Impression
Every time I see Yuuki smile, it makes me smile too.
Mother’s Rosario as an arc is doing very well for itself. It’s moving along at a surprisingly brisk pacing, too – I actually thought there was more content to cover in between Asuna’s meeting with the Sleeping Knights and their first attempt at the floor boss fight, but that might just have been my extended discomfort from another scene with Kyouko. Her relationship with Asuna is as tense as ever – and I’d even say the onset of her arrival was a little scary, with how abrupt the scene transition was. Reminds me of that time when Sinon took a surprise bullet, which was also done really well. Anyway, I can’t imagine how unnerving it would be to suddenly have everything disconnect without warning – it’s can already be a bit of a jolt with games today, so I bet it’s not fun at all to have someone just cut the plug on you like that. If she wants to impose sanctions or threats, she should have done it after Asuna had finished, or tried to contact her by shaking her – forcibly disconnecting makes it feel like a punishment, almost like it was out of spite. If that had been done during the original SAO incident, it would have fried her brain. Actually, I’m surprised Asuna’s even allowed to play VRMMOs after all that’s happened, considering how conservative Kyouko is – both Asuna and I were ready to sit through another full-blown lecture there. These scenes in general are pretty painful to watch, especially when it just appears in the middle of some happy Yuuki scenes. Hang in there, Asuna!
So. The Sleeping Knights. A guild led by Yuuki, who are only able to adventure together until spring next year and thus want to leave their mark on New Aincrad by beating a floor boss and having their names engraved on the memorial. They’ve been pretty vague about how they met, and Yuuki herself has a deep secret – one that Kirito discovered upon fighting her. And because he knows too much, he’s automatically ruled out for helping them even if he’s crazy strong. The foreshadowing is everywhere! And so are the hidden feels! I’m liking how there’s a more subtle emphasis on the Sleeping Knights during their sections of the arc – as opposed to Asuna, that is. It’s a personal quest for their sake, in which they take leading roles as members of their guild. Asuna’s just a tag-along player in this, albeit a very important one later on. From this perspective, it’s probably good that they didn’t pick Kirito. He’d hog the spotlight.
The Sleeping Knights may not be revealing everything to Asuna, but they’re motives aren’t bad at all – they’re certainly more entitled to a spot on the memorial than the scumbag guilds who spy for intel and steal boss kills after sacrificing smaller guilds. We haven’t seen too much of this side of online gaming in SAO (they’ve sort of been focused on not dying or saving someone all this time) but this sort of thing exists, and it’s reared its ugly head at last. Asuna and Yuuki could have probably taken out a large enough chunk of the guild (enough to cripple their raid campaign) before dying, but it’d mean they wouldn’t get a shot at this floor’s boss at all. Let’s leave that to Kirito, who has in fact soloed one of these bosses everyone is assembling 49-man groups to kill.
Did you notice the names on the memorial?
Asuna, Kirito, and Leafa’s names are on there!
Party leaders, most likely. You couldn’t keep those kids out of clearing, after all.
I noticed Kirito, but had to go back and double-check to see Asuna and Leafa. I expected Kirito to be on more than just one of them!
There’s also Sakuya(the Sylph leader from the Fairy Dance Arc) and Kuro(from one “spin-off” manga, or so I’ve read, dunno if it’s the same character though).
I had to think a bit to remember who she was 😀 I will always think of the Sakuya from Rewrite every time I hear that name.
By the way guys, I’m sorry for always replying to comments late. Sadly, these days I’m only really around during the weekends to post SAO. Between the last time I was on and today a cool new winter site theme was put up!
I also didn’t remember that they got to this point so quickly in the novels. Looking it up there was more description, dialogue, and internal narration, but in terms of actual events this really is all that there was up to this point. Surprising.
It’s probably a good thing. The remaining four episodes can be devoted to properly adapting what I’d consider to be the true storylines of Mother’s Rosario. This is essentially a prelude, for all intents and purposes.
;_;
One thing they didn’t show was Asuna’s mother trying to use their house’s security system to stop Asuna from leaving, right before Asuna ended up on her little walk out alone at night. It isn’t a make-or-break moment, or anything like that, but it was a point that I always remembered from this story: they’d argued, Asuna tried to leave the house in a bad mood, and her mother tried to restrain her by force.
Well… those two have a lot to work out. that’s one half of the plot. The rest is… Yuuki. 🙁
Oh, my god.
It’s absolutely awesome seeing everything from one of my favourite SAO arcs animated. I most certainly did not squeal when Kirito appeared~
I can’t wait for the next episode. It’s tomorrow, but I JUST NEED TO SEE IT.
@magicflier-
I didn’t notice that, but I do remember Asuna mentioning the appearance of her name on the memorial…
Yuuki is so cute and adorable in her interactions, especially with Asuna, and if you pick the fact that she smiles that much and put it together with the reason that she and the Sleeping Knights want to leave their mark in Aincrad…. ;; It will probably hit hard, when we actually see it animated.
Anyway,she didn’t think twice about picking up a fight for her objective even if strongly outnumbered, tha was awesome. But I gotta give it to Kirito, stealing the show right before the episode ended, that was REALLY badass.
Also, Asuna probably felt horrible during that DC, just cutting her connection like that and probably the fact that she didn’t know what was going on until she woke up.
Those guild players really acted like scumbags about not letting anyone else challenge the boss when they weren’t ready yet. If they show the fight next episode it will be really great to see Asuna, Yuuki and the Sleeping Knights in action.
The feels will be just as strong, if not stronger – even though they must have been conveyed differently while in text form. Also, even if we have no way of finding out, I’m certain there’s something in the AmuSphere user manual under health and safety about abrupt disconnections. It almost makes you wonder whether Asuna might suddenly get yanked out during a happy scene with the Sleeping Knights.