In this article we return to talk about Alicization. If you are not familiar with the series, we recommend you to retrieve the reviews of the other episodes to this link.
The Emperor Vector does not let himself be knocked down by the numerous and important losses suffered by his army in the early stages of the battle and, in response, launches a counterattack that will cost significantly to his enemies: the Integration Knights may not be enough anymore.
Alicization: Sacrifice
Alice's powerful destructive spell leads to a first retreat of the dark forces, who see their army decimated by the obvious physical and strategic superiority of the Integrating Knights.
Inspired by the tactics employed by the enemies, however, Miller is ready to sacrifice a large block of his troops in order to launch an effective counterattack, approaching one step at a time to conquer his goal: the capture of Alice.
Obviously, in front of this threat, the Integration Knights are not watching, successfully repelling the enemy attack, although the success of this defense has required a high price to pay.
Considerations
Since the context of this series of Sword Art Online is a war between two large sides, it is no wonder that after the industrial quantity of characters introduced and swept away by the Dark Territory it would also have touched the forces of the Human Empire to suffer some concrete loss. This episode makes this event its highlight.
It is not even surprising that the first real victim of the invasion is Alice's pupil Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-Two, for which he feels a one-way love and an absolute reverence and admiration: after all it is precisely here that the Knights finally discover the presence of Vector, who in Underworld folklore is an evil deity, opposed to the goddess of the sun and of the creation Stacia that gives name to many of the systems used, among the enemy lines and that his goal is, for some reason, the acquisition of Alice, defined by enemy soldiers as "Priestess of Light" and revealing how Miller artfully built a scenario that motivated the capture of the girl as a form of conflict between the two divinities.
Already previously Eldrie had given signs of his imminent fall, with many scenes typically reserved for characters destined to die and, above all, having no real direction in which to develop: the doubt about his death was therefore not so much about his event as about importance that would have been reserved to it.
Fortunately, the young Knight had a more than dignified end, immolating himself in an act that could have greatly saved the fate of the conflict.
Her departure was in fact following a spell of Dee Eye Ell, the leader of the witches of Vector who, following Alice's spell, learns of the possibility of acquiring magical resources from the dead and sacrifices 3.000 of her own forces to hurl a spell that, if scored, would probably put an end to a much higher number of lives than those used.
It is at this juncture that Eldrie intervenes by absorbing the entire spell within himself and letting himself explode at high altitude, giving bottom to his whole being to the point of forcing, through the Incarnation system, his life points to go well beyond the threshold of the 0, a point that would normally lead immediately to the death of the entity.
But if Eldrie's death is the moment that most shines through pathos and visualization, the Knight is not the only one to have his moment of glory in this episode.
Very important is the warlord leading the ogres, who is eliminated by Alice in a desperate attempt to capture her, revealing extremely relevant information about Vector's objective.
Among the members of Miller 's army we also have a more in-depth introduction of Dee Eye Ell, or at least of his emotions and ambitions, suggesting that the witch is a more important character than the other leaders of the Dark Territory and that he will have a more role important, given his will to overtake even his emperor.
Even Lillipin, lord of the Orcs, has a brief moment of relief when his consort enters the numerous sacrifices that Vector carelessly claims to acquire magical resources, suggesting the possibility that he may perhaps end his subordination relationship with the Emperor given how much made on his people.
As expected, the discovery of the true objective of Vector is for Bercouli a strategic piece of information that completely overturns the progress of the war and that continues the history of this series: Alice will have to act as a diversion with an escort by her side in an attempt to separate Vector's army, interrupting the invasion and turning a face-to-face conflict into a chase.
Overall, therefore, this episode is more focused on the characters and the next steps to be taken in the plot, rather than on the battle and on the spectacular nature of the action reserved for Eldrie's sacrifice: if it is technically consistent, both in terms of visual rendering and sound effects and in the use of music, the representation of the violent content in the series is less consistent, which here is shown to be swinging passing from the raw and direct depiction of the burned witches alive to the more artificial covering of the severed body of Eldrie and the violent death of the sacrificed orcs .
Narratively, this conflict is evolving more and more in the internal matters of Underworld, leading us to forget a bit the background and the events that should be touching the real world and the real reason behind the entire conflict. The ninth episode, entitled "The sword and the fists", does not seem to want to detach itself from the events strictly related to the virtual world after the implications in this last transmission.
