Underworld

Synopsis

July 18, year 372 in the time of the realm of humanity: a young Kirito is hanging out with his friend Eugeo trying to cut down a tree known as the Gigas Cedar. Another friend, Alice also joins them.

As the three eat lunch, Kirito thinks of obtaining ice from some mountains so that their meat lunch can be kept for longer. 3 days later they head for the mountains to extract ice as previously discussed.

They reach deep into the mountain and find a cave of ice but come across the bones of the white dragon. From the bones Kirito fishes out the Blue Rose Sword but can’t carry it. They pack their bags with ice and leave. But unfortunately they get lost and venture to a forbidden zone, the dark territory. A battle rages between a white and dark knight and Alice somehow is transfixed and crosses the boundary that encircles the Human Empire by accident, a taboo that must never be broken. They immediately head back.

The next day, the village is visited by Deusolbert Synthesis Seven, the white knight they saw before. He apprehends Alice for breaking the taboo of crossing the boundary. Neither Kirito nor Eugeo can save her. After all that Kirito wakes up in a medical facility, tears in his eyes.

June 27 2026, Kirito’s GGO squad faces off against another, but the enemy retreats after treating Kirito’s squad as an ‘irregular’. Sinon explains that the group has a 100% win rate against any other squad, but they only kill and don’t loot items.

Sinon then meets with Kirito and Asuna IRL afterwards. She talks about Subtilizer 4, who won BoB 4 and wants Kirito and Asuna’s help in BoB 5.

Kirito then talks about his new part time job, testing a new full dive system but every time he ‘wakes up’ he forgets what happened during the dive.

The technology is the Soul Translator, where a machine is able to read Fluctlights, supposedly the ‘soul’ and, like a dream, extend the time out much longer in that world compared to the real world. The codename of that world is the Underworld.

After parting with Sinon, Kirito reveals that he is planning to go to America where the next stage of the full dive technology is taking place and wants Asuna to come along with him. He doesn’t want anything more to do with the current soul translator technology as he believes that to be something Heathcliff was exploring.

But Kirito and Asuna are ambushed by laughing coffin’s last surviving member Johnny Black IRL and Kirito is caught by Johnny’s poison and collapses on the ground.

Thoughts

There’re a lot of new terms and a new world. From what I hear from the novel readers this very much covers off the prologue of the story. I’m expecting that means the real story begins next episode because I have no idea what’s going on. Is this Soul Translator something about going into someone’s unconscious and extending the time to a similar point like that they’re dreaming? Some sort of hyperbolic time chamber shenanigans!? I do understand that part as I’ve had this before where I’ve only slept for 10 minutes but I’ll be in my dream which seem to have lasted for hours. Is that the ‘concept’ they’re exploring here? Either way, I feel like I’m talking nonsense because I don’t even have my own thoughts straight… maybe because I only just got back to blogging too.

On a side note, I’ve always had this fantasy that I could someday go to sleep and go into a long dream where I end up in another world and do the whole cliché battle evil and win type of scenario. I can then pick up some skills along the way that I would remember when I wake up, kinda like Forbidden Kingdom if you watched or remember that. If that’s what this is.

The other interest I have is that fact that they’ve finally changed the ‘layout’ of Kirito’s entourage in the ‘dream world’. Instead of being all female there’s another guy! With Alice in, it also completes the two guys and a girl trope too. This is assuming that Alice and Eugeo will be returning and that this season’s focus is this dream world.

Regardless of what I think, something weird is going on in Kirito’s subconscious when he entered that place, wherever it is. Nothing yet has been explained but I did hear that the anime cut the explanation of what’s happening by a bit, so perhaps it was clearer in the books?

Animation quality is pretty good, the theme played at the end which I am aware is the opening is decent with LiSA at the mic and you’ll have seen my SOTW too.

On an unrelated note, after knowing what half the weapons used in the GGO part of the episode are, I think I’ve definitely been playing too much Fortnite. To be fair, I do blame GGO for getting me into Fortnite in the first place! Makes me wonder why we can’t have swords in Fortnite, I’d do so much better with that instead, maybe even get a win hahaha…

Speaking of GGO though, seeing how much the focus of the season will be on the dream world, I wonder if the people they fought in GGO will make a return somewhere down the line? I don’t ever believe a story would emphasis any particular group without going back to them at some point.

One episode in and the anime is looking pretty good. A lot of mysteries and questions to be answered after leaving us at such a cliffhanger. I’m excited to see how the story plays out, more importantly what the story is about. In my opinion, SAO left me on such a high note with Mother’s Rosario that I can’t help but be excited for this new season, especially after the movie as well which I‘ve mentioned many times that I enjoyed. So yeah, I’m hopeful that I’ll have a better idea of what’s going on next episode!

Final thing, I have returned! Yes I realise I’m very late, but that’s because work never stops. But I am committed to blogging SAO this season and will catch up.