Morning Wood Sword Style!



OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Two years have passed for Kirito and Eugeo and, after a bunch of unnatural exposition to catch the audience up, they ended up as trainees in Centoria. In that time, Kirito’s also learned a bit more about the mechanics of the Sacred Art system that works basically like an MMO with leveling up, including that belief in one’s self can boost their power at key moments. Since joining Sword Mastery Academy, he’s met several people, including his own mentor Sortileina Sorlut, who have been able to use this function to their advantage.

He also gains a new sword that was constructed from a branch of the Gigas Cidar, but finds himself in a duel with an upperclassman even Sortileina couldn’t beat, Uolo Levinteinn, who also uses his family’s philosophy to make use of confidence boost mechanic to become stronger. Kirito tries this out for himself with his own sturdy, erect piece of wood and makes it grow longer to penetrate through Leveinteinn’s guard, even with no protection. Almost sexual, isn’t it, Smithers?

But all is not well, as some flowers he had been growing were destroyed by some generic bullies. Luckily, a strange voice instructs him to use the abilities he’s learned to help revive them. Sortileina graduates soon after and Kirito and Eugeo become mentors themselves to two new trainees.

OUR TAKE

Huh, for two episodes coming at once, I was worried there’d be way too much plot to cover in the Overview like with the first episode, but really it’s pretty sparse. Almost like these are meant to be taken as the same episode, much like the two before it with Asuna. Though while that seemed pretty straightforward, this feels like a really simple story padded out with a ton of exposition that didn’t really help it flow.

This is the first we’ve seen of Kirito and Eugeo since the fourth episode, and since we’ve established that the Underworld has a time dilation set on it, it would make sense that more time has passed in there than what is happening in the real world with Asuna and the rest. With that in mind, some exposition would probably be warranted to fill us in on what’s happened that we didn’t see. But the way it’s handled feels so forced, especially in a situation where both characters recapping things would already know all of these things happened, so this conversation doesn’t feel like one two people would have. And it’s not like there wasn’t a better way to convey that information, seeing how we also got Kirito narrating what he’d gathered about the world on his own. Just lumping the stuff about their travels in with his narration would’ve probably been the better option.

Not to mention that them being trainees at an academy, where the story picks up, gets changed again by the end of the eight episode, which isn’t enough time to really get to know any of these new characters. Sortileina seems like a nice senpai who might also be on the Kirito not-harem bandwagon, but while we do go into her family background a little, it feels like she’s here and gone in no time at all. Which is generous compared to every other new addition like Eugeo’s mentor, who doesn’t get a single line, Leveinteinn, who is basically a training dummy for Kirito trying out his new sword, and these two easily-hateable bully characters who seem to just seem to be around to stir the pot. And oddly enough, THEY get to stick around. And then there’s Kirito and Eugeo’s own trainees who will also help to fill the show’s waifu-quota.

But the big development in terms of plot would be Kirito’s training in the “imagination theory” of believing in himself to help him fight. One could write this off as simply being an excuse to make every battle about the “power of friendship” and some such noise, but the fact that it’s being utilized as a real in-game mechanic that others can use already shows that there’s more thought being put into it than that. It’s an ability like any other with its perks and pre-requisites. This might partly be something Kikuoka had put into the coding for the AIs to pick up on and hopefully use to break free of the Taboo Index, but it seems it can also be used to heal plants and supplement attacks, but not so much that it feels overpowered, at least not yet. It kind of reminds me of Spiral Energy from “Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann”, only I’m not sure if it’s less or more tounge-in-cheek than that yet.

And because Toonami needs some more time to get Promised Neverland ready, it looks like next week will also be another double header, starting the third book of the arc. Hopefully that will be as easy to cover as these were!

Score 7/10