The Meaning of Strength – 強さの意味
It wasn’t the cliffhanger I was holding my breath for, but this week’s SAO II still left me squirming in my seat in anticipation for next week’s release.
We spent almost the entire episode in the desert cave listening to the two of them talking with Sinon eitherlaying her head on Kirito’s lap, sitting on his lap, or hugging him. After their close run-in with Death Gun, the two spent their time hiding in the cave and thinking up a strategy to survive this BoB. I talked about how SAO II won’t be able to replicate the situation Kirito was in during the SAO days, but here we have a serious situation where they are playing a VRMMORPG with their real lives on the line.
Somehow I’ve forgotten about the key issue in SAO II, but Kirito got us back on track with his theory about how Death Gun commits his murders and somehow, Sinon’s butt seems to have everything to do with that. According to Kirito, there has to be 2 people who form Death Gun. Assuming that Death Gun’s cloak works in towns too, he might have been peeping while registrants enter their real information for the BoB and got information on his victims that way. While he shoots the players in-game, his partner sneaks into the victims’ house and injects some sort of drug into the helpless and vulnerable body, inducing a heart failure. This calls for great teamwork between the pair of Death Guns and after how their convincing and elaborate theory about how Juushi X was Death Gun’s player name, I’m not so sure if I’m buying into his theory this time. But, it does make sense to a certain extent, although I find it a little hard to believe that his accomplice had managed to sneak into both Pale Rider and Sinon’s house within such a short period. Also, wasn’t his decision to kill Sinon somewhat impromptu? *Shrugs* On the other hand, this hasn’t really been spelled out clearly for us so far but Kirito’s ultimate goal is to find out Death Gun’s SAO character name, so that Kikuoka-san (his employer) can track down Death Gun’s location. We’ve narrowed the suspects down to Sterben; Sinon’s emphasis on his name was apt, and I’m sure his GGO name would be somewhat linked to his SAO character name.
After Kirito spelled out Sinon’s risky situation for her, she nearly freaked out completely. I guess it is part of the Amusphere’s safety feature to forcefully disconnect players whose heart rates exceed certain threshold, but in this case, it was dangerous for Sinon to be logged out; seeing the true face of Death Gun was the last thing she should do. Thankfully, we had Kirito there to help calm her down and together, they formed another plan to save Sinon and went their separate ways in order to defeat Death Gun.
While Kirito struggles in-game, Asuna and gang were watching the progress of BoB in ALO. Sensing that something was wrong when they saw Death Gun, they called up Kikuoka-san in-game and forced the shrewd man to spill out everything about what Kirito was tasked to do. Unable to sit back and watch her beau struggle alone, Asuna demanded to know Kirito’s diving location and logged out of ALO to be with Kirito. We should be seeing more action from Asuna, they will probably be the ones helping Kirito out in real life while he battles in GGO. I have this bad feeling that Death Gun would find out about Kirito’s dive location somehow and there will be a confrontation between Asuna and the ex-member of Laughing Coffin, but again, this is just my wild speculation.
The ending scene with Kirito walking off left me feeling rather down, doesn’t it just seem like THE last you’ll ever see of someone? The look on Sinon’s face didn’t help either and I let myself get carried away with feeling sad before coming back to my senses. Come on, Kirito won’t die. I have this feeling that something bad will happen again after they part ways, but I guess I’ll only find out next week. This time I’m sure, that we WILL get a cliffhanger-end during the next episode. Brace for it.
(P.S: SAO II is going to extend for another season, yay!)
☆ koekara ☆ 