Sword Art Online Episode 8--Get Back in the Kitchen

SAO's main plot returns with a bang by...spending half the episode cooking with Asuna. What.




This was the make or break episode, and with my patience worn thin by the slew of side stories this episode didn't make the cut for me. I'm sorry LN fans, but this is what you insisted I wait for? Forget fantasy cliches, we're skipped right past that into harem antics and wish fulfillment. While there's nothing inherently wrong with either of those things, why bother presenting the show as something original when it's going to play into those tropes anyway?

Let's start with Asuna. The show has made a point in presenting her as a Strong Independent Woman, since she's the vice commander of one of the strongest guilds in the game. However, just like every other girl Kirito has come across, all of that gets dropped when it's time for him to play the hero. It doesn't matter that she's been fighting on the front lines for the majority of the two years she's spent in-game, Kirito still has to warn her about how dangerous it is. Forget that she probably could've ordered away her bodyguard at any time, she needed to hide behind Kirito while he fought for her honor! And then there's the classic (and personally hated) "I-fell-on-top-of-you-and-you-grabbed-my-boob-so-now-I-have-to-punt-you-across-the-room-BAKA." I've said this before and I'll say it again; it's the not cliche, but how it's executed. And they way it was executed here was nothing approaching original.

And then there are the players in this game, who still seem to be unable to grasp their situation. Apparently fewer and fewer people are helping the fight at the front lines, which at first is understandable, given that death in the game is real. It makes less sense when you find out that most people are doing so in favor of the ridiculously simple crafting life. As Asuna points out, there's no joy in it. Last week, we saw that creating a weapon only really needs good ore and a high enough skill; cooking appears to the be same way, with the ingredients magically chopping themselves. It's one thing if you're out fighting for your life all day and don't want to be bothered with small details, but if you're not, the choice strikes me as incredibly lazy. Out of all the people in this game, only around 500 value reality over a supremely simplified lifestyle?




I mentioned a few weeks back that a lot of people in SAO were going hardcore for the roleplay aspect, not bothering to address the overall complications of the situation. Asuna's bodyguard falls heavily into this category, despite obviously being old enough to know better. I can understand needing a guard, but this guy takes it to a ridiculous extreme. He also brings up the extremely silly concept of "beaters" once again; clearly, the biggest threat in this game isn't IRL death, or the guy who trapped you there, it's the beta players! Scum of the earth, that lot. ...Now that I think about it, have we met any "beaters" besides Kirito and the guy who got himself killed in the second episode? Where is this stigma coming from?

For fun, I decided to pretend that this episode had come right after episode 2, to see if adapting the side stories had any purpose. As it turned out, they did. Admittedly, it would make no sense to have this huge of a time skip and have Asuna and Kirito act buddy-buddy if we didn't have the context of those episodes. However, I still think that there must have been a better way to establish all of this, but I'm rapidly losing faith in SAO's ability to do anything but take the easy route out. This episode had the same amount of pandering and wish-fulfillment as the supposedly lesser side stories.

Basically, I'm just about done with this show. (And I'm the person who got all the way through Blood-C.) When their idea of a cliffhanger makes me want to facepalm ("OMG, there's a BOSS in a BOSS ROOM!") it's probably time to leave this one to the fans and stop raining on their parade. However, in the sense of fairness and since I know that story arcs can start out rocky, I'm giving it one last chance before I bail completely. Go ahead, SAO. Show me why so many people like you for reasons I no longer get.

Images from Crunchyroll.com.