Accel World - Episode 5

K-Kawaii~

I hope I'm wrong, but Accel World is slowly starting to become the Guilty Crown of this season, which is not a good thing coming from me. The massive number of cliches and tropes thrown into this episode, along with the ridiculously rushed/fast-paced progression of the plot wasn't too appealing. I felt the battle between Haruyuki and Taku should have been split into two episodes, with the cutoff point being when Silver Crow gets his wings. I believe that would have allotted extra time for more dialogue which I feel is essential in developing strong characters that the audience can understand and empathize with.

Regarding the battle itself, it felt extremely unrealistic, especially when it came to the HP bars of the two competitors. Assuming my eyes aren't fooling me, getting your arm cut off is apparently the same as getting punched and picked a few times. Also, two separate specials - Splash Stinger and Spiral Gravity Driver - seemed to have done the equal amounts of damage, despite one having been more powerful and direct compared to the other. Lastly, I'm assuming the duel ended in a tie as the two seemed to have made up. However, I find it highly unlikely that their HP would be identical (so that it'd be a tie) given that they both used high-damaging specials to weaken each other (i.e. if they fought each other punch for punch, taking off the same amount of HP each time, it'd be easier to believe that they would have the identical health bars). Because of all this, I have come to the conclusion that I should stop taking the "game" part of the show seriously if I want to be able to enjoy it.

Lastly, that cliffhanger at the end... Why!? It's just her name, so was it really necessary to end the episode there? I'm willing to bet it won't be anything special; probably something like Kuroyuki [insert first name here] or the other way around, since Kuroyukihime said it's similar to her nickname. However, seeing her moe expressions leading up to the cliffhanger was enough to make me forgiving of this annoyance. And now that she has more or less declared war, it'll be interesting to see how that turns out. I just hope that the next episode will feel as rushed as this one and focus more on dialogue.