Sword Art Online

[shinta|hikari]

- Yui announces that she is a psychological sub-routine of the primary balancing system, intended to keep players sane while they enjoy SAO. How that is accomplished in the body of an 8 year old is beyond me.

I think she was made to actually appear and talk to players. The child appearance is probably to make it easier for people to trust and connect with her. People like lolis cute things, after all.

- Oh, but the system that the creator has complete control over went rogue, and didn't allow it to run. While it is far more believable that he just blocked it from running for his own sadistic experiment, why the hell write a complicated psychoanalysis program if you ban it from running? Just make it equally sadistic for that end. You know, like Left4Dead's Director.

The game was supposed to be a proper MMORPG so Yui was there by design. Kayaba just turned it off. Cardinal should still be under Kayaba's control anyway. It was probably easier than modifying it.

- This psychological sub-routine is drawn to the blatantly disillusional, hero-complex exhibiting Kirito and his (now) hollow shell of a ultimate stereotypical heroine girlfriend/wife...and cites them as the two players in the game with..."normal parameters."

I think "normal" in the AI's perspective is how people should have been in the game without the death game modifications. People should be enjoying SAO after all. I agree that Kirito and Asuna are not normal considering the situation.

- As Yui is being deleted, Asuna says, "I can't smile without you."

To the program she became a mother figure to literally 24 hours ago. What a lame-ass attempt at an emotional pull. It is utterly impossible to believe that she could have gotten that attached to Yui in less than a day, particularly if she is as "sane" as Yui claims the two of them are.

I absolutely agree with you. Forced drama sucks.

Then we round it all out with Kirito suddenly becoming an elite hacker on the game that he can barely even know how it functions (else they wouldn't actually be trapped here, would they?), much less be able to fire off such quick and bug-free code in milliseconds to not only convert Yui's program to an in-game item, also store her AI sub-routines within the data of his own NerveGear...the device that the creator continues to have complete access over.

This is probably one of the worst things in the story. It is utterly stupid and could have been done in a more believable way, like Yui managing to save herself after being convinced by the couple to stay with them or something. An AI doing it is more believable than Kirito who was never shown to have programming capability. Why the hell would the admin access still be there anyway if the AI itself visually disappeared?

This has always been my most hated side story retcon in the novels. The entire Yui thing should have been scrapped.