Dungeon Tower Raid

Sword Art Online: Alicization, Episode 11 Review/Recap

If you haven’t watched the rest of the anime yet, then last episode will have gotten you confused: how is Alice an Integrity Knight now?

Well, that answer will be revealed in due time. For now, though, Kirito and Eugeo are about to go through a literal boss tower in order to find the answers behind the Axiom Church and that stupid Taboo Index.

LINK, START!

Recap

Picking up where the last episode left off, Eugeo’s positive that the woman before them is his childhood friend, Alice. Alice, on the other hand, doesn’t even recognize him or Kirito. Kirito advises that they do what she says until they get inside the Central Cathedral, and after a brief farewell to Ronye and Tiese, they are hauled back to the tower.

The scene then switches back to the Ocean Turtle, where Asuna is lamenting the fact that she has no role to play in this part of the story. She also encounters a prototype robot that RATH has built.

Once they manage to get one of the Underworld residents to develop into a full bottom-up AI, they plan on transferring them out of Underworld and into a robot body for them to inhabit. Fortunately, the newer models are becoming more human-like. Remember this for later: it will come in handy in the final part of the arc. Oh, and Asuna passes these two guys in the hallway that made my Spider-Sense go into overdrive, so I’m guessing they’re enemy spies or something.

Back in Underworld, a full day has passed since Kirito and Eugeo got thrown in the slammer. Bored with sitting around, they decide to finally break for it. Using their chains durability against it, they’re able to shatter the chains, and then walk right past the sleeping guard.

After making it onto the ground floor, their next step is to retrieve their swords. They also come to the conclusion that the Axiom Church has been erasing people’s memories in order to turn them into Integrity Knights, which explains why Alice seemed like a completely different person than what Eugeo remembers. To add onto the mystery, they run into Alice’s junior, Eldrie Synthesis Knight Thirty-One. According to him, he was only “summoned” a month ago, but Alice put him in charge of stopping Kirito and Eugeo once they busted out.

Review

Continue off the theme of comparing this to an RPG, this would be the point at which the hero ends up going through the wave of bosses in a dungeon tower. If this were a normal game, this may be the final act of that game. But since this is only the first half of the fifty episode Alicization Arc, this would be the end of the first disc, like with Final Fantasy VII.

I skimmed through what happens next, but I can tell you this: from here on out, Kirito and Eugeo are going to be spending the rest of the season fighting their way through the Integrity Knights in order to learn what happened to Alice and the truth behind the Axiom Church. From what my fellow blogger, Karandi, wrote, these next few episodes are going to be either really fun to watch or a snooze-fest. Either way, I am going to keep doing this series.

I would normally criticize the pacing of this episode, but I understand that’s done in order to set for what’s to come. As long as the payoff ends up being good, then I will consider this worth it in the end.

I give “Central Cathedral” a 3/5

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