Captive Queen

Key Events

Kirito easily dispatches another one of the army people and the last one runs away.

The girl introduces herself as Leafa and teaches Kirito how to fly without an assisted controller. Leafa leads Kirito to Sylph territory to invite him for a drink.

Leafa explains that flight can only be held for maximum 10 minutes and whichever race gets to the top of the world tree and meet the Fairy King Oberon will be reborn as a better class known as Alfs and have limitless flight. But there are some difficult bosses defending the entrance to the tree, the game’s been out for nearly a year and no one’s beat the guardians.

After hearing Kirito’s story Leafa decide to help him, but she has to log out so they will meet the next day. And we find out that Leafa is actually Kirito’s sister/cousin.

A short scene between Asuna and the ruler of Alfheim, Sugou. His goal is of research into the full-dive system’s control of the brain. Kayaba was his colleague but he regards him as a fool for using the system to play games. He wants to test out the system for his own purposes so when people were logging out of SAO he redirected 300 to him and now has them for tests. In two months he’s already able to plant memories and induce emotions. His wants to sell this research for a high price.

Thoughts

So, an important question first. I think we’ve established that Suguha is Leafa. So how does his own sister/cousin not know the trademark name of her brother Kirito? I mean sure it’s online so that name could be anyone, but I think she’d ask him first before assuming. Although it could be that she never knew. Though why wouldn’t he have told her and after two years of having that name you’d think he’d mention it once after he comes out. Even if the government’s ordered him to keep quiet you’d think a slip of the tongue is very plausible.

On the topic of his sister/cousin, I can see the route their going with their relationship, and I’m not sure I like it… The revelation that they’re cousins made it slightly better, reminds me of Da Capo, again they’ve known each other as siblings for most of their life. I dunno… I don’t get why the Japanese are so fixated on this sorta thing that there’re genres for it…

What I want to talk about the most was Sugou’s idea of using this brain technology for more sinister motives. Indeed, with a system like this physical torture would be a thing of the past, just a few pokes in the brain to gain information or induce unpleasant or pleasant feelings. If that doesn’t work, slowly fry their brain as torture. If his research is going as well as he says, it’s then quite dangerous to link up the brain like this as Kayaba proved. This seems to be relatively new technology at this time so I suppose people don’t know that much. Perfect time to use it for more ominous deeds.

I can’t believe how easy it was to just take 300 people‘s brains, though I suppose no one could do anything anyway. I wonder where he’s keeping them, in a coma like state for now and tinkering around with their brains?

How will Kirito be able to beat something like this? If Sugou’s so easily able to get into their minds then Kirito will get trapped too. This guy’s more dangerous than Kayaba, at least he just wanted to play a game. I get the feeling we’ll see another ending like last time and Kirito’s will is somehow able to win. Although actually since this world’s influenced by the brain, maybe he can overpower the machine. I still don’t like this kind of thing though.

It’s become much more than a mere shounen battle fantasy now. I like it this way with the new sinister and evil subplot, gives the story a bit more depth in my opinion.

Also where’re Klein, Egil and gang? I expect to see them soon, gonna look funny with long ears. The game’s interesting enough, again have to remind everyone I don’t like the look of it, but the fighting was fine although I’d like there to be more fighting rather than Kirito one shotting 2 guys and the other guy running off. Those guardians will probably provide a good fight to watch and will hopefully involve his group from SAO. He can’t possibly take them all alone, and frankly I want a bit of group effort, and good action scenes.

Last thing then, there was a mention about reaching a certain magic skill level or something at the start so he wanted to avoid death. In which case I’m assuming dying will give a penalty of skill point losage or similar. I still think that a few days suspension from the game is better but I realise that isn’t realistic for a gaming company looking to make money.