So… Perverted Piranha Plants. I’m just going to assume that Sword Art Online was developed by Nintendo then. It makes this make sense and makes the entire thing funnier to me.

—-

I’m not sure I like these episodic side stories. If that’s how the whole series is going to go, I’d rather see it go indefinitely. The episode itself wasn’t too bad, but it was pretty light. The story felt very bare bones, with very little development and stuff, something that I’ll touch on later. But Kirito seems to have matured a bit between Red Nosed Reindeer and this one. He’s on the front lines and is helping people out, so now looks and acts the part of a protagonist. We know a bit about him and his family now as well, though that wasn’t really needed to tell this story. Silica was a compelling enough character as well, both as a cameo and as our narrator. I was half expecting someone to die in this one, as every episode so far has had at least one major death. But there was a happy ending and nobody in our main cast is gone! Maybe that means we’ll see Silica again? Unlikely but I’m hopeful. And where is Asuna? When does she become a regular? Hope it’s soon.

So by what I’ve gleaned from forums and whatnot, it sounds like Sword Art Online is going the same way as Katanagatari: one novel per one episode. I don’t know if I really approve of this, though. One of the main reasons why Katanagatari did so well was because they didn’t chop the episode up; as far as I can tell, each story was pretty much complete and faithful to the source novel by using one hour per episode rather than 22 minutes. But with Sword Art Online, the decision to squeeze a light novel’s worth of information and story into a 22 minute box does not work. It was particularly bad this episode, with bits and pieces either obviously missing sections or scenes feeling flatter than they should have been. I’m not sure if I’d have liked to have the one episode per month trade off for a better, fuller story, but right now, that option is looking pretty good.

I’m super glad I don’t know what’s going to happen, otherwise I’d just me griping about the treatment each of these novels is getting. But even without that knowledge, SAO could stand to beef up their stories a bit. We’ll see if the trend continues.

Yep.

GO Rating: 3.5/5