Genre – Sci Fi Anime
Movie Total Runtime – 2 Hour 46 Minutes
Spoilers – Yes
Where did we leave off? oh right, Hopeless Guild Decided to take a page from the book of tactical genius Leeeeroooy Jeeeenkiiiins and PvPs a full sized raid group with their six people plus Gamer Girl, and Gamer Boy dropped in to make it 8 v 49. But, Hopeless guild has names, rival guild has no named characters. The odds are against the 49. While that may just be my narrative cynicism, there are only six episodes in this, and there needs to be time for the boss fight, so a loss-redemption arc is unlikely.
The biggest problem with the fight scene is that I can’t tell the members of the Hopeless Guild from those of the Rival. It’s not like watching the rest of the series would help, the Hopeless Guild was introduced in this arc. There’s not much to say about the guild fight, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and the Hopeless Guild pushes ahead to the boss room while Gamer Guy serves as rear guard against the remnants of the rivals.
The fight against the dungeon boss is almost anti-climactic because the story isn’t about the boss fight – otherwise there would have been more effort put into showing the earlier loss rather than leaving it mostly off-screen. So after the celebrations of the victory, Duelist calls Gamer Girl ‘sis’ by mistake, then gets teary and logs out. I keep hypothesizing about the significance of the Hopeless Guild’s actual name of “Sleeping Knights”. Makes me wonder if they are actually patients of some sort. Not quite coma but otherwise trapped and the spring is when treatment is scheduled. But this is me narrative brainstorming. It could also be more tragic. With the fight scenes and celebrating, there wasn’t a lot of new plot in Episode 3, so we pass the halfway mark and start Episode 4.
Gamer Girl keeps trying to message Duelist, but she hasn’t logged back in for three days. Another member of Hopeless Guild tries to convince Gamer Girl to stop pursuing friendship with them before logging out herself.
We go back to the real world, at the school for kids previously trapped in SAO. Gamer Boy thinks he found Duelist in the real world, and my random-assed hypothesis from the last Episode gets confirmed as the place he sends Gamer Girl is doing clinical trials. The staff seems to have been expecting Gamer Girl to show up. The clinical trials are looking into medicinal uses of the neurological technologies from the wireless brain interface technologies. Duelist is terminal, as is an unspecified other member. They met up in a virtual hospice ward, so it’s unlikely the remainder will last much longer.
Sometimes I hate being right.
I gotta back up to the scene when Gamer Boy gave Gamer Girl the info on where the clinical trials were. There was a Chekov’s project being worked on where Gamer Boy was trying to get their pet AI to see the real world through a webcam. A more homebrew version of the medical device’s camera integration that was already working. When Terminal Duelist is asked whether there was anything she wanted to do or see, she says “maybe go to school again.” In-context it makes sense, as she’s spent so long hooked up to machines living in virtual worlds, she yearns for a taste of long-absent normalcy. So, with the show paused after Gamer Girl having said “Maybe you can.” I predict they will use Gamer Boy’s homebrew setup to walk Terminal Duelist through the school.
Lets hit play…
Roll end credits. Looks like I ran out of Episode 4.
Episode 5 starts with Gamer Boy and two other guys from the school working to deal with the code for the homebrew camera rig as it sits on Gamer Girl’s shoulder. She’s warned not to make sudden moves since the stabilizers are janky – and Gamer Girl promptly leaps to her feet. As they go around the school, I ask “Why doesn’t Gamer Girl put her hair back for this? To elaborate – Gamer Girl’s real world character design has very long hair, with part of it allowed to hang down in front. With the position of the camera mount, that hair is perfectly placed to keep obstructing the view.
The instructor calls on Terminal Duelist to read some of the piece they were working on. I’m sitting here debating whether her nervousness is the result of general public speaking issues or because her reading level in Kanji had stagnated due to the time spent in hospitals and virtual worlds. It’s not pointing a web cam at a tablet screen being hard to read because she does read the bit. It was a short scene with only subtle nervousness, but I spent far too long overanalyzing it and the character implications. The scene itself is not that important. In fact, this random-ass anime about people formerly stuck in a videogame has got me more invested in the characters as people than a lot of other works could even aspire to. The stakes being more personal certainly helped, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Though I’m having difficulty isolating what the additional factors are.
After a long day of letting Terminal Duelist see normal again, Gamer Girl says her parents will understand her being out so late. We know that’s not the case from Tiger Mom’s reaction to five minutes delay in arriving to dinner. But, why make Terminal Duelist worry. We have some sad bonding between Gamer Girl and Terminal Duelist over their family relationships. Terminal Duelist encourages Gamer Girl to confront Tiger Mom. Oh, that’s not going to go well.
