10 Second Anime - Sword Art Online - Alicization - Episode 1

Kirito helps test a new kind of Full Dive System. Meanwhile, Asuna and Kirito find they can't entirely escape their past from the original SAO incident. Season Premiere.

Episode 1 - "Underworld"

Hmm.

You know that feeling when you first start playing an RPG and you get dumped into the tutorial which doubles as the main story's prologue? Yeah, that's why we got a double episode for the premiere of Sword Art Online.

It became clear pretty quickly that Kirito had gotten himself involved in another game. What wasn't clear was whether his companions were NPC's or other players. The main aim of this prologue was to make everyone care for the little girl Alice. Uh, mission accomplished. Maybe it made people care too much because that blonde kid started sporting an error message in one eye. That was effective.

The prologue did its job. We've got a sense of hanging dread with whatever Kirito woke up from and whoever is making this new online experience has either bugs or unintended consequences to worry about. Which means that this is the kind of story we should all be expecting from a new season of SAO.

Heh.

You know, I wrote a lot of notes during this prologue, but I also wrote several times "boring!" so let's just mention how cute Alice was and that she was dressed like Alice in Wonderland, so Through the Looking Glass is going to be thing for this new game or whatever it is. Let's just appreciate how the producers have taken animation techniques from the movie and applied them here.

Also, the SEED of the original SAO may be in here because there's a huge tree in the middle of the playable area.

System Alert Code 871. It's important! Somehow.

Ah. Here we go! Sinon's Ass is back Online!

These PK guys are acting like one of those commando squads from the GGO spinoff who only use the game for training. A teleporting imp and a couple of kids with lightsabers, er, photon swords, is not something you would see in real life.

Sinon is only 2nd place in the last BoB? She wants to win the next one.

Hey, they mentioned the other Death Gun guy is still on the loose. It's called foreshadowing!

Both Shino and Asuna think Kirito is getting too thin. Too much time in that new full dive system. I'm concerned how he woke up alone, but there was another machine covered up next to him.

Wha. Creepy. Asuna keeping tabs on Kirito with his implant. That's going to be important later on too.

This new system uses a lot of terms from Alice in Wonderland. It also utilizes the support structure of the brain, supposedly where the soul resides, to implant sound and visuals, instead of the neurons like the original Nerve Gear did.

This Soul Translator or STL makes you forget stuff, like a dream. The soul has more information than just the senses, though, so I'm sure we'll see some kind of emotional memory come into play.

Also like a dream is how real time passes differently in-system. They call it Fluctlight Acceleration or FLA. The photons running around the cerebral support microtubules are what this Rath company calls Fluctlight. I'm basically writing all these terms down so I can remember them when the next episodes start throwing them around like they're normal words. Also, I wish was drinking that Belgian dark beer in Kirito's goblet during this discussion.

Shino is going to get Kirito and Asuna to help her in the next Bullet of Bullets to take down that veteran Subtilizer.

Aw. Asuna wants to follow Kirito to America so he can work for cutting edge Full Dive systems. He's already down on this Rath company, because the system looks like it's made to research the human soul instead of create a cyberworld for tons of people to connect safely.

And that's a nice shadow in the headlights to justify Kirito looking around so much. They were being stalked!

How convenient that they just talked about this Death Gun guy.

Also convenient is how Kirito pointed to where his implant is and that's just where this spittle spraying loser stabbed him with his hypospray or jet injector.

Kirito may not have a sword, but he does have an umbrella with a switch blade in it!

That's an alright cliffhanger, but we know they're not going to kill off Kirito in the 2nd week.

This OP credit sequence has the blonde kid Eugeo and Alice in it, so maybe they weren't NPC's. Maybe.