Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Sword Art Online: Alicization
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18175 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Manga source material for this already exists. They'd just have to adapt Girls' Ops, which features Lizbeth, Silica, and Leafa meeting up with a new female character who's also an SAO survivor. Enough content exists to easily make a whole season out of it. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2512 |
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Wow, Ep18- System Call: Remove Sexism Protection, women just seduce men and men are just stupid animals who go for it...Did this really happen in the manga? (I have to assume the same treatment got the other Integrity Knights) These swings are a little confusing, at places you have things like this and Kirito chiding Lady Fanatio for being weak and trying to please a man and then it has Alice and others really being strong and self-determined (like Asuna?). While one could take this as a framing device to compare types of women and men to explore what similarities and differences there are, I am not seeing the latter. Just hoping Eugeo plays along to do the "little stabby" and not become Eugeo Synthesis Thirty Two...
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18175 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I think you mean episode 19 and the source light novels, and yes, it plays out exactly the same way in novel 13. As to your comment in parenthesis, I would point out that Eugeo is particularly vulnerable to this kind of approach because of the way his life has gone. Someone like post-Aincrad Kirito, who has a stable and loving relationship, wouldn't be fazed by that approach at all.
Frankly, I don't think Kawahara gave the slightest thought to any deeper meaning behind the characterizations. And as to your hopes? Spoilers! |
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zrnzle500
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@Hiroki not Takuya Frankly, I think that is a gross misrepresentation of what happened, nearly to the point of a strawman. As you yourself pointed out, that is inconsistent with the characterization of the other female characters. I will agree with Theron that Kawahara likely did not put much thought into giving his characterizations of his female characters a deeper message about women, but I will say that he was not trying to say that women "just seduce men and men are just stupid animals who go for it" (I don't recall him making any previous female character a seductress, actually). Rather, it seems to be challenging the notions that love should only belong to one person or that it is owed as a reward to be earned (say, for rescuing them). I think it would be difficult to argue that that isn't the point, since they have the important female characters of the arc explicitly spelling that out to Eugeo. I would also argue that it also challenges the image of Eugeo (and potentially by extension other such characters in LNs or other stories) being some sort of white knight selflessly saving women, with no ulterior or self-satisfying motives, though that will depend on where the rest of his arc goes.
While I admit that Kawahara's characterization and general treatment of female characters needs improvement, as I have argued elsewhere on this site, at least he acknowledges the issue and is working towards it. As much as some parts of the internet don't want to admit it, you can do far worse that SAO with regard to just about any aspect or issue, this one included. I can definitely think of some series that much more readily and thoroughly play into negative narratives about women or otherwise, and far more thorough and ugly ones at that. Not naming any names here though. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2290 |
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I wasn't really bothered by any deeper implications of the Pontifex "seducing" Eugeo, but I still wasn't a big fan of the scene. I didn't like that:
- Eugeo's apparent insecurities & jealousy are largely manufactured on the spot in this scene, and were not major themes in the show prior to this, so it's difficult to buy this as a notable failing in his character, and it just looks like Kawahara forgot until just now that Eugeo needed some reason to fail - that her rhetoric to him was so baldly ridiculous & contradicted by what he knows of her: "I will love only you," she says, right after he's finished beating up some of the literally dozens of other knights she's employed through presumably similar psychological attacks, & all of whom she oh-so affectionately refers to by number - that SAO couldn't seem to decide if she was seducing him or offering to be his mom |
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Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 2512 |
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I was also expressing some dismay that given how solidly Eugeo has been characterized to this point as having the express mission to get Alice with Kirito's help, that he would succumb so readily to the Pontifix's offer of "pleasure beyond your imagining (sex)" despite numerous internal warnings about the situation and go so far as to ignore all that do whatever she says. Any reasonably intelligent or aware guy would ignore all that and carry out the mission rather than play out the trope I mentioned. For fairness, the Pontifex's characterization here as seductress is about as incongruous and more than a little annoying as a means to convey how "bad" she is as if all we know of her weren't enough for that. At best it is "ham-fisted" writing to create maximum melodrama despite my hopes for better given how some here have been crowing for the last year prior that Alice was the best arc of the SAO saga. I'm not seeing it the way the anime is presenting it. So yes, SAO is hardly the worst offender in sexual politics portrayals in anime but it is the worst among shows I have been watching for the last several years. I guess I'll just have to accept that Kawahara's characterizations are inconsistent (to say the least) and that he has succumbed to the "make it up as you go syndrome" that you and Theron posit. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18175 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Who around here was saying that? It definitely wasn't me, and I don't recall anyone else pushing that argument, either. |
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jr240483
 Posts: 4374 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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unfortunately its highly unlikely! girls ops isnt as popular as say toaru kagaku no railgun or sword oratoria so the chances of that all girls spin off getting an anime adaptation is slim to none! |
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
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@Hiroki not Takuya I posited that he previously didn't put much thought into the characterization of the female characters because he said as much himself in recent interviews (as well as not using sexual assault unless necessary to the story and not at all in LNs going forward). I do believe him when he says he wants to do better, though those changes won't show up in the story until later, as Alicization was originally written several years ago.
