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.
Despite the return of Kirito, Alicization reminds us not to sing victory too soon by putting into play a new, risky and compelling obstacle in front of the couple of protagonists of the series: it is now crucial to conclude the battle before it is too late, or the consequences will be much more drastic than expected.
Alicization: Danger
The seventh episode of this cour opens by definitively concluding what was an arc that began in the very first series of Sword Art Online and which was a recurring subplot in the franchise: PoH is, in effect, the reason for many of the biggest traumas. of Kirito, triggered for the sheer sake of tormenting him with a weight that he carried far beyond the events of Aincrad.
The final duel between the two is therefore a very important moment for the protagonist and, although it is not particularly spectacular on a visual level, it passes until its conclusion in the most appropriate way, bringing to full fruition all the learning path of Kirito in his adventures. (although this, as we will see, was not best communicated by the adaptation) in what is a symbolic parallelism to what was shown last episode with Asuna and Yuki.
The two most cathartic scenes in this section are certainly the reconstitution of the Blue Rose, used to force the log out of frozen players without hurting them (since the power of the Blue Rose is to absorb energy from its victims) and, of course, the return actual Kirito in his original Aincrad form, complete with a double sword, in preparation for the final confrontation.
The ensuing duel, whose choreography and sound contribute to good on-screen rendering, is far from the sheer power contrast that distinguished previous duels like Sheyta vs Iskhan or Bercouli vs Vector: the whole clash between PoH and Kirito is distinct. from its purely technical nature and this is where the animated adaptation loses on Volume 18.
Unfortunately, the entire animated series of the franchise has chosen to neglect the more detailed aspects of the functioning of the Sword Skills, a gap that here makes some combat sequences difficult to interpret and does not allow you to appreciate some moments of actual progression, with some uses of the system that Kirito tried to experiment through various story arcs without success.
Also the explanation of the power of the Night Sky, which in this fight is revealed to have inherited the characteristics of the tree from which it was originally forged to absorb, with a very extended radius, energy and resources allowing Kirito to reuse them at his discretion is left. to the viewer's intuition, with the possibility of causing a bit of confusion.
Despite this, the visual quality of the anime mitigates the damage of the adaptation as well as the conclusion, almost poetic, of the battle in which Kirito chooses to give a long-term torment to his psychological torturer by transferring the memory of his Night Sky into him by transforming the his body in a new Gigas Cedar, thus taking away the possibility of manually logging out or performing any action, leaving PoH in a limbo of inertia which, given how the episode continues, could prolong itself excessively.
On Ocean Turtle, in fact, on the orders of Miller, the acceleration of the system clock is reactivated, bringing it to limits far higher than what a human visitor can bear without serious risks: with the rate of 5 million, in fact, a minute in the real world correspond to almost 10 years within Underworld and this means that, where Suguha and Sinon are safe due to their remote connection, forcibly interrupted when the activation sequence is over, Kirito and Asuna must reach a console log out within the next 10 minutes or their Fluctlights will remain in the Underworld for centuries, much longer than a human life can actually live, before they can return to their real bodies, with the risk of forever remaining plants.
It is with this background countdown that Kirito reaches Subtilizer preventing him from reaching Alice, also thanks to the sacrifice of his dragons, concluding the episode with the beginning of the climax of the Underworld side of the narrative
