While I wouldn’t say this was the busiest episode, it was a necessity to get Kirito into the game and prepared for what is coming. Kind of surprising that they are going to go right into this tournament, but I suppose that is why he converted his character. I wonder if he’ll need to outright win the tournament before Death Gun starts coming after him or just do well in the early stages of the tournament?

And now we have our explanation for why trap Kirito exists. Seems like the character model you get upon entering the game is pretty random. And certainly with random the writers can just make Kirito look however they’d like XD. Almost liked the theory that Asuna was behind him having to go trap in this game so he’d avoid expanding his harem, but oh well. It does make it easier for him and Sinon to meet since she’d be less on guard around someone she perceives as a girl.

While I do think at some point Kirito should have come clean to Sinon, I do get why he initially didn’t. Easy to see how female players get a lot of attention and I get him not wanting to ruin the meeting with the one person who seemed able to help him. Couldn’t really afford for her to think he was just approaching her to hit on her and be stuck having to approach the guys who thought he was a girl…In the end I can accept it as one of those necessary evils. But good luck to Kirito once she finds out.

Sinon was a whole lot of help though. Kirito definitely wouldn’t have been able to get geared up and registered for the BoB in time otherwise. You can see how much more relaxed she is in this world and certainly how much gun knowledge she’s picked up probably in part to trying to deal with her problem and just playing the game. Kirito will have a problem when it comes to the shooting side of things since stats can’t completely make up for not having much experience with firearms. For the present that gun isn’t going to be much help, but I’m sure it will be key near the end.

The show does seem to like to make Kirito amazing in a way that stands out. I do find it a stretch that he’s one of the only people using light sabers, able to beat that bullet dodging game, and able to ride the buggies. If that was really the case those things probably would have been patched out or at the very least he wouldn’t be great at all of them. The racing one seems like the ultimate stretch since his SAO experience isn’t going to help him out much there. But in the end Kirito is the MC so maybe that’s just how it goes.

Seems like Kirito will be fine with the light saber though. Will certainly have the advantage that no one will expect to see someone getting into point blank range and swinging a beam sword around. The psychological advantage will be key as long as he can find a way to close the distance. A bit surprised that Kirito was so vague about his background. I could understand not wanting to bring up SAO, but ALO shouldn’t have been a big deal. Maybe just felt like keeping things vague for whatever reason.

This was a good chance to see Kirito basically being Kirito again. Did a good job winning some money with that dodging game and now is pretty well set to compete in BoB. At least it only took an episode to basically introduce Kirito to the game and get him geared up. Now we should be able to pretty well jump straight into the competition and see where this arc might go.

Again not the most exciting of episodes, but certainly necessary to get Kirito ready. While things could go south in a hurry once it’s revealed that Kirito is a guy, at least he’s made contact with Sinon. Since she might be the next target of Death Gun, having someone there to back her up should be helpful. One thing I’ll give props to SAO for is only giving the title for the next episode. It’s nice to be left a bit in the dark and not have a preview that pretty well gives away the whole episode XD. Sure you can technically avoid those yourself, but a little assistance from the show is good as well.
Score: B