The Red Nosed Reindeer

Key Events:

The top group have already reached floor 28.

After saving a few people, Kirito is invited into their guild and he agrees to join. Their guild is slowly gaining levels and money.

On a night stroll, Kirito meets up with Klein again. But he says nothing.

The female guild member Sachi is afraid of dying. Kirito says he will protect her.

The guild decide to gather some money with a dungeon run. A member triggers a trap and spawns hundreds of monsters with no escape. The members all die apart from Kirito who is much higher level but hid that from them.

Time skips to Christmas Eve, 49th floor. Kirito is alone again, he finds out about an event with a boss ‘Nicholas the Renegade’. All the big guilds are searching for him as it’s rumoured that he drops an item to revive the dead. Kirito plans to solo it.

Klein follows him there and asks he joins their group. Kirito refuses but their conversation is cut short as Klein was followed by the Holy Dragon Alliance. Klein decides to hold them off and let Kirito off alone.

Kirito wins but finds that the item can only be used within 10 seconds of someone dying. He gives it to Klein and leaves.

At ‘home’ he receives a recording from Sachi telling him not to blame himself for her death, and to live on.

Thoughts:

Floor 49 already? That’s pretty quick, 3 episodes down and nearly half the floors cleared. I wasn’t paying attention to the anime time, so I guess a long time had passed in the anime, but episode and screen time wise, it was fast.  I’m assuming the main story happens on a certain few floors as it would be unlikely to have a story for a lot of floors. But even still, after making such a big deal of how hard it was to even get past something like 10 floors, you’d think they’d at least try to make it sound more difficult. Suddenly it looks like the game’s easily doable and I’m sure it’s not that simple. Hopefully difficulty will spike up soon, wouldn’t be a game if it didn’t. Would love to see last floor boss.

It’s still managed to ‘keep it real’. People still talking about it as being a game. I think whoever makes it out of this alive will be traumatised never to go on another MMO again, at least not another VRMMORPG. Unless this had the opposite effect and gave them a massive confidence boost for any game.

I wonder why some people are trying to race for the top in this life or death situation. Why not just level up ‘normally’ and wait for the ‘best’ to clear the levels whilst you try and have some fun. No matter what, it’s still a game in the end. I think I’d be able to enjoy it even knowing I could die at any moment. Worrying too much will get you no where.

I’m rather surprised that there wasn’t a way for others to know your level. I didn’t think that was a standard in MMOs. I don’t know any MMOs where I can’t see my friend’s levels somehow. I mean in some MMOs where you can’t see another’s level you can usually tell by the gears they’re wearing. Usually gears are level specific and if you’ve played long enough you’ll recognise it instantly. I’d have thought they should at least be able to tell from the weapon he uses. Though that said, he did switch weapons when facing that weird Santa, so perhaps he used a lower level weapon to ‘mix’ in? Even so, why? I thought he was a lone player, what would prompt him to join a guild? What would make him slow his levelling down to half his level? Did he get lonely?

From what I understand this episode showed a ‘flashback’ or a side story if you will. This was written after the main story but the anime wanted everything to be in chronological order. Which means a few things I think, firstly that we won’t be seeing the main story for a bit, secondly maybe some of the things won’t tie up properly and thirdly these stories will probably explain why he’s a lone player in the main story. Like this episode showing him losing some friends. Sounds like the typical ‘everyone close to me dies, so don’t like to get close’. So yeah, probably going through the foundations of why he’s a solo player and what he’s fighting for etc. So he can be ‘at the top of his game’ as the black swordsman for the real story.

Note: I apologise for a lack of blogs the past week, I’ve been out every day apart from Thursday. I haven’t had the opportunity to watch anything until today, so I’ll resume normal blogs now.

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