Sword Art Online - Alicization - War of Underworld - Episode 16 - 10 Second Anime

Kirito’s allies face mounting losses inside and outside Underworld, but glimmers of hope appear too.

Episode 16 – “Code 871”

Eh?!

Are you kidding me? SAO’s Code 871 is just a pun on Yanai’s name? 8 (ya) 7 (na) 1 (ichi)! That crazy traitor! This is taking 2D waifu for laifu too far. Anyone who designed tentacle torture for ALO was bound to obsess over a beautiful AI. It’s almost hilarious. Yanai hid the Alicization candidates, the whole point of the project, for the digital nookie.

Hmm.

Sometimes SAO dials things to eleven way too quickly. Heroic action stories are supposed to have dark times before the good guys start their counterattack to save the day, but SAO has always had a cruel streak for its characters. Still, it’s overwhelming to have every front of the War for Underworld suffer defeat and then reveal all the villains’ identities have ties to the good guys through the other World Seed games. SAO takes the phrase “darkest before the dawn” way too seriously.

Well, at least the glimmers of hope are interesting and inspiring. The first glimmer was how Kirito secretly slipped a necklace onto Sinon. Maybe that guy won’t even need to have Higa assemble an external fluctlight backup. The second wasn’t interesting, but Leafa entering the fray with the orcs gave me a feeling of relief. Let that busty fairy elf go ham on those red grunts! The third glimmer was in the epilogue, and that was truly a “hmmmmm” moment. Some secret SAO server spun up. To what purpose? Did Kayaba keep a backup of Kirito in there too? The resurrection of Kirito Jesus is going to be satisfying.

Heh.

Yanai infiltrated Rath from the SAO game corporation. Gross perv made the tentacle grape of Asuna. He’s been feeding data to the American NSA too, which is how Miller’s group came to Ocean Turtle. Oh, terrible fake cliffhanger. Higa isn’t going to die here from Yanai’s gun.

Okay. Sinon recognized Miller as Subtilizer, but why should he recognize Sinon’s Underworld character as the GGO sniper? Bah, it’s all about connections to each other in the real world as the bad guys take control of the narrative inside the virtual world. Misty tentacle grape! Sinon still has trauma from her sexual assault. Kirito will save her. Somehow. Yup. When did he put his necklace on her? Time for a GGO BoB rematch.

Uh, talk-no-jutsu isn’t going to work with Vassago’s Voice still influencing the horde of beta players, no matter how much respect that Korean and Chinese player have. Things are looking bad all over. Is this Iskahn and Sheyta’s last stand? That’s a nice entrance. Go, Leafa!

They sure made that walking robot tough. Eh? Is this the first time anyone saw a Code 871 alert? Ah. This is Yanai’s sabotage of the Alicization project. Oh, Kikuoka cares more about an ALICE fluctlight which breaks through its limits through logic instead of emotion, but they should have seen a lot more of this kind if not for the Senators and Integrity Knights rounding them up. Without the Senate and the Administrator, perhaps it’s the first time a popup alert stayed on the screen that long. Har! And Eh?! Rinko and Kikuoka solved 871 as a pun on Yanai’s name! Ehhhhhh!?

It’s just a flesh wound, Higa. You’re going to be okay. Oh, Yanai had it bad. He fell in love with “Admi-chan.” Quinella did have outside help. And now Kirito can die in a fire because he killed her! I think that’s still an open question, though. Yanai thinks her Lightcube is gone. There’s still room for some twists here.

Nuts. Asuna’s group needs to surrender, or all their ALO friends are going to lose their characters, plus the Underworld fluctlights. PoH has a nice reunion with Asuna. We get to hear how terrible a person he is. He maneuvered the massacre of Laughing Coffin while he watched, just so anyone who never PK’ed before had a taste of homicide, justified as it was. I think Vassago made a mistake. Standing right in front of Kirito is going to bring him to a bad end.


Epilogue teaser. Something with a big SAO sign on it just turned on!

Next time, will Kirito go through an internal journey of purgatory levels for his soul’s redemption? It feels like it’s time for a flashback episode after all the revelations from the villains PoH and Yanai.