After beating some men wearing red armor, Kirito finally meets Leafa properly and decides to befriend her. This begins our orientation about the World of Fairies, which includes the game's flight engine, about respawning and etc.
Since Kirito killed a couple of guys in the previous episode were PK is highly encouraged, the question is what happens to their avatars after they are defeated? Turns out they still remain in the game as Remain Lights and by the looks of it, making a sound might disrupt the Remain Lights since these lights have their minds intact and it best to wait for it to disappear. Even though the game encourages PK, I can't help but admire their respect to the dead characters that will respawn after a few hours.
After the brief introductions, Leafa suggested that they should go to the nearby town and Kirito suggested to go a Sylph territory since it’s the nearest. The first thing that Leafa did is to explain that having a different race enter their respective territory might cause trouble. I find it funny since the way how Leafa explained it is that it sounded like they will attack Kirito automatically or something! After the explanation about territories comes the fun part in this episode, the flying.
If there is one thing that bothered me when we first saw Leafa in the episode is how the heck she learned how to fly without the use of the stick that Kirito used to aide him with his flight? As it turns out that Leafa learned a trick on how to fly without the use of the stick by visualizing bones and muscles on her back. The method of flying reminded me a lot on how birds learn how to fly by stretching their wings and slowly flap it, just like what Kirito did with a little aide from Leafa. Thanks to Leafa's help, Kirito learned how to fly that he even had a race with Leafa! I still find it funny that Kirito only learned how to fly in this episode but he never had a chance to learn how to land!
Speaking of Kirito, one thing I noticed about him in this episode is that he is seriously jolly and out-going. He doesn't act like that guy we saw from the Sword Art Online game, he feels more like a completely different character. But considering that his situation in SAO is different from his situation in ALO, I guess he can be a bit out-going since his only mission right now is to rescue the princess from her castle and not to survive at the very end.
At the town, we saw one thing that makes ALO different from SAO; it's the inclusion of magic. The magic in this series is kinda interesting and hopefully, they will expand on it as the series progress. Another thing to point out is that each race has its own specialty, in the case of the Spriggan; they are good treasure hunters and good with illusion magic. Sadly, the episode didn't reveal the specialty of the Sylph, so yeah. We also have a proper introduction of Recon as Leafa's friend in real life and he is quite dedicated to Leafa, so yeah. He is a guy who likes Leafa and he's been friendzoned by her.
On a pub in the town, Kirito learned from Leafa about the World Tree and why reaching it is the ultimate quest in ALO. To sum it all up, whoever passes the quest after beating all the guardians will be granted audience to the Fairy King Oberon and will be given wings that can make someone fly for more than 10 minutes. But this quest has a price, only one person can finish the quest and even if you make a party, only one member of the party can have the wings. I find this condition a bit unfair that is why it is understandable why no one finished the quest even if the game began a year ago.
Leafa decided to log out in the game while Kirito log out on a room on top of the pub. This is when we meet Leafa in real life, she is Kirito's younger sister, Suguha! What made it funnier is that her face turned red and that she is unaware that Kirito is his older brother, Kazuto! This will be really fun once she learned that he is in a party with his older brother. Back to Kirito, he is with Yui and fell asleep and finally, logged out in the game.
Meanwhile, Asuna is held captive by Oberon the Fairy King, or should I say Sugou, the head of RCT progress. To sum up what's happening in this scene, Sugou is just exploiting the potential of the NerveGear by trapping 300 logged out SAO players and use it on his experiments about the human brain and how he can exploit it using the NerveGear and Asuna is one of those is Asuna who is now called Titania in this game. Wow, from one creepy pedophile, he is now one creepy evil mastermind. Speaking of this creepy pedophile, he continues to do creepy things on Asuna's body by smelling her hair and teasing her.
As for Asuna, from that strong chick we saw earlier in the series, she is now a damsel in distress, waiting for her prince riding on a white (or black) horse to save her from this cage that she is in. Even if that is the case, she actually has the initiative to try zooming on Sugou's hand movements to figure out the possible number lock combination even if she has a blurry sight for some reason. The only conclusion on why she had that vision is because Sugou might be manipulating bits of her sight in this game.
