The Phantom Bullet arc winds down to a sensible finish, and although it wasn’t great by any means, it was vastly superior to the first season’s two arcs.
The denouement itself was relatively straightforward, with the only big reveal being that of Death Gun’s identity (or should I say identities). If you’ve been paying attention to the characters around Shino and the fact SAO’s villains have always been some character we already knew, it should come as no surprise.
The episode-long final battle was appropriately exciting and fun to watch, though animation quality and artwork (especially the backgrounds) were surprisingly under-par for A-1 Pictures standards. I was kind of disappointed that the deciding duel would come down to just another sword-fight, but Kirito’s pistol use and Sinon’s “phantom bullet” added nice little touches that made the action at least a bit more interesting. 
The way Kirito and Sinon tied the tournament with a “present grenade” was cleverly cheeky in addition to delivering well-timed comedic relief.
In the aftermath of BoB, Shinkawa’s assault scene was not enjoyable to watch, but that was also the point of it; by dredging out feelings of disgust and violation against Sinon’s madly obsessed “friend”, it clearly highlighted the morality of the situation as well as the degree of Shinkawa’s delusion of reality.
The closing scenes at the cafés (I just realized they went from one café to another…) appropriately tied the plot threads together and gave Shino the resolution she needed. Not much to criticize about here. I’m satisfied enough with the choices they’ve made to resolve the conflict and give proper closure to the characters. It could have been a lot worse, given the track record.
There has yet to be an SAO II post where I don’t harp on the slowness of the pacing, and I’m back again, to no one’s surprise.
While this episode made relatively good use of its time, episode twelve spent its first half boringly discussing battle plans while its second half and episode thirteen had those scenes with Asuna in Kirito’s hospital room, which had as much relevance to the plot as Dark Wind did.
Even the next episode’s preview title “Debriefing” does not sound promising at all. I mean, didn’t we just get one? Do they really need another entire episode to finish this arc? Please… no…
Additionally, too many minutes were wasted on repeated dialogue and flashbacks about the same story and same events we already know or should know.
For how much this show tries to spell out its script in sometimes, it certainly hasn’t kept it tight other times:
The density of contrivances per episode is still as high as ever – obvious ones include the hospital electrode, Kirito’s battlefield sixth sense; questionable mechanics such as Death Gun’s quick counter-sniping, and hospital security cards working for residential front-doors.
The worst case was definitely the way Kirito remembered Death Gun’s SAO in game name. Retrieving the identity was a major plot dependency, and at first I did not understand how Kirito could possibly do it by simply defeating him. What we got as an answer was very unsatisfactory, and irreparably compromises the premise of this arc.
Aside from that, the faults were mostly minor and didn’t hinder the story besides being “obviously too convenient”.
The school-yard bully scene nearly ended up being a disaster, and I was just about ready to face palm after Shino did her 180 character swing. The saving grace was the scene immediately following, where we saw her panting and bracing the wall beside her, before taking “one little step” forward. This was the true purpose – to show her growth in self-confidence in a reasonable manner that justified her existence in the story.
Another near-miss was when Kirito lifted his hand in (supposedly) a gesture to caress Shino. But she immediately shook her head, and ended any form of them getting closer right there. Note the subtle contrast in behavior to Sinon in game.
In fact, these were just a few examples where the writing has demonstrated more self-awareness and decency. There’s not nearly as much fan service, Kirito show-off, or stupid romance moments that would have otherwise conflicted with the goals of the narrative.
Let me guess, did the editors actually start proofreading the script?
Characters were glaring weak points of the first season but decent effort was made to rectify that in this arc.
The antagonists were far from perfect. They killed Zexceed because he insulted a type of character build? We never get a good (or rather, compelling) sense of how they got to such a degree of madness. But suppose VR did have potential to influence people to that extent (no one truly knows); their stories were reasonably believable and reflect on much broader themes about the psychological effects of virtual reality.
The same could be applied to Shino’s character growth: How it grew and how believably it grew is rather debatable. For example, how did her strength in-game translate to strength in real life?
Does the story even try to answer that question? No, it doesn’t, and I’m left feeling a rather big disconnect between her motivations, her ideals and her actions.
But at the same time, it’s forgivable to an extent. From a writing perspective, it’s infinitely easier to answer the “what?” and the “why?” than the “how?” because VR is such a highly sensitive and poorly understood subject matter. Kawahara’s not going to research psychology to speculate how it changes people, but he certainly can speculate what might happen to them and explore some of the philosophical implications.
I want to wait until my final post to have an in-depth discussion about themes, so I’ll briefly list the ones this arc has touched upon:
- VR can be a medicine, as well as a poison.
- Murder in self-defense; saving a life.
- How “real” is the virtual world?
- Why do people play MMORPGs? Is it more than just escapism?
The story barely scratches the surface of any of these themes, and their presentation lacked persuasion. But at least the writer brought them up, and the material presented is enough to leave one pondering.
So, let us begin a new chapter in SAO’s next arc while carrying forth the progress of its former.
Unlike the Aincrad and Fairy Dance arcs, the Phantom Bullet arc had much fewer glaring problems. Perhaps it was suited for a better adaptation, or Kawahara wrote better; I’m glad either way. Now if only the pacing was a bit faster, we might actually finish the next arc by the end of the season.
Voice of the North 