy in the first half, but Kirito’s lack of sincerity in the show’s second half is baffling. As for Asuna, she doesn’t degrade as a character, though the story’s treatment of her goes down. Now, I don’t have a problem with showing a strong character as vulnerable, changing someone’s role in the story, or what have you, but in the show’s second half the writers have done everything in their power to outright disrespect her image from the show’s first half. There are more tasteful ways to show weakness than softcore porn. The other characters are even worse. Most of them are shoved to appear all at once in one or two episodes, with their roles in the story being nothing more than to serve as fight fodder or to give info dumps about the setting. There’s no time for them to give the world a personality, they have no personality to start with, and the world itself has almost no immersion with so many of its aspects being crammed. Of course, the show’s second half is a more personal tale about Kirito and the new character, but only the new character is worth something since Kirito is insincere. But Sword Art Online isn’t a personal tale. Though the show’s first half does focus on Kirito and Asuna, it’s more about what they learn from the world and other characters around them than their own thoughts. The show’s first half has simple characters, but they don’t overstay their welcome. Though the show’s pacing hurts it, it makes up for it with world building that can make these personable but simple characters something more. The show’s second half has none of this, and to make it a personal tale when it worked much better as a grand story becomes its downfall. With the world building gone, the mistakes really surface and soon the show has more questions than answers. Conflicts between player factions amount to nothing, fight scenes are bland when thinking about their new powers, and the over the top villain is more annoying than threatening. Except for Kirito, Asuna, and the new character, the show does away with its down to Earth characters and setting, further ruining the immersion as it hammers the viewers head with the message that this is a fantasy. This aesthetic change would have worked if the setting and characters were at least decently fleshed out, but they aren’t. So why couldn’t the show stop at episode 14? The show’s first half is far from perfect, but the love and energy put into it really shows. But the show’s second half is like a cash-in focused on the wrong thing and somehow made that thing worse. In a way, the launch day of Sword Art Online is much like watching this show; everyone is immersed by it, but by the time the evening hours come along, everyone regrets ever starting this game. The good news is the viewers can log out, and I suggest doing so after the show’s first half. But if I’m saying that, then I question if Sword Art Online is worth logging into. |
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maxlance
Posts: 50 |
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Well, I dunno, then one could say that the character whom you won't name (Leafa) seems to now be included more dominantly in the games and side stories and supposedly is even more pronounced in Gun Gale season two than in the light novel suggests she indeed has a market pull and so sizable fan appeal. (Google _thinks_ there are three different Leafa dolls -- would that be more than other SAO character?). So why is Leafa so hated by some? How did Leafa "bring down" the tale? Well, if she hadn't been a sib would've there been this much animus toward her? Is it her being a Asuna "rival" that sticks in many people's craw? I think her controv added spice and interest in the series that could be in danger of being just another VR series with grinding characters in same adventure settings this season around. I also welcomed the unusual emotional drama she brought in which might be uncomfortable for the pure adventure set. Again just let her popularity speak for itself. The producers would've early dropped her like nuke waste had their fan feedback been otherwise. The tease of this in the Extra Edition and SAO Offline bits is interesting. What I'd like to know is the Leafa hate more a Western than Japanese perspective? Knowing that would resolve a lot. Sure, I'd be happy to play a warrior partner (or even Leafa-type) in a free MMORPG if invited to break me in, but I doubt any freebies are anywhere close to resembling Wil SAO games. I think more than any other VR light novel writer by his detail of the nuts and bolts of how all the rules and features would work, is SAO author "incidentally" creating a blueprint of how a real VRMMORPG might go? Maybe he ought be sitting at the table when the first one is being drawn up! Anyone know of such a discussion on any VR or RPG dedicated blogs please inform me! [EDIT: Use the Edit button instead of bumping, let alone, triple-posting. -TK] |
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Newbie9
Posts: 38 |
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Best SAO look alikes are on Playstation and X-Box but the best free online games that's most look like SAO starts with Tera, Runes of Magic, Rise of Mythos and League of Angels. Tera is hard but Xcellent. Drakensang is more like ALO but try it. Drakensang rips charcaters from other games so that's extra fun. Not so much Linux games but they're good as Macs online now and getting better so better get into Linux more too. Some games like Tower of Krraken pair with graphics DVD you can order cheap that let you play online games that almost look like Wii.
The best SAO talk places that stay around forever and get posts and images all the time are at MyAnimeList, Manganaut and Sanakau Complex. Some mangaka show up on Sanakau and you can post to them like Crunchyroll used to have. Google Chrome can translate Japan SAO sites which is the best but it doesn't post what say good so you hardly get any replies. Good questing! |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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At the AX SAOII premiere I watched the English versions of viewers-choice awards episodes, otherwise I don't think I would have ever watched them dubbed. I must say I really like the voice actress for Asuna, because I thought she actually sounded squeakier and younger than the Japanese seiyuu. But she's the wonderful Haruka Tomatsu-san who has such a soft and sweet voice.
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getchman
 Space CowboyPosts: 9120 Location: Bedford, NH |
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have some SAO Outtakes. better than the show
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