Sword Art Online May Have Given Me A Reason To Join The Haters

The anime Sword Art Online has plenty of haters, and I don’t count myself among that crowd. I still love the first couer of the first season, and while there have been some real dogs among the other couers (cough, cough – Alfheim) the series has been more enjoyable than avoidable. 

But the latest episode of Season 3 may have pushed me over into the hater camp. I say “may” because it also may have made me respect the writers for a deep story reveal that is almost as disturbing in its implication as the sexual assault that causes the show to carry a “mature audience” warning for the first time in three seasons.

To explain the issues that come from episode 10 of Season 3, I need to spell out what happens, and that means spoilers. So, if you haven’t seen the episode, and don’t want it to be spoiled, consider this your SPOILER ALERT. If not, then read on after the break. Also, while I won’t go into detailed description, a content warning for discussion of sexual assault seems in order.

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In Sword Art Online Alicization (the full title of Season 3) Kirito finds himself helping Alfheim arc character Kikuoka Seijirou of the Ministry of Information with a new virtual reality project, but one which he can’t remember anything about after each session. Even though he can’t remember it, the experience Kirito has been having isn’t virtual reality, it is artificial reality and it is indistinguishable from a real experience when he is in it.

The reason Kirito experiences the Alicization world as reality is that it isn’t just putting his senses into a simulation, it is placing his soul into a massively complex artificial reality. Kirito spouts out some quantum mechanics mumbo-jumbo about microtubules in the brain — smartly referencing the theory of consciousness posited by Roger Penrose in his 1989 book Shadows Of The Mind — as being the source of the soul and therefore able to be manipulated via a new technology called the Soul Translator.

We eventually find out that Kikuoka is actually a Lt. Colonel in the JSDF and is in charge of Project Alicization. This artificial world, Kikuoka finally reveals, is a secret government project to create not just artificial intelligences but artificial “souls” and  to get them to be able to kill, for the purpose of making robotic soldiers capable of killing humans.

Kikuoka doesn’t explain exactly how this is supposed to happen, but we do know that the artificial world has a set of laws called the Taboo Index, which is supposed to guide how the artificial souls function. Lesser rules of the Taboo Index can be broken, which will result in the enforcers of the world, the Integrity Knights, showing up and taking the transgressor away for some form of punishment. But the major rules result in a paralyzing error that prevents the soul from moving. This is what happens in the first episode, which is entirely set in the artificial world with no context, when a young Kirito and his artificial soul friend Eugeo watch their artificial friend Alice get taken for simply touching the ground in a part of the world off limits. Eugeo tries to stop it, and is paralyzed by the Taboo Index rules.

The episode in question
In episode 10, Kirito and Eugeo, now young men, are both Disciples (high-level students) at the Sword Academy, learning swordsmanship. Kirito now has full memories of his real self and access to many of his SAO, GGO and Alfheim skills — how is too complicated to explain in this already lengthy explanation. As Disciples, each of them is a mentor to a Trainee, called a Valet — Tiese for Eugeo and Ranye for Kirito, both young women. Kirito and Eugeo have made enemies of two high-rank noblemen Disciples, Humbert and Raios. The two evil noblemen hatch a plot to get at Eugeo and Kirito by getting their Valets to accuse the nobles of sexual assault. The Tabboo Index rules allows the higher ranking nobles to judge the two Valets as guilty of a crime and punish them, which they decide should be sexual assault. They make sure Eugeo is aware of it so he can try to stop them and be forced to watch, paralyzed by the Taboo Index if, as a commoner, he tries to interfere with the judgement of a noble.

So the episode goes into a lengthy portrayal of sexual assault that falls just short of rape. Viewing it as a storytelling method designed to get us to cheer for Eugeo as he fights to break through the Taboo Index paralysis (which he does at the cost of an exploding eye) makes me hate the writers for resorting to such a manipulative trick. Adding insult to injury, that manipulation makes me want to cheer when Eugeo cuts Humbert’s left arm clean off, and when Kirito cuts off both of Raois’ arms (resulting in his very interesting and bizarre death).

But after some pondering about the horrifying and seemingly gratuitous nature of the assault scene, I realized that it also told us something very interesting and disturbing. The rules set up by Project Alicization are intended to create situations so horrible that the artificial souls in the world — as far as we know to this point, everyone except Kirito — are forced to either accept the way of things or break the restrictions of the Taboo Index. Specifically, situations so horrible that the only recourse is to kill someone.

That means that every single artificial soul — Alice, Eugeo, Tiese, Ranye, and even Humbert and Raios — exists to either be a victim of some horrifying circumstance, the perpetrator of same, or a witness that has to decide to fight the Taboo Index or accept the rules of the world. And that means that Kikuoka and the others behind Project Alicization don’t view the many thousands of artificial souls they have created as anything more than toys or tools to be used for their end goal of creating killer robot soldiers.

Sickening? Smart? Bit of both?
Does that make the use of a near-rape sexual assault as a story element justified? I’m not sure. Certainly having someone just tell us viewers how evil the creators of Project Alicization are wouldn’t have anything like the same shock and awe of showing it to us and getting us to draw that conclusion ourselves. But frankly that is just the same sort of emotional manipulation as the assault scene and Eugeo’s reaction, just a few steps (and probably a few episodes in the future) removed.

It is a daring and bold way of revealing a very important story element. It is also a crass and cheap form of emotional manipulation. To be clear, it also isn’t the completely pointless tentacle assault on Asuna from the Alfheim arc, or even the villain’s creepy obsession with her from the same arc that had no purpose but to put Asuna into the out-of-character damsel in distress status and make Kirito the dashing heroic rescuer. The Season 3 assault, as awful as it is, serves a story purpose, ultimately a huge one I would guess.

Frankly I am still unsure if I admire Sword Art Online Alicization for the way it handled the assault scene, or hate it for the same. Maybe both. Or maybe I admire the way it revealed a major plot element, but hate the specifics of how seemingly gratuitous its actual presentation was.

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YOUR VOICE

What do you think about the sexual assault scene in episode 10 of Sword Art Online Alicization?[/box_dark]