Ocean Turtle


Synopsis

Back in the real world after the attack, Kirito’s in a severe condition due to the poison and his brain sustained lasting damage with the possibility that he may never wake up.

But issues arise as both Asuna and Suguha attempt to visit Kirito at hospital as he’s not being allowed visitors. They dig up as much information as they can and find that Kirito isn’t actually at hospital. Looking further with the help of Yui and Kirito’s heart rate tracker that Asuna has, they find that Kirito was transported to a harbour and the signals to the heart rate tracker disappeared from there. Yui further deduces that Kirito was likely carried away from the harbour by helicopter.

They remember that Kirito was involved in a project that is vaguely related to Akihiko Kayaba and in turn a woman named Rinko Kojiro.

Asuna makes contact with Rinko and agrees to pretend to be her assistant to visit the Ocean Turtle. There, they track down Kikuoka who hasn’t been seen for months and Asuna demands to know where Kirito is.

Thoughts

I was wondering when we’d be back into the real world for more information as we’ve had nothing of that in the game itself. But unfortunately this episode turns out only to be a wild goose chase, for the most part at least, until one lead got them to the Ocean Turtle and the destination that they needed.

I did like the google glass equivalent thing being used this episode as they searched for Kirito so they can ‘keep in contact’ with Yui. I believe they were from the Ordinal Scale movie so it’s good to know that it wasn’t a one off thing as the story was canon. Maybe we’ll see more of it another time after Kirito gets out of his ‘coma’ and they can explore augmented reality again.

I did find the backstory of Kayaba and Rinko very interesting though, no doubt she’ll be a key character, at least in the real world aspect, as the story progresses. The flashbacks give a little more insight into Kayaba and his intentions for playing his own game of Sword Art Online. Though if I’m perfectly honest, that was over 5 years ago when I watched the anime for the first time and understandably I’ve forgotten most of what happened. I had to look up all the various references and links that connected the flashbacks to the story. In any case though, that does mean I wasn’t overly fussed about the backstory.

Now that Asuna has found her way in and confronted Kikuoka, and a huge well done for getting there, I’m assuming Kikuoka can’t just shoo her away. So after all the wild goose chasing and Rinko flashbacks, I expect to finally understand what’s going on with the Underworld, Kirito’s injury and his involvement, after 6 episodes in.