Kirito decides to finally go to the World Tree and Leafa decides to accompany him. This is when the new adventures of Kirito and Leafa begins, featuring Sigurd and some other characters of this show that we should care about.
The episode began how Suguha ended up playing ALO and I understand at first that she has doubts about it since a virtual MMO is the reason why her brother is on a coma. Her change from that skeptical girl who hates online games, she became that girl who becomes addicted to it thanks to the fun experience she had when she first entered ALO. Not a bad character development to be honest.
At present, she is with Kirito who is done shopping for his new equipment where they meet Sigurd who treats Leafa as an asset of his party. One thing I notice is that Kirito's experience in playing Sword Art Online made an impact in his overall personality. Granted, he is a bit cheerful but his experience in SAO made him realize the importance of human life and I like this kind of change. One thing to note about in this scene is that I noticed that no one in the said game recognizes Kirito, it can only mean that the news about who cleared SAO didn't reveal the identity of the one who cleared the game.
The way Kirito defended Leafa from Sigurd who wants Leafa to stay in his party is great and at the end, Sigurd just let them leave so that they can go on top of the tower so that they can gather enough momentum so that they can fly for more than 10 minutes. But before they can take off, they had this talk about liking someone, which only showed us the obvious that Suguha likes her older brother. Speaking of liking, Recon appears and once again, continues to be shunned by Leafa. What made it funnier is that earlier in the episode, he was shunned by Suguha in real life!
On their way to Arun, the town below the World Tree, they had a couple of fights with some monsters and saw more of the magic system in the game. There is nothing special with the non-magic fights in the episode since the felts still have that same feel from SAO. It feels like there is nothing special with ALO's non-magic fights, which obviously bored me.
The only thing that interests me in the team-up between these two is that players can't easily log out in neutral zones and that a player's avatar will become empty. Thankfully, Kirito is with Leafa so they can take turns guard their respective avatars for a possible enemy or monster attack. Aside from the Suguha fan service, during the time it is time for Kirito to log out; we had Yui tell a fake story on how she met Kirito and more on that liking crap. Before Leafa can make her reply about the person that she likes, Kirito returns to continue their quest.
Before they can leave, Kirito noticed that someone is following them. This is when the concept of familiars that act as trackers is brought up, which is something most shows that has magic in are using for a couple of times now. The one who created the familiar is someone from the Salamander race. Is it me, or they are trying to put a lot of emphasis that Salamanders are the bad guys in this series?
Meanwhile, while Kirito is having a great time playing ALO, Asuna is stuck with the creep named Sugou aka the Fairy King Oberon. One thing notable about this scene is that Asuna is finally aware that Kirito is still alive and Sugou hypothesized that Kirito doesn't have the guts to use a NerveGear after the SAO incident... which is the opposite actually. Asuna is now hopeful that she can see Kirito in the future and memorized the password that Sugou pressed to open her cage.
