Previously on Sword Art Online:

Kirito & Leafa succeeded in stopping the Salamander’s attack on the Slyph-Cait Sith summit. With trouble averted and new allies gained, Kirito & Leafa continue their journey to Arun. Spoilers Ahead.

Kirito & Leafa finally make it to Arun at the base of the World Tree but have to log out due to server maintenance. In the real world Kazuto takes Suguha with him to visit Asuna in the hospital, seeing as hpw she has never met her. While Suguha begins to sort through her feelings for Kazuto in the real world, Asuna escapes from her cage and learns more about the horrifying experiments Sugou is performing on the players minds.

The action takes a backseat in this episode, but we at least get some more explanations and development, but unfortunately we also get some less then kosher scenes.

The city of Arun is huge with wonderful architecture and atomsphere; it’s also home to thousands of players and since it’s a neutral territory players from all over ALO come to interact with one another without fear of attack.

Now while there are a few scenes in ALO, most of the character development takes place in the real world with Kazuto (Kirito) & Suguha (Leafa). We get to see more of the two’s relationship and as evident in earlier episodes, despite being cousins the two share a very close brother & sister relationship (she even still calls him “big brother”) even thought they are still unaware of their ALO identities. Suguha is still sorting out her feelings for Kazuto which is why she decides to go with him to see Asuna. Upon seeing her she begins to feel regret about coming and thinks of her feeling towards him.

In ALO Asuna manages to escape her cage and finds a room with multiple holograms of brains. Surmising that they were the captive players brains Asuna finds a control console and tries to log them as well as herself out of ALO, but is captured by two scientist slugs.

This scene itself is almost wholly uneccesary as is almost devolves into tentacle hentai, with one of the slubs borderline molesting Asuna, it almost takes your mind out of the episode as a whole and almost completely demeans Asuna’s character, luckily she still manages to steal a key card before she is taken back to her cage.

Necessary? Doubt it.

When Leafa & Kirito return to the game, Kirito comforts Leafa who tells him she’s heartbroken and the two venture into Arun. Things seem to be going well until Yui detects Asuna above them and Kirito races off, leaving Leafa on the ground below.

While boasting some nice development for Suguha & Kazuto, “The Truth of ALfheim” isn’t as good as earlier episodes. This is mostly due to the lack of action and Asuna’s scenes. While she does retain some cleverness, she is almost completely demeaned in this episode. The quest continues next week as Kirito races to see Asuna.

3/5