Gamer Girl concludes that she’d be more able to have that conversation in the virtual world. But that first requires convincing Tiger Mom to actually go into the virtual. For the sake of the story, it turns out to be easier than I expected. In-game, Gamer Girl reveals that the cabin they bought back in Episode 1 reminded her of her grandparents’ house, including the landscape. After a spark of recognition, we get a flashback of little Gamer Girl with her grandparents in winter. A happier contrast to the modern emptiness of the grand house. This draws me back to a line of dialog that I hadn’t highlighted a few episodes back during the dinner argument. Among the accusations thrown around was one from Gamer Girl that Tiger Mom was ashamed that she hadn’t come from a rich family. The grandparents we see are clearly content with what they do have – just sitting there sharing an orange with their granddaughter.
Gamer Girl argues for staying with the people she knows and cares about at her current school. It isn’t until the next morning that Tiger Mom relents on the transfer, but not on the college track and the requirements thereof.
Episode 6 opens with a montage of in game and real live events leading to a message I can’t read dated March 29 2026. We’re back to the future as of the writing of this review, but the past for when you lot will read it. Current events it is.
Gamer Girl runs to the medical center in a fearful state where we find they’ve unplugged Terminal Duelist from the machines. Her heart stopped briefly. While they resuscitated her, it’s still almost over. Gamer Girl convinces the doctors to plug Terminal Duelist back in so they can actually say goodbye. Terminal Duelist crafts a skill scroll for her in-game special, then collapses because her real-life body is failing. Hopeless Guild shows up to see her off, then the cast of the main series, and then the whole server, even Rival Guild.
Terminal Duelist gives her last words, then we cut to the funeral. A symbolic cherry blossom petal lands on Gamer Girl’s shoulder where the camera rig sat before blowing away on the wind. One of the Hopeless Guild attending the funeral introduces herself. Her cancer had gone into remission, so she is out and about at least. We get more sad conversation. It is a funeral, after all.
The conversation with the doctor running the clinical trials drops the name of the person who gave the initial tech to them. Gamer Boy is shocked as it was the head researcher for… duh duh dun… the guy who made the original Sword Art Online. Gamer Girl is also shocked. Meanwhile I’m going “No Crap, this was a revelation?” I mean, it was so obviously the same tech that I never once thought there were two independently developed no-implant neural interface technologies running around. I even said it was the same tech earlier because it was so blaringly obvious I didn’t think there was supposed to be a twist associated with it.
Anyway. Roll Credits.
Post-credits we have a real-life meetup of the usual gang, having their pet AI using the camera rig. The pet AI isn’t really much of a character. I only mention the scene because I find it optimistic that the characters are not terminally in-game.
I had pretty much always dismissed Sword Art Online at the premise. The initial story about people trapped in a video game could so very easily go wrong. While I’ve still only watched this side story, it was far better than anything based on that elevator pitch has any right to be. I don’t often get to give a positive summation, but at the very least, Mother’s Rosario is worth watching. I can’t speak to the rest of the franchise.
This line really should have been the summation at the end. It encapsulated the piece in a nutshell.
That’s a clear sign that the writers managed to make this more than just a “high concept”/elevator pitch gimmick story.
Pretty much.
I’ve been having a hard time coming up with a response, but I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring your comment…
Thanks. For the record, I wrote and submitted my comment before seeing your comment quoting the same line.
Hey Mikey! He likes it!
As I’ve said before – the Unwatched pieces in my collection tend to have a common theme of not enticing me to put in the time to watch it from the available information. This means there will be a greater proportion which I ultimately don’t care for. In the case of this piece, it was a box set of a fragment late in a sequel to a work I had not seen, so I was unaware that I held a complete, intact story to even view in isolation.
Things that I have seen are excluded from this series, so that has filtered out a lot of material I do enjoy simply because I’ve already seen it.
That said, more new acquisitions have been added to the list, leaving 114 titles yet to be posted for general Glibs readership, with 98 pending review. So the ratio of “thanks, I hate it” to “I enjoyed this one” will undoubtedly shift to some degree.
speaking of upcoming reviews – I found this random Bollywood production which seemed like a better fit for thursdays, but I have no idea if it’s on streaming. I bought the DVD at Goodwill, so you know it’s quality.
Tell me the title, let me see if I can find it streaming
I sent you an email to keep the general commentariat in the dark.
I’m shocked and pleased you liked this as much as ya did. I agree w GT, especially that the writers got you to *care* about the characters in this story.