I do find myself skeptical of the claim that SAO is the worst in sexual politics even of those you have seen, given I know you have watched some of the slave harems produced in recent years, some of which have scenes or even whole episodes which have worse implications than anything in that scene or in SAO in general, even beyond the whole slave harem thing. Not that there is anything wrong with watching or liking those shows. I just don't understand why you feel SAO's sexual politics are worse than those. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2290 |
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I remember hype to this effect earlier this season as well, though I don't remember who specifically was involved. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2184 |
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So since Quinella fucked with Eugeo's head does that make this effectively Kawahara's first female rapist?
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LuScr
Posts: 140 |
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Leaving aside the sexual politics of rape and brainwashing, I thought the major takeaway from that sequence was Eugeo "remembering" that Kirito was with him and Alice as children--something which, thanks to Rath, no one else recalls, including Kirito himself (though it seems Administrator is an exception to that).
I would be very surprised if that does not play a big role down the line. |
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 257 |
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I know that armchair quarterback-ing fictional characters is always kinds stupid but I almost went nuts when Eugeo didn't use his dagger because he was saving it for Alice. No, you dummy! The dagger was a just-in-case thing for if Alice got in the way! If you took down Administrator, then Cardinal could come out and then whip you up a new dagger (or just fix Alice, no dagger necessary) right away...
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Jack2196
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From Ln reader
In fact they cut many scenes from Ln version Basically Eugeo's family really disliked how their son would not be able to help at the farm. This is from the day Eugeo received his calling: "Grasping the parchment wrapped with a red ribbon, the proof of his appointment, tightly, Eugeo had ran back to his home on the outskirts of town and announced his sacred task to his family somewhat proudly. Following a short silence, the first reaction came from the younger one among his brothers. He curtly clicked his tongue and cursed, saying that he thought it would be his last day handling the cleanup for the cows’ shit. The older one told his father that it would throw the planting plans for the year into disarray and his father, too, asked Eugeo when his job would end and whether he could help out in the fields then, in a groan. As though afraid of the men’s sullenness, his mother disappeared into the kitchen without saying a word. Eugeo felt constantly ashamed in his home for the next eight years. And despite that, Eugeo’s wages as a woodcutter were controlled by his father and before he noticed, the number of goats had multiplied and the farm tools were swapped with new ones. Despite how, Jink, appointed as a guard apprentice, spent all of his wages on himself and ate white bread stuffed full of meat for lunch, and showed off his studded boots and a sword kept in a lustrous sheath. Despite how, Eugeo had to walk on in his worn out shoes and a jute sack filled with nothing more than the left over hard bread on his back before Jink’s presence." And this is what the rest of the kids on the village thought about Eugeo: "Jink had said this to Eugeo after around two years after that summer of his eleventh year, when Alice was taken away by the integrity knight. There aren’t any women left to care for you any longer, with that girl of the village chief gone now, he said. Jink’s eyes back then told him that he deserved it. The fact that Eugeo lost the privilege of being the one closest to the cutest girl in the village and a genius at sacred arts, Alice, brought joy to him." And finally, regarding the issue with Tiese: This is a bit lost in the LN, but in the Web Novel, the rape does actually take place and Eugeo only sees the aftermath, unlike in the LN, Eugeo kills Humberto, not because he has to save them anymore, but simply because he hates them and wants revenge, because they "took something from him". To summarise, in all of his life, the only moments when Eugeo felt "loved" was when he had something to "pay" for this love, be it on the first ten years of his life when he brought food, medicine or helped at the farm, be it when Tiese asked him to save her from a terrible marriage and in turn she would love him (She did in fact love him at this point, but Administrator is just really good at playing people, so she used this as well). And the last straw that Eugeo had to grasp, Administrator takes that away by making Eugeo believe that all this time, what he wanted wasn't to save Alice, but to save the "love" that he associated with her, in that case, saving "Alice" would be pointless, because according to Administrator, this "love", belonged to someone else already. And thus, Eugeo falls into her trap. Finally quinella doesn't rapes eugeo,she just control his mind. |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
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SAO as a franchise has always felt to me similar to Star Wars; lots of nice in the moment tactical actions and excitement, tends to fall apart if you think about the characters' strategy from a broader perspective. They're both fine as long as you don't think about them too much; not plot holes so much as character stupidity or sudden motivations or the inevitable Ass Pull appearing. Franchises like that are often successful as entertainment. (Harry Potter has the same basic issue, especially the way magic and items introduced to cleverly solve something in volume X can't or aren't used to solve problems in any volume Y with Y > X, and also didn't show in volume Z with Z < X when they would have been extremely useful, even if depicted as well known and common in volume X.)
It's even fun for people to try to come up with strained and loony theories about why it all makes sense, but really, by this point people should know what they're getting and if they actually want a consistent series that makes sense when you think about the broader strategy, they should go elsewhere. You don't watch Star Wars expecting Star Trek, and you don't watch SAO expecting Log Horizon. They both are what they are. |
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