Sword Art Online Episode #04 Anime Review

Cute little girls with baby dragons threatened by evil, sexy older women. Yes, it’s stereotype fetish week. But the episode is actually fairly good.

What They Say:
“The Black Swordsman”

Silica is known as Dragon Tamer Silica, but after leaving her group she is caught and her pet, Pina, paid the ultimate price. Before she is killed, Kirito saves her and offers her a choice.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, it looks like the time stamps are going to play a role in my reviews, we will need to keep track of time. It’s February 23, 2024, Floor 35 and we see a party that is breaking up. A little girl, Silica, is having an argument with an adult woman and it escalates into a party-splitting spat. Off goes the little girl (this is probably not a good thing to do in a place called “The Lost Forest.” Can we get anything more telegraphed?). Silica is not a powerless character (level 44), but she soon finds herself alone (with only a flying pet thing that doesn’t seem to fight) and faced with powerful monsters. She’s also lost a lot of hit points. About to die, her pet, Pina, sacrifices itself to save her. As the monsters are about to deliver the death blow, none other than Kirito appears.

Silica is still distraught over her pet’s death, but Kirito reveals to her a way to revive Pina: you have to go to a garden on Floor 47 where a flower can revive tamed beasts, but only within three days of death. Kirito offers to help her, because she resembles his little sister, so he says. As they go into town, they come across Silica’s old party, and it feels like the adult woman is out to do harm. We get a little RPG lore at dinner as Kirito tells Silica about player killers (who can be seen by the red symbol above their heads) and criminals. That info drop at this time can’t be just a coincidence. I was expecting something along these lines to happen at some point, and I guess that point is this episode.

They go and get the flower, but on the way back, they run into Rosalia, the woman with evil intent (whoever was surprised at this event, please get a clue). And Rosalia may not be her real name, as she is also known as Titan’s Hand, the leader of the Orange Guild. We learned earlier that players who commit crimes have an orange symbol above their heads, so it’s pretty obvious what she is and what she does. And she has friends.

This doesn’t impress Kirito, however. And when Silica mentions his name, the other members of the Orange Guild start to get a little worried. Kirito is actually famous as the solo swordsman who is on the front lines and doesn’t even bother with a shield. Rosalia tells them it’s unlikely anyone from the front line (which must be somewhere above 50, where Kirito has his home) would be down on 47 now. They attack Kirito and hit him with everything they have, but as we look at his health meter, it hardly budges. In fact, it regenerates faster than they can damage him. That’s because he’s level 78, and they’re just gnats to him. His auto-healing can recover 600 hit points every 10 seconds, and the most they could damage him in that time was 400 points. In other words, he’s near-immortal at their level. We also learn there was an ulterior motive to Kirito’s help all along: he was there to find the Orange Guild and put them all under arrest. A lone survivor of a small guild killed by the criminals came to the front lines begging for justice, not by having the Orange Guild killed, but putting them in a prison until the game is over. Rosalia prepares to put up a fight, but Kirito shows her that a level 78 is not to be trifled with, so the Orange Guild surrenders (since Kirito would otherwise kill them, and he doesn’t really care about having an orange criminal symbol for a few days, especially out on the front line where he is always alone).

We end on a happy note. Kirito used Silica as bait, but she’s not angry about it, and the two are now friends. Pina is revived and you may join in a chorus of “aww.”

So, this episode, we get a little more game world knowledge (though it’s pretty much what is standard in online multiplayer RPGs) and we have a cute girl who doesn’t immediately die. Compared to the exercise in annoyance that the previous episode was, this was actually a rather enjoyable outing. One thing, however, seems rather strange: at the start, it would have seemed reasonable to assume that reaching Floor 100 and defeating the final boss would have been the ultimate goal of the show, but at the current rate of advance, the front line players, including Kirito, might get there in about 3 episodes. It does make one wonder if what we have all taken as the larger plot, being trapped in a game world where death is death in the real world, may in fact just be the first arc of a larger story, a good deal of which will have to take place after they have cleared the game and freed themselves from the clutches of doctor who-cares-anymore.

For the moment, we get some good background about Kirito and see that there is a broad array of people in this game world. There was some good action in this episode, and it ends on a heartwarming note. A definite improvement over the last outing, and as this actually occurs before the previous episode, I think I would have preferred it to precede it. In this case, an example of poor adaptation.

In Summary:
Silica is a beast tamer and has a small dragon-like pet name Pina. When she gets into a fight with her party and splits off, she nearly dies. Pina sacrifices itself to save her from immediate death, but it is Kirito who suddenly appears to bring her to safety. He then volunteers to help her get a rare item that can revive her dead pet. Along the way, however, Kirito also has some other business to attend to. It was a nice change to have engaging characters who don’t die, and this episode is a vast improvement over the last outing. While the show is still very predictable, at least the characters are doing enough to make it entertaining.

Grade: B

Streamed by: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard

G.B. Smith

Greg Smith has been writing anime reviews and a review column on anime dubbed into English for several years, first at AnimeOnDVD and now for The Fandom Post. His occasional column on English anime dubs, Press Audio, appears whenever he comes across a dub worthy of a closer look. He is also the deputy editor for our seasonal and year end retrospectives.

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