I had fun reading about it.
You might enjoy watching it – but I’m not sure where you’d find a copy.
I hate that so much stuff is hard to find.
The promise of streaming was the opposite of hard to find and expensive.
I bought a couple of arcade game collections for the boy and I to enjoy while working this weekend and the damn things were dumb money. I had never bought DLC stuff before outside of Oblivion remastered and they are expensive. I would think that ROMs of old games would be 99c or 10 for $5.
Boy was I wrong.
No Konami I am not paying $38 for one of your arcade collections.
It makes all the $3-10 NES and Genesis cartridges we bought over the last 25 years look all that better.
Surprisingly, the only real consideration was making media companies richer.
They have to offset the DEI costs somewhere.
We need to talk about the miracle of software emulation at some point.
It’s not so much of a miracle from a technical perspective when you can throw the brutal amounts of compute in modern systems at tackling an 8-bit console with less compute than a wristwatch. It’s more of a miracle when you’re doing the emulation on a potato with barely any more compute than the original and an incompatable architecture.
Don’t look at me like that, someone, somewhere, has gotten a full NES emulator running on a Commodore 64, I just know it.
He can download RetroArch and emulate everything up to Wii, including arcade. Much more than 8 bit. Any Windows PC can handle it.
In a previous decade I used to play around with one of those emulators for which you could find all the old Atari & Commodore 64 ROMs – totally legal wink wink – and to my great surprise it turns out almost all those games are crap by modern standards. Who knew.
There was one C64 game that I just could not find and I’m kind of glad I couldn’t because I didn’t want yet another pleasant memory trashed.
I had an emulator just to play Commander Keen when I was feeling nostalgic.
Rhy – A lot of the old games are slathered with nostalgia filter. They were important stepping stones, but they didn’t have the benefits of the lessons learned from their mistakes.
The Infocom games hold up better than most – having no graphics helps.
The old games have died of dysentery.
The Infocom games hold up better than most – having no graphics helps.
Yes.
Zork Zero and/or Beyond Zork had graphics. I think one of them was done after Activision bought Infocom.
Witness and I think Deadline had a time mechanism. You had so much time to solve the mystery. I don’t remember how it was implemented. It has been a long time since I played those games.
The actors unions didn’t help any.
Galaga, Pac-Man, and DigDug were almost a gigabyte.
WTF?
First time I have ever played Gauntlet.
That was fun.
The boy liked it too.
My favorite, Planetfall, had that too. You had to find food or die.
Fun fact… that genre still has an active community and playing around with it a couple decades ago was what finally inspired me to pursue my current career.
Some of the more modern games are very impressive indeed.
Galaga was my favorite followed closely by Gyruss but that one was a lot harder to find.
I recently acquired the same collection of games – it was on sale for under $5.
My favorite, Planetfall, had that too. You had to find food or die.
Right, I remember that now.
I’m gonna say it again: Worms Armageddon is tremendous. I loved that game. Have played with my nephews at their place on some streaming thingy.
I’m a simple man.
Mamdani purposefully snubs Jews in an annual event, and “Mamdani plans to spend $5.2M on his propaganda office
Taxpayers are on the hook for $5.2 million to pay the swollen salaries of the information ministers in socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new City Hall propaganda bureau – a staggering 175% more than first thought, The Post can reveal.
It’s barely been open for business for a month, but the Office of Mass Engagement has already seen ts headcount balloon 186% from 14 to 40, with $5,123,756 earmarked for salaries, according to the city’s recently released 2027 executive budget… the agency had begun hiring for 14 cushy jobs totaling roughly $1.6 million in taxpayer cash, with gigs that included a $150,000 campaign director…”
Well. WTF were people expecting? He really may be the worst. AOC and Omar are at least cute. Apparently, the soy AWFLs find *him* cute, which absolutely baffles me. Well. Offering women a bunch of ‘free’ money is incredibly popular. Well. Among the throng of young females, statistically, some of them are gonna be hot. I’d also wager the soy boys are far to low-T to be of any sexual use, other than provide start-up free money in attempt to woo the ladies with their staunch feministicality.
https://nypost.com/2026/05/31/us-news/nyc-mayor-mamdani-plans-to-spend-5-2-million-on-his-office-of-mass-engagement/
And before anyone comes in and says they wouldn’t Omar I’d hit that like a ranger battalion quick roping into Mogadishu.
Thank you for taking one for the team.
Anything for the Glibs.
Omar’s fucking hot AF. I vow to inseminate her with the virtues of individual liberty. AOC, as well. With her in that dress, I’d like to enrich her with my taxes.
