Sword Art Online episode 14 is the end of Aincrad and the end of Akihito’s dream.
The creator Akihito claims that he does not know why he decided to make Sword Art Online, but his explanation afterwards says differently. He dreamed of an steel castle floating in the sky and created it in Aincrad. The world of the castle would be superior to the real world. He was making his own Utopia in the game. For him it was not even a game, when questioned about the people who died he mentions that like in any other world when you die you are gone. Since he thinks of the game as his dream and ideal world imagine how pissed he must be at the both of them for breaking the rules of the world. He must feel cheated of a proper ending to it all, since they did not play by his rules.
Unfortunately the writers have still not learned about what makes a meaningful sacrifice. Kirito living at the end and most likely Asuna as well makes the whole thing seem pointless. All the fears about dying and being apart and not keeping his promise. What a waste of time. While I am talking about their “last” moments together I thought that finding out their real names at that point was meaningless if they were really going to die. They only knew each other in the game, so there was no point in going into the part of their lives they did not share in their last moments. It would be like waiting to talk about your childhood with someone you met as an adult on your deathbed.
One of the biggest problems with Sword Art Online has been about the bodies of the people in the game. Well now they have dealt with that pretty well by showing the state that Kirito woke up in. Everyone who made it this far is probably in a similar state in a hospital bed somewhere. My complaint about it now is that Kirito should not have been able to just get up so easily after lying around for two whole years. They even showed the muscle atrophy that he had, but somehow right after waking up he could just get up and not even unhook himself from anything and go look for Asuna. I know it was for the impact of showing that his first thoughts after getting back to reality were of finding her, but they could have shown him struggling to get up to find her to the same effect.
As an ending to wrap up things about this first segment of Sword Art Online it was pretty good. They explained how Kirito got his dual wielding so that he could be the hero in Akihito’s story. There was also an explanation of how this was all supposed to end before Akihito was found out. I did not think that the weird thing Heathcliff did during the duel would be addressed, but that was explained as well. I did not like that they cut out a big chunk of the dungeon and the ending just came out of nowhere. Some more build up after the honeymoon period would have been nice.
