Swordsman’s Pride

Synopsis

As Kirito promised to show Liena his abilities, he doesn’t back down and his duel with Volo begins. With the power of his family lineage behind Volo strikes down once. Kirito matches with a four hit combo and stops Volo’s strike with the third hit using the power of the Gigas Cidar. With the fourth strike he swings but is short. Unfortunately the fight is then cut short by Azurica and declared a draw.

Unhappy with the outcome of the match, the antagonists Humbert and Raios mess up Kirito’s flowerbed of Zephilia, Liena’s favourite flowers. However through the power of imagery and the will of the other flowers to save their friends, a bit of the life force of every other flower is absorbed into the Zephilia and they are revived.

Liena defeats Volo in the graduation exam and exits the school as the top rank in her year and Kirito and Eugeo move up to Elite Disciple year to have their own pages Tiese for Eugeo and Ronie for Kirito.

Thoughts

I don’t know whether it’s the season’s slowness or I’m becoming impatient, but things are really slow. Literally only three things happened this episode, Volos fight, flower comradely and graduation fight where Liena wins the top rank.

Though honestly I think my opinion of this episode went downhill because of the predicted eye-rolling moment when the imagery mechanic took full effect during the Volo fight extending Kirito’s sword (insert growing sword and Asuna jokes here). Not to end the demonstration of its power there though, the mechanic then helped out Kirito’s precious flowers. Though I guess it does solidify in the viewer’s eyes the mechanic’s full potential, reviving dead plants. Speaking of the reviving dead flower scene, I do wonder who that voice belonged to that spoke to Kirito.

I think the Kirito Volo duel could’ve had a bit more action to it like Liena’s duel scene which had a few more arm swings. I mean I did enjoy them both but then again, I expect these scenes to be good as they are SAO’s bread and butter, it’s in the name after all.

I suppose coming down to it, the flower scene was what made the episode feel much slower, but I will for now accept it as a necessary part of the story telling to emphasis how strong the imagery mechanic is and how it can be utilized outside of combat. Perhaps this is the mechanic building up to something else much bigger later down the line, but we’ll see. I’m more interested what bigger devilish acts the antagonists will get up to. Killing someone’s flowerbed is not cool, but it’s so minor that it makes me think that their mental capacity is that of a child playing a prank. I can imagine them, giggling away as they pull some flower petals apart…