Sword Art Online (Off-Topic)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, April 27, 2015, 04:04 (3304 days ago) @ Chewbaccawakka
edited by Ragashingo, Monday, April 27, 2015, 04:45

*MINOR SPOILERS BELOW*

So, despite my personal insistence that I don't really care for Anime that much, I find myself watching yet another Japanese cartoon. This one is titled Sword Art Online and I found it on Netflix. The premise is the launch of a fully immersive fantasy-style MMORPG. Players don a neurally-connected headset that takes all mental input and translates them to in-game commands.

At time of launch it is revealed that the designer of the game had an ulterior motive in that he wanted to be a god of his own little universe. He secretly installed a kill-switch into the headsets and disabled the "Log Out" function in the menus. This trapped all the day-one players in the game with the stipulation that if someone could "beat" the game then they would be released.

To up the stakes, the kill-switch engages should the player fall below 0 HP. In other words, it's a MMORPG that effectively takes the place of your real life, and kills you if you are defeated by the world.

Yep. I'm with you. I just can't stomach most anime. There are so many shows that are just the same copied plot of "timid boy at high school somehow gets powers and is surrounded by flirty girls." Is makes picking through to the good ones (I'd recommend Cowboy Bebop, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Fate / Zero, Spice & Wolf, Ghost in the Shell, and Macross Frontier to name a few) like finding a needle in a particularly annoyingly repetitious haystack. Perhaps worse are the ones that have good art and voice acting and world building but just sorta forget to actually explain the plot... (I'm looking at you Last Exile! Heh. And Macross Frontier!)

Sword Art Online worked for me because while it's initial plot (AKA: If you die in the Matrix, you die in real life!) wasn't novel, it was pretty well done. The show's producers knew MMORPGs very well and integrated a mostly consistent rule set that made sense to me as a gamer. It was neat to see a good take on a "no magic" type fantasy world and then see pretty good representations of a "high magic" world, and an open world FPS. Likewise, the characters weren't the most dynamic, but they had their moments. Kitiro's survivor's guild (spoiler, he survives and is finally able to log out!) and the guilt he has from being forced to kill real people (via killing them in game) to protect innocents worked because it came back to haunt him and wasn't forgotten about. Asuna's eventual resolution between herself and her overbearing mother was sweet and touching.

And then the final side story that ends the series, the one called "Mother's Rosario", was legitimately moving. Without spoiling it too much, it was about a group of real life friends who wouldn't be able to stay in contact so they became determined to unlock a new floor of the dungeon tower the (new, safe!) version Sword Art Online was built around so they would all get their name on a special in-game monument. I teared up a bit at the conclusion of that one.

I don't put SAO in my top anime of all time list (see above) but I'd rate it a nice low level B and am happy to recommend it as long as the person I'm talking to has seen some of the anime I like more.

Now, my questions for you are:

• ...If you had the option to enter a game world like this one, would you?

With or without the perma-perma-death? Without actually risking my life then heck yes. With risking my life? Maybe... as long as there were some pretty good safeguards against player killing. I'd probably stick to the second wave and let the risk takers do the initial dangerous exploring and dying. I'd help secure trade trade routes or roads or whatever after they'd been established.

[*]...Would you prefer a Fantasy themed one? Or Space Opera?

Yes. :p

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Well darn. I broke the list tag...