10 Second Anime - Sword Art Online II - Episode 22

Sword Art Online II - Episode 22



Asuna finds Yuuki in real life and discovers her circumstances are very sad indeed.

Heh.

I thought Yuuki's circumstances were going to be medical, but I guess my imagination was too small to conceive all the sadness piled onto this little girl. Her whole family contracting drug-resistant HIV through a transfusion, Yuuki steadily loses them all to AIDS. She's now confined to a clean room using medical full dive gear to alleviate the pain.

In fact, all the Sleeping Knights are terminal care patients using this medical full dive gear. But, as Yuuki's doctor explains to Asuna, the gear is only palliative. It doesn't cure their terminal conditions, so they chose one big thing to do in ALO before the next two of their group finally succumbed. That is sad. And it's no wonder the kids are reluctant to make new friends if they're only going to say goodbye permanently in a few months.

Yui getting eyes and ears through Kirito's software is the plot device to let Yuuki go to school with other kids again.

Nice use of the rising sun to light Asuna's face as she's about to give Yuuki a small ray of hope. Cliché, but still well done.

If Kirito is a good coder, that Yui app for Mama's phone shouldn't be too far away now.

This story's almost over and we still don't know what "Mother's Rosario" means. We should get on that pretty soon.

Hmm.

I was surprised that Yuuki's condition turned out to be AIDS, mainly because we don't hear much about it in the West anymore. In Africa, it's still a huge epidemic, mainly hampered by difficult access to the more developed cities where scheduled drug therapies could be supported. I wonder if this is a sign of how long ago the light novels were written, which the anime is adapted from. I have a former work colleague who lost his parents in the late 80's because one of them came in contact with HIV-infected blood. Blood bank policies changed since then, so it seems a little outside the odds if this family contracted HIV through a transfusion in the 21st century.

Asuna wants to provide Yuuki a sense of escaping the full-dive environment, at least for a short while before Yuuki dies, and her boyfriend will surely help her. Trying to normalize the new, even in the face of impending doom, is also a way "to fight." Asuna, fight-o!