Quite literally picking off from a cliff hanger, Kirito is hanging out with Alice! As expected, he does indeed save her life because that’s the kind of guy Kirito is. Through their little squabble, we get a view of tsundere Alice getting offended by Kirito calling her an idiot, and it’s honestly quite adorable. However, hanging off the side of the Cathedral is probably not the best place to have a discussion about Kirito’s intentions. Nevertheless, Kirito presents the solid argument that the Pontifex and the Church are wrong, and that accepting their laws without thinking is a flawed way of living. Alice doesn’t really have an answer to that, save for the idea that letting people judge arbitrarily will lead to chaos. But if this “order” is what allows people like Raios and Humbert to do terrible things in the name of nobility, than it just has to come falling down.
Kirito’s sword falls out of the Cathedral seam, but he’s saved by tsundere Alice who claims she’s only doing it to return the favor. I’m very surprised that Alice is hanging on as well as she is, considering she’s fully armored. The muscles on her arms and shoulders must be absolutely insane for her to be holding herself up just as well as Kirito, who only has some simple clothes.
The two declare a temporary truce to get themselves out of this dilemma, and Kirito comes up with the most dangerous, absurd plan I’ve ever seen. Doing flips and balancing on tiny rods while being over a 60 stories above the ground is something I expected from Mission Impossible, and even then barely. Yet Kirito has the agility of a lemur and does his acrobatics with ease, I suppose all that time in videos games and in Alicization does that to a guy. Unfortunately for our tsundere Alice, she’s scared of heights and has to be dragged up by Kirito. Gah, she just gets better and better!
We get our first blast back to reality in a while, and something seems amiss near the Turtle. It likely relates back to those fishy guys we saw many episodes ago, and I think we have some action incoming in real life. The project is probably being watched by many nations, as the potential for robotic soldiers with artificial intelligence is huge. I think it’s likely we might have some fighting between the people on the Turtle, and insurgents from another group or nation.
As for Kirito and Alice, their day just gets worse as they come across a line of gargoyles that spring to life. To make things even worse, Alice recognizes them as minions from the Dark Territory, which adds quite the question into the pool. Why are they there? Will this be the first step in Alice realizing that the Pontifex and the Church aren’t as wholesome as they claim to be? Kirito is honestly carrying Alice so much during this entire episode, going as far as to fling her up onto the platform. Once again the strength necessary for such a feat must be insane, but hey, video game physics. They’re quite lucky the minions gave them enough time to fortify themselves on the platform though. After they slay the demons relatively easily, Kirito and Alice share another cute moment with Alice complaining that Kirito doesn’t carry a handkerchief. Honestly, if both Eugeo and Asuna didn’t exist, I’d be shipping the two so hard.
As for Eugo, he continues to climb the stairs within the citadel, and runs into who could only be the Commander of the Integrity Knights. I assume he’s Synthesis One, and probably an absolute monster of a warrior. He also vaguely seems to be the man that appeared in Fanatio’s flashback, but perhaps I’m mistaken. Nevertheless, things are getting tense! Alice is beginning to question the Citadal, Kirito has a new friendemy, Eugeo is about to face off against the most powerful Integrity Knight, and things are brewing the real world!
” The muscles on her arms and shoulders must be absolutely insane for her to be holding herself up…” No, she could do it because of the process that she went through to turn in a knight. Her strength is no longer the same as the ordinary folks in her world.