10 Second Anime - Sword Art Online II - Episode 24 [END]

Sword Art Online II - Episode 24 [END]

Yuuki succumbs to her disease. Her many online and real life friends mourn her passing. Series Finale.

Heh.

Oh, man. Bring on the feels.

So many cars on the feels train, ain't nobody got room for opening credits.

When the medical staff left the door to the clean room open, that was the sign it was all over for Yuuki.

Yuuki, you and your big fluffy sentimental heart. Naming your most powerful sword skill Mother's Rosario and giving it to Asuna just about broke my heart.

The sword skill having 11 strikes is significant because each of the 5 decades of the rosary represents 1 Our Father prayer said on the big bead, then 10 Hail Mary prayers ending with the Gloria. 11 beads, 11 prayers, 11 strikes. Seeing her mother's form overlap with Asuna as she died cemented all those connections. Yuuki, rest in peace.

Zekken was still the strongest swordsman in ALO, but only in timed duels!

Blacky still plays like a hardcore character, being tough enough to take Zekken's hardest strike, but Zekken has higher dps. In a battle to the death, would Kirito have won? Who knows, since Yuuki and Kirito were playing against the clock too, so their tactics differed. That fight card is hilarious.

This set of stories may be over, but as the lines between online life and real life blur, new issues and new adventures await our heroes of SAO.

Hmm.

Yuuki's story brought out the feelings of survivor's guilt and how they intersect with terminally ill patients. Was her short life worth all the expense and time of others' work? Thankfully she arrived at her own answer that life is precious and there is no price tag on it. Those who worked so hard to keep her alive had only one request: live! And when she couldn't do that any longer in the real world, she found a way to live in the virtual world.

While the view that virtual worlds represent frivolous activity or wastes of time, with Asuna's mother taking that perspective, those who can't escape a virtual world like the SAO survivors or ones who have found a meaningful existence free from pain like the Sleeping Knights, are quickly blurring the lines between different modes of life.

Kirito's realization that the dive technology that Yuuki used was designed by the researcher keeping the crazy architect of SAO alive during the time that he was trapped in there too makes him fear that Kayaba the designer of nervegear was trying to find a way to stay trapped inside SAO without need of his body. Now that Kirito is working to make an interface for Yui to the outside world, those lines are blurring indeed.

The third story of Sword Art Online II showed that life is where you find yourself, so live. Just live.

Final Thoughts.

The three main stories of SAO II, Sinon's story, Saving ALO from Ragnorak, and Yuuki's friendship with Asuna, explored different facets of how real life affects virtual life, and vice versa. Sinon and Kirito had to face the trauma of taking human life, and how that story brought back elements of Kirito's time in SAO was very interesting to me. It also introduced a new character who continued traveling in Kirito's circle.

The second story, while short, was a fun reminder that these kids are playing a game for fun, not that they're trapped in there. However, it did raise the interesting points of protecting established virtual property against random world breaking. People can become just as attached to items they only see through an electronic interface as real life items, or people for that matter. It also made the audience aware that the underlying software architecture may be more complicated than even the developers and moderators are aware. Plus, Klein fell in love with a giant dude...

The third story, about real friendship, also touched on how the idea of family and home are where you find them, whether online or in real life. As our own world is still developing social media, the idea that online friends, families, or homes are supposed to be different than real life friends and family is slowly receding. It is not weird anymore to have most of your social media "friends" be your real life friends. Or even friends you first make virtually to become people you spend time with outside of your computer screen or smartphone app. There are still issues over intimacy and privacy as we try to figure out what a "long distance relationship" even means these days with easily accessible video chats, but the human touch is still a huge dimension in our connections and interactions. The lines may be blurring in SAO, but the lines are still there.

As for the anime itself, if you were a big fan of Sword Art Online, this latest season wouldn't change your opinion. The characters are still well written, Kirito is still an overpowered champion, and all the girls still fall in love with him. Funny, serious, and full of adventure is what we expect from SAO, and we got all those. Well done. And they gave me the man tears again. That's a good show.