Adventures in Escapism: Sword Art Online and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

 
This is the last time I'm going to write about SAO on this blog, since I think that I've made myself really clear about why I dislike it in terms of how it's handled its characters. However, that wasn't the only reason I dropped the show. For a while, I had a nagging feeling that I'd seen this story before done far better. I wasn't familiar with most of the shows people were comparing SAO to, like the .Hack franchise, so I wasn't sure where this feeling was coming from. Then I realized that SAO didn't remind me of an anime; it reminded me of a game.

Disclaimer: The following post contains spoilers up to episode 9 of Sword Art Online and for the entriety of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. If you are planning on watching SAO without knowing anything going in or care about having the end of a 10-year-old GBA game spoiled for you, then it may be best to skip this post. It's also really long, so I suggest getting a pillow or maybe a favorite drink before proceeding.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was the first game that I played that had the Final Fantasy title officially attached to it. The only other experience I had with the franchise was with the first Kingdom Hearts game, which had been released the year before this title was localized. Despite being published in the states by Square Enix, this game was the second-to-last title to be released in Japan under the Squaresoft logo before the company was merged (the last title was Final Fantasy X-2. Make of that what you will).

Video game trivia aside, 13-year-old me was immediately hooked on this game. Even back then I really valued plot and character development in my entertainment, but I'd long ago accepted that those things were usually the first to go in making a video game. For this reason, I stuck to RPGs because at least they had the semblance of a plot. Kingdom Hearts was amazing in that regard. But Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was one of the first handhelds I played that had really engrossing characters and plot.

 
So what does any of this have to do with SAO? I think that Tactics Advance embraces a theme that SAO is ignoring, and the show is suffering because of it. It may be unfair to compare two different mediums, but I think that there are enough similarities in story to make my point. Besides, SAO is basically a love letter to gaming anyway, and anime and Japanese games tend to go hand-in-hand.

Here's a quick plot synopsis: Four kids run across a magic book that transports them to the world of Ivalice, which happens to resemble their favorite Final Fantasy game (*wink*wink*nudge*nudge*). The main character, Marche, has to navigate this new world, find his friends and little brother, and figure out how to get back home. It's a standard setup, but like with anything else its success has to do with how it's presented. And this game does a really good job of that.

 
In the first part of the game, after the tutorial, you get a little glimpse into each character's life. Marche, the main character, is the new kid on the block trying to find a place to belong. His family is mostly concerned with the well-being of his little brother, Doned, who's been in a wheelchair for most of his life and can't go to school. Marche makes friends with a boy named Mewt and a girl named Ritz. Mewt is relentlessly bullied by some kids at school for bringing a bear with him everywhere, a memento of his dead mother. His Dad is a screwup who seems to have problems holding down a job after his wife's death. Ritz's trauma isn't immediately apparent, but she obviously has a problem with the bullies and they seem to be afraid of her.

Again, not the most original set-up. But what makes the story so memorable is what they do with it from there. One of the major themes of the game is escapism, and the plot centers around the fantasy that each character creates for themselves. Initially, Marche's reaction to find his friends and go home seems like the only rational course of action, but as the game progresses, you start to wonder why he would want to leave. He's found everything that he was apparently lacking in the other world; he has a group that cares for him like a second family and enough power that he could never be ignored again. As it turns out, the world was built to give him exactly what he wanted, a fabrication created by the magic book Mewt owned.

 
The other characters we were introduced to get their wishes granted as well. Ritz, as it turns out, was an albino and afraid of people making fun of her hair, so in the real world she dyed it. In the fantasy world, her natural hair color is pink (the color she would dye it) instead of white. After giving up on therapy in the real world, Doned can walk again in this fantasy. Mewt gets the lion's share of the spoils, being the owner of the book, and is now a prince ruling the country alongside his resurrected mother. His dad is also the most powerful judge in the land, responsible for enforcing a strict series of laws that affect your gameplay. The world exists to let them live out their fantasies, but when Marche decides to rebel against it, all sorts of problems are thrown at him.


The game directly confronts Marche with his choice numerous times, even having a boss change into his friends and then a mirror image of himself while questioning his decision (linked in the video above; note that Marche's name is changed to the screenname of the person who recorded it). Marche's actions don't only affect himself; he's essentially tearing down his friends' dreams as well. Doned makes a particularly good argument about how going back means he'll lose everything. However, Marche does successfully convince all of them that they can't trade reality for a particularly convincing dream. Their realities are something that can be confronted and still changed; they don't need to throw in the towel because going along with a fantasy is easier. That's life. It's not easy, and it's not always fair, but you keep going at it.

It's surprisingly deep for a GBA game, and its message is something that's stuck with me even all these years later. I still pick it up and play it every now and again, and while the gameplay has gotten simple to clear over the years, the story still holds up. It's easily one of my favorite games of all time just for having the kind of story where you can take something different out of it every time.


