The Meaning of Strength

Key Events

Kirito theorises that there are 2 Death Guns, one in game and one in real life so that when the in game one shoots someone he will communicate with the other to kill the defenseless player in real life after obtaining their address from the system and breaking in. Since Death Gun’s been aiming for Sinon, it means that the preparations in real life is complete to kill Sinon once the shot lands in game, i.e. Death Gun’s accomplice is in Sinon’s room waiting. But he can’t do it until Death Gun gets the shot in and logging out would be dangerous as she would see his face and risking him panicking.

Back in ALO, Asuna figures out everything from interrogating Kikouka Seijirou and finds where Kirito’s actual body is and heads there.

Kirito has formed a plan with himself as the decoy to lure out Death Gun and for Sinon to snipe him. And an interesting addition is that now since there aren’t that many players around the live cameras have floated its way to Kirito and Sinon recording their time together. Sinon doesn’t mind as if people get the ‘wrong’ idea, may mean less people will ‘go after’ her.

It’s only 2 minutes until the next satellite scan, so Kirito heads out alone for the first part of the plan to lure Death Gun.

Thoughts

That was a disappointingly lacklustre episode, though I guess it did get some things out of the way. But the only thing out of that I’ll look forward to is seeing how Asuna will react to Kirito and Sinon. That’ll be one hell of a pain train coming his way. Though perhaps she’s already left the room and the other girls decide to make a pact not to tell her, either that or they’ll be looking to do some pain inflicting themselves…

The latter half of the episode didn’t help my interest either considering it was repeating everything we already know.

At least the first half of the episode provided us with some useful information about how Death Gun could be/is killing people. With everything as theorized, does that mean Kirito won’t die as he hasn’t given his details? Unless there’s a huge plot twist and his rehab nurse is part of Laughing Coffin waiting to inject the drug when he gets shot. But seeing as he’s the main character he won’t get shot so we probably won’t even see the nurse even if she was part of LC. Still though, that’d be cool and more interesting.

But anyways, moving on, with the theory Kirito has, it still brings up a lot of things, such as that means he can’t just kill anyone in the game, he has specific targets that are ‘killable’. Which means that if he encounters a fight with someone who’s not a target then he’ll have to run or snipe them. But I suppose with that camouflage cape of his he can pick his fights. And I also suppose that he’ll have researched everyone so he picked people in the vicinity of an area he has reach over, i.e. I’m assuming he’s not going to kill people in Hokkaido and also someone in Kyushu as he’s not gonna be able to get someone to rush there and back that quickly. Unless of course he has more accomplices in which case doing so would be a good idea as anyone tracking the killings would find it harder to notice a pattern of death locations. Actually reminds me of Death Note where L figured out the region of killings instantly and broadcasted that news reading only in the area he suspected. Of course though, this is hardly a Death Note esque anime.

I have to say, I thought the reason not using his handgun was simply because he wants to stun his opponents so he could have some playtime with them before killing them.

Also another thing I wasn’t a fan of was where Kirito was looking at a certain point in the episode. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. I mean, I don’t mind such things, but it takes away from the seriousness of the situation and makes it feel more jokey. Maybe that was the point, but I thought a discussion about how a mass murderer is killing people would be more serious.

Also, with the whole personal information thing, I think this is definitely an interesting debate that is a very real problem in our modern day lives. How much information is too much to give away? I’m the type that hates giving away information, for example you won’t find me on something like Facebook which asks for a lot of information. I don’t mind giving vague details, but I certainly wouldn’t give specifics. However, there’re probably many ways to find out about someone even if they don’t give all their information if you know where to look and have the necessary contacts. Especially after the Edward Snowden event, I think we all feel a little less safe with our personal information.

Well, I did two short rants here, so I’d say it’s probably enough to give it a rest. So thanks for reading and leave me your comments if you have any! I’ve never said this before, but I’d love to hear what you think, I love a good discussion.