English Dub Review: Sword Art Online: Alicization “The Osmanthus Knight”

Life and Love in an Elevator.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Kirito uses his Perfect Weapon Control, which is a big ol’ purple blast, to defeat Fanatio, but is heavily injured from the fight. Eugeo heals him with the same health transferring spell that Kirito used on him in the cave, but he’s stopped before he uses too much. Once he’s better, Kirito becomes concerned with Fanatio’s own health, as she’s starting to bleed out. In his desperation, he uses one of the daggers given to him by Cardinal to send her back to the library, much to both Cardinal and Eugeo’s surprise.

Once they’ve potioned up, the two make their way to the next Knight to beat, but come across a strange woman in an elevator who offers to take them to a higher floor. But after running into those two kids, there’s no way this lady isn’t another Integrity Knight trying to get the drop on the-

…or NOT, I suppose. She’s really just an ordinary person who simply operates this elevator and doesn’t seem to know any life outside of it. In fact, she’s been at this for 107 years and has even forgotten her own name. They eventually reach the 80th floor, where Kirito and Eugeo get off, but the encounter gives Eugeo some perspective about his own calling, as well as seeing the operator as yet another victim of Quinella’s experimenting with extending lifespans.

They continue to the next chamber, which is a pristine garden, and find a fully armored Alice sitting under a tree at the top of a hill. Kirito preps Eugeo to use their attacks, which they can only use maybe one or two more times each, but are surprised to find that Alice’s sword is the tree she’s been sitting under, meaning she’s had hers in Perfect Weapon Control the whole time, having been made from a tree from the Underworld’s first town. To give Eugeo time to charge his ice attack, Kirito challenges Alice directly. She soon corners him, but he grabs hold of her so that Eugeo can freeze them both in place.

However, Alice’s power breaks her free just as fast, so Kirito uses his last attack to provide a chance for Eugeo to strike her with the other dagger, but the explosion blows a hole in the wall that Alice and Kirito fall through. Eugeo can only watch in shock as the wall reforms in front of him.

OUR TAKE

This brings us to the end of the fourth book in this arc, which I can partly tell from the ending of this episode feeling like it would be a pretty fitting place to leave people guessing what will happen for months until the next release, even though it’s obvious both Kirito and Alice will be alive next we see them. These books have so far been split up into four episodes a piece and since Episode 13 began with Kirito and Eugeo entering the cathedral to find Alice as one of their objectives, it makes sense that the ending here would be about them finally confronting Alice with their first big fight against her. The fight has a lot more emotional weight to it than the last few by virtue of the personal history shared between these characters and that we’ve met this version of Alice before, but now we get to see her in action for the first time.

But there were also other parts to discuss, like the aftermath of the battle with Fanatio, specifically Kirito’s choice to use up one of their daggers on getting her to safety. The cynic in me would guess that she was chosen for this because she’s a hot girl, but there’s other possibilities to work from that lend themselves more to Kirito’s character. For one, we’ve seen his philosophy regarding seeing Artificial Intelligence as real people, so that would explain why he isn’t seeing the dying Fanatio as just a set of ones and zeroes that he has no reason to care about. But there’s also his time in Aincrad to consider, where he saw many real people he had come to care about die in front of him, and so would embolden him against letting anyone simply fighting to protect people they care about die without him doing everything in his power to stop it.

And then there’s the section with elevator girl, which sort of feels like the stuff with the twins last week in that it seems rather clunky in how it transitions between the last and next fight. Though I think I like it better, if only slightly, due to it providing some extra perspective for Eugeo on his own life. And I honestly did expect her to turn out to be yet another Integrity Knight, but I’m not exactly disappointed that she wasn’t one. It just seems like a neat idea that feels sort of shoehorned in. But next week starts a new book!