Full disclosure: Middle East /Indian brown happens to be a thing with me. (It certainly shows in my long-term relationships.)
No, no she is not.
/pale redheads are the best.
I hear AOC won the audition to unseat the old guy in her district and her looks were probably 90% of it. I am sure Omar was similarly auditioned.
Is quick roping like self hanging?, because I’d caradine myself before Omar.
Both were absolutely chosen because of their looks. AOC’s quasi-Hispanicness, as well, and same for Omar’s heritage. (Just don’t talk about her marrying her brother to break immigration laws, AFAIK.)
They were both willing to say whatever they fed ’em. They were trained to deliver The Message with gusto. (They absolutely auditioned for that.)
And in return?! They get all the attention, money and fancy presents that comes from being a pretty mouthpiece. I’m sure they, like Harris, fucked their way to where they are. (Perhaps not to Harris’ famous standard, but perhaps.)
After she got over her brother, seems she has a taste for white guys.
I wonder how that goes over in the Somali community.
I appreciate your euphemism.
He is glib I will give him that. I will not comment on his “attractiveness” because it is irrelevant and impossible to judge after learning more about him and watching him in action. But his most important qualification is the letter “D” next to his name. The commies who took over that party have capitalized on the fact that almost nobody shows up for the primaries so here we are.
He’s a decent looking guy for Baghdad.
His background is northern Indian, I believe. A lot of them are pretty white, especially the wealthier castes. His family moving to Uganda is the literal “settler colonialism” that he pretends to complain about.
Yes, he is decent looking but it’s completely overshadowed by him being colossal prick.
I would say he’s mid for an American.
Makes up for it some by the way he holds himself and grooming.
America has the advantage of lots more variety to choose from.
It’s the hybrid vigor.
“He really may be the worst. ”
Unfortunately he was the pick of the litter. The next will be progressively worse. It’s the nature of politics, to build on the previous experiment.
I’d like to see a group photo of “Mam the Man and his staff”.
Get ready to taste the rainbow on that grouping.
His staff are the ones that have the same ugly politics but no ability to mug for the camera.
Paging Incitatus… Incitatus to the courtesy phone, please…
@rhy: The staff are the writers. Mamdani, AOC, Omar, and plenty more, are merely visual branding.
We’ve got this guy, he’s articulate (not really) and clean.
And in commie circles, the ugliness is usually both inside and outside.
“French police have detained 780 people involved in violent clashes in Paris and other French cities that erupted on Saturday night after Paris Saint-Germain defeated Arsenal to win the Champions League.”
–and in London,
“About 75 people had to be rescued from height and 16 people were arrested during Arsenal’s victory bus parade on Sunday, emergency services said.” ~The Guardian
I love how Euros sneer at American ‘Redneck culture.’ I’m also curious how the Trumpian Euros in Germany, UK, etc will react to their countries being taken over. I suppose I think they’ve already given in to ‘the inevitable,’ but there are sparks of discontent. I hope it swells over, more than AfD has been able to get after being shut down. (I’ve lost track of them.) I fear it’ll take a Big Event for them to change.
Huh. There’s the Great Man style of history. I think I lean towards a Big Event variant. Upsetting when ya think the world will get one and ya kinda think they deserve it, to get slapped into consciousness. Europe needs one. As I say that, I was thinking this morning about how if Trump were assassinated, especially in public, how fucking *thrilled* and celebratory people would openly be. My own family, for instance.
They’re thinking the same as me. And like me, ha! I just ‘want’ it to happen to other people over there! (Preferably, after I’m gone. And I get popcorn to watch from Above, having MST3K watch-athons with current events, as I give ’em my told-ya-sos. )
(The Great Men (usually?) worked hard to get to where they were when the Big Events transpired, but I think they obviously go hand in hand.)
Violent riots after a victory happens in
Philadelphiathe US too IIRC.I remember attending a couple “Canyon of Heroes” celebrations back when I worked on Broadway and some NYC sports teams had some success. The worst I saw was piles of ticker tape that had to cleaned up after.
In the 90s when the Chicago Bulls played the Utah Jazz for the NBA Championship I was in Salt Lake City with my dad (in his truck at a truck stop) watching the game and I joked about all the Mormons rioting like Chicago if the Jazz won.
Maybe after Paris falls London and Berlin will wake up.
I usually have one anime of the season that I feel like I should watch, but don’t. Currently my Japanese teacher is watching this one, but I’m not.
Nippon Sangoku
The pinnacle of modern civilization known as Japan is now long forgotten. Ravaged by civil war and technological collapse, Japan has regressed into a post-Meiji era society and is now divided into three imperial territories known as Yamato, Buo, and Seii.
