Episode Review : Sword Art Online II Episode 17

Sword Art Online's light adventure came to an end this week, as Kirito and the gang challenged the king of the giants for the sake of all Alfheim and also a really cool sword. Giants were slain, swords were tossed away and then picked back up again, and Klein discovered and immediately lost yet another love of his life. This was a fluffy, upbeat adventure episode, and that's perfectly okay.

We started off this week with the actual boss fight, as Kirito and his friends battled the king of the giants in a vaguely defined race against time. We sadly didn't get another animation buffet to match last week's, but this fight was still reasonably engaging on its own terms. There were a whole lot of “now it's my turn!” attack rotations, which come across as total nonsense to anyone who's played an MMO, but are basically just an accepted part of the SAO package at this point. Yui calling timings on the bosses' various attacks did help give it a somewhat more game-like feel, and attacks like his freeze breath-into-shatter also helped evoke a true boss battle mood. It didn't match last week, but it was still a vast improvement over the majority of the first season's fight scenes.

Following that, the NPC Freyja informed Kirito that in order to win, they'd have to recover her family's golden hammer. This led into one of the most Kirito of Kirito moments, where Kirito's response to Sugu asking him to use a lightning attack is to leap in the air, do an absurd backflip, and then kneel down and perform his attack. Moments like that are exactly the kind of thing that make Sword Art Online impossible to take seriously, but they're also honestly a part of its charm - this show is silly and in love withits protagonist, and if you accept that, you can actually feel in on the overall joke.

Recovering the hammer led to sudden heartbreak for Klein, as Freyja transformed back into the giant Thor. With Thor's help, the party swiftly dispose of the giant king, and Klein ended up receiving a hammer consolation prize for his efforts. And then it was down to Excaliber's chamber, where everyone got to watch Kirito pull the sword from the stone. With the quest finally complete, the world of Alfheim finally began to right itself, and we got treated to a lengthy sequence of watching color return to the underworld.

The second half of this episode really made clear what this whole arc's been about - just hanging out with characters the audience is already fond of. There were silly jokes at Klein's expense, silly harem gags at everyone's expense, and the whole gang got to laugh and make merry and have a party at the bar. Your mileage here is pretty much entirely reflective of how much you enjoy watching these characters spend time together, so it's not really something that lends itself to easy critique. It's light and fluffy - a moment to catch your breath between larger adventures. And outside of that first slog of an episode two weeks back, I'd say this filler adventure was a perfectly reasonable time.

Rating: B