Ice Sniper

Key Events

We start the episode with Sinon defeating a boss and picking up a new gun, the Ultima Ratio Hecate II.

In a wasteland in GGO, a pking squad has gathered waiting for a monster hunting squad to appear. With the pking group is Sinon, we’re told she’s a student.

The monster hunting group appears with 7 people and only 1 can be seen holding a physical gun, 5 have energy weapons and 1 has a cape so nothing is shown. As they approach, Sinon’s group moves out with Sinon staying behind as the sniper. At roughly 1.5km away, Sinon opens fire on the person with the physical gun and kills him in one shot.

The rest of the group attacks, however the caped person reveals a minigun and mows down several of Sinon’s team. His name is Behemoth, a hired bodyguard.

Sinon moves out of hiding and rushes to her group. She issues out commands for the others to distract Behemoth to kill him. But she misses the first shot. Her second shot comes from the air as she jumps off a building and lands another headshot for the kill.

Back in ALO, whilst Silica, Leafa and Liz are killing some monsters, Kirito seems to have decided on something

Thoughts

That was a quick move from relaxation to action. Thought it was a bit too quick, but I am rather happy that we got to see the new female lead in action, rather than any relaxed moments of her walking around with a big gun. This is a much better introduction for her and her personality. Especially that voice, who I recognised as Canaan’s voice. Weirdly enough, she also reminds me of Canaan in personality a little, which would imply an interesting background. One that I hope and am also certain that the anime will delve into at some point.

I find it ironic that the OP showed a bit of ALO stuff and also Asuna. I know that Asuna barely, if at all, appears, which I’ve repeated. But I assume that ALO won’t show up in GGO, I don’t know the storyline, so I can’t say for certain. I wouldn’t mind if ALO was somehow involved with GGO. I think that’d make a very interesting crossover. But I don’t think it happens in the novel, but perhaps they’ll change it up a little for the anime. I won’t know the difference, but I do know that not many wants that to happen.

Just an odd point, as I’m probably the complete opposite of a gun enthusiast, why is a minigun called mini? That thing certainly is anything but mini.

There was some nice atmosphere building around the game especially with the good choice in location and terrain to showcase the first battle. Does great to set a serious tone for the story.

With a shooting type game, as I never play them, I wonder how the health works here. With fantasy it’s this attack does this amount of damage can be augmented or whatever etc but with guns I’m assuming it’s much more realistic. As in, a headshot with whatever gun, however weak, should surely take someone’s health to zero right? Meaning that the game is much more skill based. Of course I’m expecting better guns to shoot faster, hold more ammo, longer range, faster reload time etc. I do like the realism of it though, with Sinon actually losing a leg for example, which I assume will regenerate when she next logs in.

I somehow expected that Sinon’s group was forcing her to be with them. But I’m glad that doesn’t seem to be the case and they’re not bad people. They’re just random pkers. I don’t even know why I expected it to kick off the anime down that dark alleyway. Probably got used to Suguo’s harassment of Asuna, that went a bit far down ‘that’ route for my liking. Sinon here looks to have a good group of people with her, and she’s also got a similar sense of viewing the game seriously like Kirito. I can see why the two of them will get along, and makes me more interested in this, what seems to be, normal girl’s life.

Another thing I was wondering about was if Kirito would still be called that when creating his character in GGO. His name might be recognised, though that said, I suppose it could still be anyone copying the name Kirito, everything’s open online.