Sword Art Online - Episode 12

Yui ;___;

Delays, delays, and more delays. The NyanTaku curse continues to plague our release schedule. Anyways, for those who didn't know, NyanTaku's SAO will officially be switching to an EveTaku release starting Episode 13, so hopefully delays like this (e.g. 1 week) won't happen anymore.

As a whole, this arc was slightly weak in my opinion; it would've been better if it was a purely slice-of-life side story with Yui as a real player instead of an AI so that the mood of the arc wouldn't have went from heartwarming to depressing so suddenly. But instead, although more background on SAO was explained, even more questions arose. Just what is going on with the whole SAO system behind the scenes? More so for technologically-inexperienced individuals and non-gamers, Yui's explanation might have totally flown over the heads of many viewers. A few inconsistencies were also pointed out to me, with a glaring one being the scene where Kirito created "Yui's heart". Here's what NyanTaku TL Rekyu had to say:

Seeing how he got blown back, the system obviously detected him... so why wouldn't it delete the item? The item itself is an anomaly to begin with... a foreign object... but it's not deleted... why?! Oh, god. I even go hater mode for series I like!

But despite these flaws, I still really enjoyed the family moments the three shared. It's too bad that Yui was "deleted" in the end; it was quite the emotional scene even though I'm unable to relate to the pain that comes with losing one's child.

So, what's next? With the series having now reached the halfway point, looking back, the focus of the show hasn't really been about clearing the game. For the most part, we got a lot of side stories, including the recent two-episode, semi-slice-of-life arc. And while I personally don't mind these types of episodes, there is a part of me that continues to wonder whether the game will be cleared in 25 episodes, at this rate. Seeing as how a 90th Floor monster gives even Kirito trouble, I don't want to know how strong the 100th Floor's boss is, and how much training and gathering of troops will be necessary in order to take it down. That being said, there's still time for the direction of the story to change and the pace to pick up. Regardless of what might happen in the second half, I'm confident that I'll be able to continue enjoying Sword Art Online.