The lakes. The trees. The peaceful quiet of getting away from it all. And the ghosts. Ghosts?
What They Say:
“The Girl of the Morning Dew”
The newly married couple is enjoying their time away from the front lines. But a new guest will take them all the way back to the beginning.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, Asuna and Kirito are married and have requested a leave from the guild to have a honeymoon. They set up house in a secluded woodland on Floor 22. Kirito still has some worries, wondering if their relationship is real and will survive a transition to the real world. Asuna angrily replies that her feelings are real and in the real world, she will be sure to find him. As they sleep in separate beds, it appears that the relationship is still rather platonic, at least on Kirito’s part.
As they explore the forest, Kirito talks about a rumor he heard in the nearby village: there are ghosts in the forest, the ghosts of the monsters that were hunted there. Cue the appearance of a ghostly young girl. Asuna becomes jelly (and so, bipolar Asuna continues, wildly yo-yoing between brave and cowering; great characterization there, shows a real talent…for poor writing), but Kirito investigates. The girl turns out to be real enough, but there is something very strange going on. She is very young, far younger than any normal player. Further, she has no cursor above her, thus, there is something off.
They take the girl back and wait for her to wake up, as she has fallen into a deep sleep. The next morning, the girl is awake. Her name is Yui, but she seems to be having memory problems. She seems very bewildered, but feels better when she takes Kirito and Asuna for her parents. The girl needs someone to take care of her, however, and two front-line warriors are not exactly the best parents. So, the two decide to visit the beginning town to search for information about her.
There, they find a disturbing sight. Though around 30% of the remaining 6000 players live in the Town of Beginnings, the place has been taken over by the Aincrad Liberation Army, that sorry outfit we saw before. Here, they are little more than thugs who go around extorting payment from the civilians. A group of them is picking on a woman who provides day care for young children, trying to take away the children’s gear, claiming that it is “taxes.” It is lucky for them the Kirito and Asuna come by, with Asuna saving the children with just a few little moves that quickly intimidate the Army. So, Asuna should be called Asuna the Boomerang at this point, as her character continues to whiplash between weak and overpowering.
There is something definitely strange about Yui. She has something of an panic attack, where she talks about everyone’s hearts and then there is an aerial disturbance. The very fabric of the world appears to react to her emotional state. This is perplexing, though on thing becomes abundantly clear: Yui is not your normal entity within the world of Sword Art Online the game.
As we come to the end of the season, it appears that the writers want to spring another mystery upon us, though this one might be connected to the very fabric of the virtual world the characters live in. It’s better than the, quite frankly, boring game of house that Kirito and Asuna were playing at the beginning of this episode. It would seem that was just a feint before they dumped this new source of questions upon us. I hope that this pans out into something interesting, otherwise this show is going to be getting a downgrade in my ranking of it.
In Summary:
Kirito and Asuna enjoy the married life (in a very innocent and childish way), but their honeymoon is interrupted when they come across a mysterious girl named Yui. There is something not quite right about Yui and the mystery only deepens as they try to discover who she is. Perhaps we will learn something more about the fundamental nature of the world as the origins of this mysterious girl are revealed.
Grade: B-
Streamed by: Crunchyroll Review Equipment: Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
