The Crime Within the Walls

Key Events:

In a war meeting for a boss, Asuna, who’s the vice commander of the Knights of the Blood Oath, takes charge of the operations.

Asuna scolds Kirito for slacking off one sunny day, but learns to enjoy the weather and falls asleep. She treats him to a meal for watching over her as you can be pk’d whilst sleeping.

They hear a scream and see someone hung outside a building with a blade in their chest. It was a safe zone, he could’ve been killed through a duel. But Kirito finds no duel winners.

To investigate this Kirito and Asuna leave the frontlines. They find a ‘witness’, but gather no useful information.

The weapon of murder is appraised and find out it’s made by someone named Grimrock who the witness knows. They were in the same guild, along with the victim. The 8 of them found a rare drop. They voted to sell it and split the earnings. The leader left to sell it but died. So possibility is that someone who knew she had the item, killed her, the other members of the guild. The likely ones would be the 3 who opposed selling it.

Grimrock was the leader’s husband, in game, and likely that he seeks revenge. Two of the three who opposed was the witness and the victim. The third is someone in the Holy Dragon Alliance. So Kirito and Asuna set out to find him.

After a chat between the two former guildmates the witness freaks out and is killed as a dagger stabs into her through the window.

Thoughts:

From a battle VRMMORPG fantasy to a mystery detective story. Whilst at first glance it may sound a bit boring, I personally find it intriguing. For pure action lovers I understand this episode was tame, however for those who want a good story, I think it was an interesting turn of events. Some ‘lighter’ sides of this action game as it’s not all about the action in MMOs. Though a murder mystery isn’t really MMO like either. But anyway, whilst I like that they’re trying something new, I still want the main story. Doesn’t look like the next episode as they’ll be clearing this mystery. For a mystery fan like myself, I’m looking forward to how they solve this. I have many questions, like who murdered them, who is this Grimrock and the answer I want the most is how he murdered inside safe zones without initiating a duel.

Moving on, I don’t think they explained it properly. I remember Kirito saying that a duel is a test of strength, if that’s the case then why do you have to kill the other person for real? And how is that possible? I mean yes you ‘die’ in a duel, although in some games you are just left with 1 hp, in others you are instantly revived and I’m sure there are many other ways games do this. So what I can’t understand is how it is possible to kill someone completely in a duel. And also I’m assuming that rooms people sleep in have locks otherwise there’d be mass murder if someone goes round sleep duelling everyone else. It seems Grimrock isn’t using the duelling method to kill though, so I’m very interested in how they explain that. No game allows attacking of characters in town/safe zones, especially not pking, you’re not even allowed to kill ‘orange/red’ players’. I’m eagerly waiting to comment on it.

Going back a bit, at the beginning of the episode I couldn’t understand why Kirito was so obsessed with not killing the NPCs. Asuna’s idea was fine of having NPCs distract the boss, using the game’s ‘resources’ to the max I’d call it. So makes me wonder why Kirito’s against it. Has he already blurred the line between reality and virtual? Well, by the looks of how he was relaxing and enjoying the grass and weather, I think he has. Dangers of virtual reality.

Which leads me nicely to my next part/rant, as I wonder why Kirito’s so tied up in virtual reality. Why does he want escape the real world? Was reality that bad for him? I’m hoping to find more backstory before they start the main story, or integrated into the story. But anyway, it leads to my take on reality vs virtual. It may be virtual but if the 5 senses are ‘working’ isn’t it as good as reality? Is it so bad people get tied up in a world that isn’t real? Why can’t we be hooked up all our lives and live happily ever after? Sure our body is ‘dying’ slowly in the real world but does it matter when we’re living a good life in another reality and die a happy person? Like the matrix if you’ve seen it. Seeing is believing, the mind governs you, if that lives then what does it matter about your body when you can escape to another world and live just as well? I’m expecting the main argument being it isn’t real. And of course I have to agree, but if it feels real then why can’t it be just as real?

Apologies for that little rant, those are my feelings on virtual reality, I’m not for it nor am I against it, I think you need to open your mind to more than the bottom line to what can be real and what can’t.

Oh and I liked how that blade that killed the first guy stuck itself into the rock ground. I don’t see that as being realistic, but it’s fun either way… yeah random note to end.

Anyway, it was nice seeing Asuna again, shame we don’t know what she’s been doing all those floors ago, but we’ll probably find out. Either way, she’s worked herself up to be second in command of a large alliance on the frontlines and is leading the charge, that’s enough information for now.  And good to see that Saito’s ‘made up’ with the rest of the people in the frontlines.

If anyone was wondering, I’m writing this on a train.