10 Second Anime - Sword Art Online - Alicization - War of Underworld - Episode 6

War begins between the Dark Territory forces and the Human Guardian army as the Eastern Gate falls at the start of the Final Load Test.

Episode 6 - "Battle of the Knights"

Hmm.

The first thing I noticed about the beginning of the Final Load Test is how much SAO wants us to care about the Integrity Knight Renly Synthesis Twenty-Seven. I can't tell if it's a boy or a girl, but we'll probably know by next episode. What's worse, it looks like those poison dagger girls Linel and Fizel want to harass the character. I find nervous types in anime annoying and those two little girls were a pain to watch the first time around, so this story line is all kinds of irritating for me. The only thing that might be interesting in it is how the Integrity Knights important memories were managed by the pontifex, because they needed the emotional attachment to one as the anchor of their identity and agency for justice. The pontifex let them have that one, without letting them have any context of their original personalities. We see Deusolbert reference this in the episode too.

So, perhaps Renly was on the verge of getting wiped or reset, but without the pontifex, the last six months have turned this Integrity Knight into a psychological mess. Dealing with this character development as a tool for world building in the midst of the story's endgame is not a good choice, because it feels like the author is stalling for time to finish the overall outline, or trying to dump unused atmosphere notes into it. I think we got the gist during Eugeo's scenes with Quinella.

On the plus side, we got to see what has been going on with the artificial fluctlight evolution without human intervention. It was very interesting to see how the Giant had a system code alert in his right eye, but without the bug reporting system happening. The glitching was familiar, but then the Giant's berserker mode linked his lightcube with Fanatio's as either a way of purging an error on its own or an adapted power-up for survival mode. The monsters of the Dark Territory were never meant by Rath to develop into an AI application, so we might be seeing pure alien AI evolution within the fluctlight environment.

Since it's become explicit that Alice's lightcube (but why not Eugeo's?) is the prize for the cours of this edition of SAO, I'm glad to see how prominent the lightcubes of the individual fluctlights are being made as part of the story. That connection the Giant Chief Sigurosig made with Fanatio was a jaw-dropping moment because it forcefully showed how these characters aren't real people, how much the pontifex had made top layer rules important for the human side, and how the AI without any human influence could develop their domination skills on their own. I totally want to see Kirito Jesus come out of his coma after seeing all this and just wrecking lightcubes underneath the code of the Underworld environment. Unfortunately for me, it's going to be a while before that happens, since we have to care, oh so much, for these other characters we've never met before.

Heh.

Recycled images from last episode, but I'll make two images of DIL. The other important chiefs are the goblins and giants who are in the first wave.

I suppose we have to watch out for this scaredy-cat Renly. I'm hoping his/her problems are based on not getting memory-wiped in a while, and now he/she can't. All these labels for people remind of a Godzilla film.

The more I listen to Vassago's voice, the more I hate him. And not in a good way. It makes me impatient for him to get off the screen. The things he says are dumb and vulgar, and by vulgar, I mean low class. The dude came from GGO and probably SAO, and he thinks he can make money off the graphics of an immersive environment applied to movies? He should know how these things work by now.

We know Deusolbert and Fanatio's skills, so I'm more interested in these other knights and the Dark Territory monsters. Still, it will be fun to see how good they are when they aren't going up against Kirito Jesus and Eugeo the Apostle.

Very interesting how the Giant had a system code alert and started glitching, but his berserker mode linked his lightcube with Fanatio's. Glitch or purely artificial evolution on the monster side?

Those little girl assassins are being allowed to run all over the place?

A smoke bomb nullifies Eldries entire force? How about blowing it away or something? I suppose that's what the poison girls meant by Eldrie being a novice. Fun. Goblins can run on all fours like dogs.

Renly just ran away? Uh, I really don't care about her backstory, but the writers are going to try to make me.

The Knights with battle experience hold their own, but there are just too many enemies. That one regular fighter in green better not die. He's a good one.

This lightcube stuff is what I've been looking for. Pure alien evolution on the Dark Territory side with no human intervention.

Ugh. One Integrity Knight traded for the Giants Chief. Poor Dakira. She was a freckled cutie. Meh. Do people really have all this time to spend talking to each other on a melee battlefield?

They're really showing all these lightcubes in action now that grabbing one is the McGuffin for two cours.

Goblins were just waiting for Deusolbert to run out of arrows? Bad plan. He doesn't need arrows. He just barbecues the goblins holding him down. Goblin Chief melted. Two of the Council of Ten gone to one of 13 Integrity Knights. That's not a good trade-off when the armies are tens of thousands to mere thousands.

What is this big silver ball Alice is making? We knew she was up there to soak up all the valley's "materials," but I didn't realize that also meant dead bodies "generated" during the battle. Alice and her dragon want to get down there, but they have a job to do. I'm positive that big silver ball will be a target for the dark mages.

Meanwhile Renly is hiding in a supply tent and those poison scamps will probably find her next episode. The episode title about "disqualified" stigma hints at something making Renly anxious.