Dual sword wielding Kirito is back.
Kirito and Leafa escaped the group of monster and are now heading towards the venue where Sakuya, the leader of the Sylphs and Alicia, the leader of the Cait Siths to sign their alliance. Also heading towards the venue is an army of Salamanders lead by General Eugene. Can Kirito and Leafa stop the Salamander interference?
After escaping a group of monsters they head straight to the venue of the signing of the alliance between the Sylphs and the Cait Siths with a bang. And with a bang, I mean literally since Kirito used some smokescreen spell to make his entrance! After claiming that he is the ambassador of the Spriggan-Undine alliance, which is obviously a bluff to those who watched this story arc from the very beginning.
To prove that he is an ambassador of the said alliance, Eugene challenged him to prove it within 30 seconds. The initial clash between the two is fun to watch. As I have expected, because of the fast pace of the battle, there are a lot frames that Kirito's face becomes a bit distorted. Thankfully, we only see Kirito's distorted face for a couple of seconds and I am fine with it. Since this is a different game and we didn't see other strong players, Eugene is the first player that Kirito encountered in ALO that he had a hard time fighting. His fight in the previous episode doesn't count since it is not a duel or something close to it.
We later found out that Eugene's sword has the ability to change its phase so that a sword can just pass through it with it and Eugene will use his strength against his enemy. To put it simply, Kirito has met his match in this game. To escape from his clutches, he used another smokescreen spell and grabbed Leafa's sword. This can only mean one thing; Kirito will use two swords in his fight against Eugene. I find it a bit weird since earlier in this story arc, Kirito mentions that his dual wielding skill from SAO didn't make it in ALO. They better have an explanation how the heck he got his dual wielding skill again.
Now comes the worse part in this episode, the bad animation just for this scene. Kirito's fight in this scene is so badly animated that it's hard to find a decent frame without pausing... or not. I didn't find a decent looking frame by pausing or by watching the scene frame by frame that I end up getting frustrated on the animation team. If they can do a good boob bounce, boob pressing and other fan service shots that lasted for at least 2-5 seconds, why can't they do a good fight animation shots that last for at least 2-5 seconds? To add up my frustration, Eugene's face looks retarded in a still shot. In a single still shot!
Kirito defeats Eugene in the said aerial duel and promised Eugene that they will fight again sometime, which is something I started to learn to expect in this story arc since dying is now cheap in this game. The Salamanders leave because they don't want to mess with the "supposed" Spriggan-Undine Alliance and finally, Sakuya, Alicia, Leafa and the rest learned that it was just Kirito's bluff all along! Silly Kirito and your serious looking bluff! Because of what he did earlier, everybody wants Kirito to become their mercenary! This leads us to more fan service shots featuring a lot of boob pressing courtesy of Sakuya and Alicia!
As for the instigator of the one who tried destroying the alliance Sigurd, he is kicked out from the Sylph and ends up becoming a renegade thanks to Sakuya. What Sakuya did is to let Sigurd do what he wants and that is to be a Salamander. Guess he needs to wait for the release of patch 5.0 for him to be resurrected as a Salamander. Back to the boob pressing part in this episode, Leafa seems to be jealous and we saw the obvious, she likes Kirito more than as a party mate.
After leaving a large sum of money to support the Sylph and Cait Sith alliance for their quest to reach the World Tree, Kirito and Leafa head towards Arun. Meanwhile, Asuna escaped from her cage and will try her best to escape from this game. Why can't she just press the log out button or something? They better have an explanation why Asuna can't log out the game after she escaped from her cage.