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Throughout my life, for both work and pleasure, I’ve played many MMORPGs. I’ve also watched many anime set inside MMOs, and it always felt like something was missing. However, I was never able to quite put my finger on why—not until this episode, anyway.
In anime about MMOs, everyone takes the game too seriously, which makes sense as you need there to be stakes and tension to keep the story interesting. However, the fact of the matter is that most people play MMOs (well, all games, actually) to have fun. For some, this means PVP. For others, MMOs are a dress-up simulator. Still, others just want to do absolutely everything the game has to offer. Many MMO anime have these different kinds of characters, however, when the big moment comes, they all get super serious and band together, either in the name of good or evil.
In a real game, this would never happen so cleanly. There’s always some ass who cares about their own momentary satisfaction above all else or, in this case, a team of them: ZEMAL. They want to fire their big machine guns and that’s it. Winning or losing doesn’t matter to them. The tournament is just an excuse do to what they would do anyway.
So even though teaming up to make it to the cruise ship before the flooding gets them is the right call for winning, they use the nearest team’s dislike of machine guns as a reason to kill them. They then turn their guns on each other because, why not? This is the kind of player I needed to see in an anime like this. Not only does it add some levity to what’s going on but also makes the setting feel that much more like a real MMO.
As for the rest of the episode, on the surface, it’s just a lot of action. The betrayer team attempts to hold off the other teams while the other teams make a break for the ship. Numerous gun battles ensue. However, digging a little deeper, you start to realize what is actually going on: Pitohui is getting the betrayer team members killed off one by one and whittling down the other teams in the process. Taking the reigns as a team leader by sheer force of will alone, she engineers a situation where most have to fight their own teams (leaving them too distracted to see what she’s really doing) while also ensuring that her own former team survives—i.e., she makes it so Llenn, Fuka, and M are up against a person who can’t really hit them at their current range and who they can’t take out due to his armor.
It’s possible she even engineered the clash between Llenn’s team and SHINC, giving Llenn the battle she wanted. Of course, not even Pitohui would have been able to predict that Fuka would accidentally kill almost the entire Rhythmic Gymnastics team in one shot.
All in all, this is an above-average action-focused episode. It looks good, has a lot of cool moments, and even has a deeper layer for anyone paying close attention. No complaints from me!
Rating:
Random Thoughts:
• Come on, Llenn! You have freaking super speed. Just knife the woman already and be done with it.
• Pitohui instantly deducing that her new team member had a photon sword for the sole purpose of killing her the same way she killed him was fantastic.
• This episode made me more and more sure that Pitohui is not the traitor—and that the actual traitor is probably Llenn.
• If T-S really does win again simply because they sat on a building in the corner of the map the whole time, I’ll be upset. That said, I suspect that Pitohui is aiming the ship in their direction not to rescue them but so that she can kill them all herself.
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.
