While the world of SAO and its implications are fascinating, I'm even more interested by how it handles its characters.
It didn't have the same impact as the first episode (which is to be expected; it's hard to top a giant masked figure explaining the premise), but SAO continues to impress. I won't be surprised if this turns out to be the top favorite of many this season. Like I mentioned before, I'm not an avid MMO gamer so I can't speak a lot to the portrayal of the gaming experience, but so far SAO is impressing me in another way, through world-building and character development.
In this episode, we see essentially two methods that players have adopted in hopes of getting through the game and coming out alive on the other side. The first, showcased by Diabel, is to continue to treat the game like a game. This is clear in the way he introduces himself--"I like to think of myself as a Knight"--in a game that has no character classes. He conducts himself stereotypically like a knight as well, going for honor and camaraderie while he attempts to lead the group to victory. The only time he breaks away from this setup is when he tries to land the final blow for the extra loot, costing him his life. But even then he goes for the knight angle, refusing the potion and asking Kirito to carry on his ideal.
While Kirito and the show seem to paint Diabel as the "good guy" trying to help everyone out, I'm not so sure if that was the case. I have a hard time believing that Diabel acted like that in real life. The moment when he breaks from the plan to solely benefit himself show his true colors (the other players didn't know about the bonus item, and they'd already agreed that the EXP would go to the winner). Diabel behaved in a way that would be fine in a normal game, but in SAO a mistake like that means you're dead, and a coat isn't worth someone's life in my opinion. I'm not sure if Diabel really believed that he was going to die, so he played his knight character to the end.
A lot of my thoughts about Diabel were inspired by a comment made by Asuna, who uses the alternative method to survival. She's not interested in playing a character or teaming up with anyone. "I'd rather stay myself until the very end than sit and rot away at an inn back in the first town." That line is also a great example of the characterization SAO uses, letting the character's actions speak for themselves and letting the viewer draw their own conclusions rather than explain everything (for an example of the exact opposite method, look no further than Accel World).
Her lack of knowledge on basic game mechanics paints her as a newbie, but she has a natural aptitude for the game that makes up for it. So far she seems to be someone who picked up the game on whim and only wants to get home. If that assumption is true, then that makes her radically different from Diabel (and partially Kirito) since this world is not her "escape." Whether she's meant to be the "wish-fulfillment" character remains to be seen, but this type of characterization is perfect for SAO so far. I hope it stays this way.
In-between the two is Kirito, who despite having spent a month in the game hasn't made any friends. He makes an interesting speech at the end of the episode, claiming that he's the best of the beta players, but just like I think that Diabel was acting, I think that Kirito was playing a role so that the arguments about not trusting the beta players would stop. If he'd been that confident in his skills all along, then it would've shown before now. He had some of that confidence at the beginning of the first episode, when he still had his idealized avatar, but it's disappeared since then. The game has forced him to fight as himself, but he still has decide whether he's going to play the game in a way that's true to who he really is, like Asuna, or continue to pretend, like Diabel.
I can't promise that posts will be this long each week, but SAO has really surprised me. If it continues to present interesting topics to unravel and speculate about, I'll be happy to keep blogging it.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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