Last week set up a final, hand-to-hand showdown between LLENN and Pitohui, and after a little friendly ribbing, LLENN manages to strike a nerve and get Pito to let her guard down. The thing is, even cutting her in the leg and throat doesn’t come close to bringing her down, and she has an iron fist waiting for LLENN’s face. She even eyes LLENN’s discarded P-chan, and has no qualms about using it to kill its master.
P-chan self-destructs rather than let that happen, but M is nearby with Fuka as his hostage. Pito’s rationale for killing M before Fuka or LLENN is that he betrayed her by bringing his love into what she wanted to be a true “death game.”
Fuka frees herself with the dagger in her hair, rushes Pito, but doesn’t attack her; instead, she cuts off LLENN’S hands and kicks her just right so she’s able to, essentially, tear out Pito’s throat. Pito admits defeat and agrees to honor the promise they made to meet IRL if LLENN killed her.
Unfortunately, the very distracted LLENN and Fuka are taken out by the last remaining team (T-S) who end up winning SJ2, but LLENN’s primary objective was never to win, but to save Pito, and in that she was successful.
After having tea and sweets with real-life SHINC, Karen and Miyu meet up with Goushi (of whose looks Miyu immediately approves), who has agreed to take them where real-life Pito is.
On the way, he describes how he was once a pathetic fatty who stalked Pito, and ended up being captured, restrained, beaten, and turned into her manservant, all of which he’s fine with, because “M” stands for masochist.
After watching Elsa Kanzaki play guitar and sing at her secret concert, Goushi takes Karen and Miyu backstage to meet the real-life Pito…the club owner. But Karen isn’t fooled; Elsa is the real Pito, because she knew things only someone who read her letter could know about her.
Elsa congratulates Karen for seeing through their admittedly half-assed little ruse, and gives her a big kiss that makes her very uncomfortable (though Karen herself gave her a big hug just before that).
When next we see the two, they are LLENN and Pitohui, only now they’re on the same side, enjoying GGO not as a Death Game, but a place to just have fun. And after her first and only encounter with Elsa IRL, Karen is somewhat reluctant to agree to any future ones.
So ends a usually entertaining, occasionally clever, but ultimately inessential edition to the SAO/GGO saga.
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That’s a good way to put it, inessential. And rather true. And I realise I forgot to include in my writeup that LLENN’s gun self-exploding does not agree with the game’s mechanics… GGO guns are not artificial intelligence, but who knows maybe they are from now on 🤔😎 It was like LLENN became magical mahou shoujo waving an alive wand
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P-Chan blew up when Pitohui tried to fire it because there was a round stuck in the breech – which is what the spirit of P-chan was trying to bring to LLen’s attention. Funny Kirito never had no talking swords….
I agree “Inessential” covers GGO Alternative pretty well. It was entertaining and engaging, and touched on SAO’s key themes simply but went for a ‘happy ever after ending’ to tie things up – which as a sidebar to the main franchise I guess it should have. I enjoyed it and will probably marathon it at some time in the future but am a lot more excited about the next entry in the main story which will be coming soon.
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