It's interesting how many similarities there are between SAO and Tactics Advance, even though they come down to coincidence. In both, the main character has to clear a certain objective to get back to the real world--a 100-level dungeon in SAO, and a series of crystals that maintain the world's existence in Tactics Advance. While death isn't a constant threat in Tactics Advance, a big deal is made out of the one in-game place where characters can die and never return called the Jagd. Ritz acts a lot like Asuna, minus needing constant rescue by the main character. The law system is also similar in punishment to SAO's; break a law and get a yellow card. Accumulate a lot of yellow cards or break a major law and you get a red card and jail time. From there, you can bail yourself out or serve your time and have your record cleared.

What I'm trying to get at is both SAO and Tactics Advance appear to draw from the same source of fantasy wish-fulfillment through escapism. One embraces and debates the idea while the other tries to make the audience forget about it by indulging itself to a level that's causing people to compare it to bad fanfiction. I'm not saying that SAO should suddenly have a deep discussion on the nature of escapism, but given the structure of MMOs and the premise of the show, it's something that at least should be brought up, right?


Let's look at Kirito for a minute. Even without knowing his backstory, from the very beginning of the show we know that he's looking for an escape. In the first episode, he says that he "feels more alive" in the game. He's someone who clearly prefers fantasy to reality. When the players find out that they're trapped, Kirito is essentially getting his wish. Now he can live in the world that he prefers. However, like Marche in Tactics Advance, his first instinct is to clear the game. ...Why? Like I said earlier, it's a natural response, but once someone clears the game, it ends, right? And unlike Marche, no one has confronted Kirito over this hypocrisy. It would honestly be interesting to hear his reasoning. Is he doing it just because that's what gamers do, beat games? Does he feel regret over choosing to spend most of his time in a virtual world and he wants to make up for it? Or, and this is the worst possible answer, did the author not give him a reason and he's doing this just because that's what heroes do?

 
Again, SAO doesn't need to make a big deal out of this, but the theme of escapism is woven through the premise and it feels cheap to ignore it. In episode 8, Kirito and Asuna discuss how fewer and fewer people are heading for the front lines, content to live out their in-game experiences. I also talked in my episodic posts about how much roleplaying seems to be going on in SAO despite the life-or-death situation. Like the other characters in Tactics Advance, they're content to live out a dream instead of deal with reality. I think that's why this bit of information came off as lazy to me. Instead of trying to escape and building up their skills to that end, the players of this game trade their lives for something that's easier but isn't real. In Tactics Advance, valid arguments are given for both sides. In SAO, the plot doesn't even seem to regard this as something that should be debated. It's entire selling point seems to be: "Who wouldn't want to live in this world forever?"

 
Maybe this is the "social experiment" of SAO, but it still requires some solid reasoning on Kirito's end if it's going to pull that off. With the reveal of Kirito's super special Dual Wield ability, a conversation about why he's driven to finish the game would validate the story a lot more than cheap character deaths and paper-thin romance ever could. At first I thought that the source of this discussion would come from Asuna, since she seemed so driven to get back to the real world. The virtual world didn't hold the same appeal for her as it did for everyone else. It's too bad all of that seems to have disappeared in favor of making her the damsel in distress for our black trenchcoat hero.

 
And it would be interesting to hear an argument opposite than the one Tactics Advance makes. I said above that SAO is clearly a love letter to gaming--MMOs in particular--and fantasy and escapism does have its place (I wouldn't be involved in anime fandom if I thought otherwise). SAO does have an opportunity to make the case for virtual experiences being just as valid as real life. The problem seems to be that it's making its case based on superficial elements, so it comes across like more of a fanboy account than a legitimate pro-gaming stance. The over-emphasis on how "cool" and "special" Kirito is at the expense of everything else drains the show of its potential to make that argument.

As far as I'm concerned, the creator of SAO (and the similarly flawed Accel World) is amazing when it comes to world-building. I believe in these near-future settings. The little details--like Kirito getting thrown into a statue and an "IMMORTAL OBJECT" popup immediately appearing--breathe life into it. That was the SAO that I was captivated by in the first couple episodes. And it's frustrating when a series promises so much but then decides to deliver the bare minimum.


To summarize, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is a story about kids learning how to deal with their problems head-on while being tempted by a fantasy world. Sword Art Online (so far) is about a guy who kicks butt at MMOs and gets all the girls while the plot pretends to be deeper. One is a story that's stayed with me for nearly ten years, the other is something that I misguidedly expected more of. Both have a lot in common, but while one raised the bar, the other dropped it. If SAO is able to take that next step and address the topics it's trying to ignore, I'll eat my words about it being a waste of potential. I've made my argument; I'll let its fans enjoy the rest. In the meantime, I think I have a game to replay...

Images from Crunchyroll, YouTube, and the SAO and Final Fantasy Wikis.