Dude, what is going on in this show? First you walk into the girl’s room and then you get a girl lifting her skirt? Haru… we need to have a serious talk about this.

—-

This was straight up a training montage. I don’t know how you could expound on that because that sums up a lot of what was covered in this week’s episode. I don’t know if I was the only one getting weird flashbacks to Daniel-san’s fence painting, but that’s what I saw. As far as training montages go, I’d rate it between Rocky III and Disney’s Hercules. What it really needed was some sweet electro-pop music though… That would’ve been awesome. But even with the whole climbing the tower with image power or whatever, will he be able to fly? That’s the big question. If the wings were purely cosmetic, then why did he take Sky Raker’s weapon? Wouldn’t he just be able to fly on his own? In any case, I’d like to see how this goes for him come next week. Hopefully it’ll involve a lot of trash-talk and action shots.

After holding out so well after lo’ these many weeks, I went and spoiled myself again. So on top of this episode being throughly predictable, there was also foreknowledge involved. Which, you know, was okay here. I’ve finally calibrated my own expectations of this show with what it’s been putting out. But unlike last time I knew what was going to happen, I don’t have any visuals to compare the show to. That is probably the biggest thing right now, since Accel World is a very visually oriented show for me. Story is good, and so is character development, but when it comes to this show, it needs to blow me away with art and animation first. The characters are a pretty close second. It looks like Sky Raker will be going the way of our previous female one-off characters and will be written out. Which is a shame; I really like her. And now there’s a reason for her to stick around because she was a member of Nega Nebulous. 

I’d like to think that this story will wrap up next week, but that might be a bit too optimistic. If anything, it’s going to take a good two episodes to tie up all the loose ends in this one. Ah well…

GO Rating: 3/5