However, Aoteru Misumi, a 15-year-old literature enthusiast, dreams to bring back the culture and technology that once made the pride of his country. Although unwilling to turn his theoretical knowledge into concrete action at first, a tragic turn of events drives Aoteru to head to Osaka in hopes of enlisting in the army and eventually uniting the country under his own banner.
Osaka—once one of the three jewels of Kansai—has become a crime-ridden city where Aoteru almost loses his life. Luckily, he encounters a fellow ambitious young man named Yoshitsune Asama who pursues the same dream. With Aoteru’s strategic prowess and Yoshitsune’s masterful swordsmanship, the two now embark on a journey to restore the former glory of Japan.
My current favorite of the season.
Akane-banashi
This one, shockingly, is available in many regions including the US for free with commercials on YouTube. I’ve been waffling about writing up with a bit of history about the Edo era comic storytelling similar to vaudeville in the US.
All the names give me flashbacks of watching (or worse, reading) Battle Royale where it is impossible for someone who does not speak Japanese to keep them all straight in his head. I actually had to put the book down after a hundred pages or so because I just could not figure out who was who.
From the ‘not possible to have a reasonable discussion with Lefties, from my SiL’s best friend, who posts lefty shit on her business’ FB page and makes shitty ‘pride’ merch. This is on her personal page, and isn’t about me. There’s no ‘talk’ to be had. And, yep. You’re heartless, so convinced of your holier status, and you won’t hear ill of your ‘church’ and its leaders.
“I’m going say something that feels cruel
which is unlike me
but I do mean it
I used to have a few friends
who were (are) MAGA
and I tried to help them change
but they wouldn’t
and eventually I couldn’t stand by any longer
and we don’t speak anymore
and I hope they’re lonelier without me.
that’s the cruel part
that I don’t want to say out loud
but can I be honest? I’m a good friend
I KNOW I am
and I hope when it’s quiet
they miss me
and feel lonely
because they deserve to.
because we CANNOT act like their bullshit is normal. it’s not. it’s dangerous.
keep talking to your maga friends who might listen, but trust me – ditch the ones who won’t. they don’t deserve you. ❤️🩹✌🏻”
==========
The definition of AWFL, who runs her shitty from-home crafts business and lives on the money of her husband. Fat woman, always has been. Makes plus-sized clothes. Made/ distributed whistles for anti-ICE.
The replace MAGA with ANY (except its ‘synonym’ NAZI) other word…
lol Projection as always.
It’s pronounced prog-jection.
She sounds like my sister.
Who unpersoned me almost a decade now over some BS about teachers and their unions.
My life is a tad quieter without her always demanding I help her move or fix something.
With all of my health issues the last few months I haven’t really cooked my own food, just heated up stuff. So I haven’t touched my hot pepper stash in the freezer. But feeling better now, so I’m cooking tonight. I added two Reapers to what will be some ‘tacos’ and the remainder turned into a chili like thing. I hope my tolerance hasn’t dipped during my hiatus. 🌶️🔥🤷♀️
👍
I don’t real-cook anymore for reasons either. I hope to again but priorities interfere for now.
That ought to cure what ails you.
I miss cooking. Mostly, my Sunday Soup Days. I’d make a crock of filling soup and dive into that through the week.
Tasted just one tiny piece of the beef and it was hotter than anything I’ve had in months. It will be delightful, I’ve missed the heat.
I can’t do hot.
⬅️
Happy June, or something…
😎🌻⛱️
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ04WbgI9rg
🎶🎶
Good morning, Sean, U, and Ted’S.!
Morning, GT. How goes it?
Very well, thanks! I’m almost done with that stupid Squaredle work puzzle Sean got me hooked on! How are you?
I’m in the office sifting through my backlog of messages and emails. My lab work from last week was all good numbers. I did go up a few pounds from recent personal lightest, but it’s within the water weight fluctuation range, so I suspect it’s just water. I got my sleep schedule back to a reasonable range just in time to not miss work because I couldn’t get proper sleep. And I have cheese 😁🧀
If you have cheese, you can face anything!
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/995/981/9a5.jpg
Morning, Glibs.
suh’ cuh’
How goes?
things are falling apart- 2 weeks ago I learned Im getting hearing aids. Now its time to get the heart checked since I was having issues passing out after coughing
😯😥
Happy Monday!
He seems nice….
Media Major with a pervsion scandal? Speed running that career path?
suh’ fam
whats goody
/get to see my cardiologist today- yay
Good morning, homey! Study hard for that cardio exam!