Impression
Kirito-chan, you’re almost as cute as onii-sama is amazing. No-one is as amazing as onii-sama though, he’s my idol. I adore him so much more than Miyuki does. In all seriousness, if any of you are still watching Mahouka (and if you are, you’re probably watching SAO too, so I’m mentioning this here) I’ve dropped that. You should too – go read the novels instead! I can’t take it any more, it’s like I’m watching Slaine get tortured on a weekly basis – and that’s after seeing the Glasslip train smash itself into a wall every Thursday. Don’t worry though, I’ll keep blogging that one – it’s approaching “so bad it’s good” status with its drama, schizophrenia and general confusion.
In comparison, SAO II is doing pretty well for itself! The pacing’s nice, and we’re getting regular doses of action, which is all starting to build up now – the main tournament of the Bullet of Bullets is where Kirito’s finally going to face off against Death Gun. It’s good that he’s found him, at the very least – Kirito was at a disadvantage from the very outset given that Death Gun knew his avatar name and appearance, while all he had was a couple of rumours and a moniker. I think he was also entertaining the possibility that Death Gun might have changed his appearance for the tournament in order to camouflage himself – but if Death Gun’s aim is to get his name out by killing several high-profile players, it would sort of defeat the purpose if he suddenly looked like Silver Crow instead of Darth Vader. Of course, it’d still be a bit dumb to advertise through an avatar name, but sadly for Kirito the three unknown players -Gunner X, Pale Rider and Sterben- all do sound quite ominous, and can in fact form a link to Death Gun in different ways I’m not going to mention just yet.
It was nice seeing the tournament unfold so dynamically, with a wide variety of terrains and locations to suit competitors of all types – they had that area map as an illustration in the novels as well! Trust Kirito to somehow manage to subvert the spy satellites by taking off all his clothes and swimming underwater – and of course, trust him to cosy up to Sinon yet again, the bastard. You could have actually formed a decent argument for Pale Rider being Death Gun from watching their battle with Dyne – the way he was easily capable of dodging bullets was not completely unlike Kirito, who honed those skills in SAO to begin with. And Rider had his face hidden. But of course, he ended up being taken down by the real Death Gun, who started going through the motions for performing yet another killing. Interestingly enough, now that the whole Laughing Coffin thing has been revealed, Kirito’s completely changed his tune from brushing off Death Gun as a cheap conman, and now looks like he does actually believe it. Well, it’s not like he’s perfect. Unlike onii-sama.
Sorry, had to get one more in there. I’m done now.