Let’s Play Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment – Part 52

Hey boys and girls. You know what would be great right about now?

That’s right, the next installment of Next Top Waifu! And let me tell you, judging for this slot was a lot harder than I expected. However, the winner is…

SILICA! This position was closely tied with Lisbeth, considering the sheer amount of times Miss Blacksmith has pissed me the hell off. Eventually she won the higher slot because, though she’s had plenty of bad times, she’s had some good times too, rare as they’ve been. Silica simply hasn’t. The character herself isn’t that bad but she’s been the centre of so much creepy shit that it’s inexcusable.

Tangentially, I really wish she wore her hair down more. It really goes a long way to make her look mature and less like… well, loli bait.

The bedroom scenes seem to occupy this… weird continuity-less space in which you can take a girl to bed for the explicit purposes of fucking, then jump to a scene completely unrelated to fucking, then go back to the game proper without a word about it again.

I don’t even know why Silica’s in Kirito’s bed. There’s no justification for why she’s here and they definitely haven’t fucked.

Case in point. Dumbass has no idea why her face is red. Even Kirito isn’t dumb enough to wonder why a girl seems flustered after making the beast with two backs.

Maybe Silica’s supposed to be sick? or something? What A Mysterious Jogo.

That awkward moment when your husbando is right there and you don’t know what to say.

Silica holy shit you are in bed with him I think staring at him is kind of secondary at this point.

The communal braincell has fled Kirito’s grasp.

Blue-ovaried again.

*sighs* “Oh well. Time to sniff his hair.”

One piece of good news at least! The Photo Album is good for things other than studying your creepy CG in loving detail! It also lets you replay the CG cutscenes you’ve experienced. Since taking a screenshot requires pressing Start, and pressing Start skips a cutscene, I’ve had to be pretty careful about those. Taking educated guesses about when the best time to ‘strike’ is, or just constantly resetting the game and continuing from a checkpoint like I did with the PoH and Philia one. Since clearing the Hollow Area unlocks it, I can show you all of them now, including the previous ones I had to do text recaps of!

Can you tell I’m stalling for time until the patch yet?

Next up on the totem pole iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis…

Lisbeth! Which you already knew because of what I wrote for the Silica entry. Oh well.

And finally, four scenes in, we have one that actually hints at something less innocent than just lying on the same bed.

… you don’t think she’ll get mad? You don’t think your wife will be mad about you sleeping with her friend!?

What the fuck am I watching. I didn’t edit anything out, this is exactly how the scene is presented ingame.

Enough cuckoldry, let’s bicker about who gets the sheets.

I think you’re the one who thinks a half-inch is reasonable, Kirito. HEYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Kirito is overjoyed to meet someone who’s as X-TREME as he is.

… huh?

… w-what? What the fuck? Did Lisbeth just hit it and quit it so hard she flung Kirito bodily into the Friendzone? What is even going on any more?

Kirito you are like three inches from her. So a dick-length. If you can’t hear her, you are officially deaf.

GROW SOME BALLS, LISBETH. OVARIES. WHATEVER.

Not pictured: Kirito folded up like an Olympic contortionist to fit into the space around Lisbeth’s armpit region.

“No brains to go with that beauty I guess, Kiri.”

“Still landed a home run before Silica even got up to bat! That’s something at least.”

Man. These bedroom scenes. They aren’t even particularly skeevy. They’re just… bizarre.

With the inferior waifus behind us, only the top three remain. Who could they be? The answers may surprise you! Oh who am I kidding, they’ll be as obvious as the colour of the sky. But I need something to amuse myself for three days so this is what you’re getting.

Asuna! I don’t put Asuna in the lowly third place slot lightly. I mean, she really hasn’t done anything that bad. She has one of the best track records of the bunch. It’s just that, well… she really hasn’t done anything. She’s almost a complete non-entity. I’m honestly hard-pressed to remember anything she’s done Event-wise beyond be vaguely scolding and matronly when the need arises. Not bad but not a standout either. At least being middle-of-the-road put her above Miss Tentacle Rape and Miss Waffling Homewrecker.

D’awww Kirito’s even holding her hand.

The intricacies of the Japanese language strike again. Clearly Kirito was using some kind of formal syntax and personal pronoun there that us baka gaijin could never absorb. Ted Woolsey would weep at the sight of this translation.

Oh my God is this really going to turn into a language discussion.

“But calling you Kirito-Sensei when we-”
“Not what I’m talking about sweetie!”

I mean it has been almost 150 hours. Apparently the unpatched game has a pitfall of a glitch that removes Asuna from the game world entirely. I probably wouldn’t have noticed for another 20 hours. Sorry honey, them’s the breaks.

“I really need to talk to Agil about buying a bigger bed for this room.”
“Oh stop being such a drama queen.”
“I’VE FALLEN OUT THREE TIMES!”

“Ah yes, I remember it fondly. You stripped down to your underwear right in front of me then violently assaulted me for looking at you.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Save it for marriage counselling once we get home.”

His Pavlovian responses triggered, Kirito begins to salivate at the prospect of a booty call from his wife.

And then the scene just sits its big fat lumbering asshole down on the couch and ends. Did they fuck? Did they stay up all night and talk? Did Kirito wind up having to sleep on the couch while Asuna ate ice cream straight from the carton while she tearfully asked Lisbeth if she was turning into her mother? All these questions and more will be answered NEVER.

What’s that? Time for the Rank 2 Waifu? Okay then…

SINOOOOOOOOOOOON

Now I’d like to make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t think Sinon is Best Girl. She isn’t second-place here by virtue of the fact that she was number one before Philia showed up. If I was judging by depictions outside of Infinity Moment, Sinon would be far lower. She’s just… really, really not everything she’s hyped up to be by the fanbase. I’m sorry guys, it’s just the truth. She’s exactly as much of a falsely confident victimized tsundere that Asuna became. Sinon won second place here because of the whole Infinity Moment team she’s had the most parts that I genuinely liked. The poker game, for example, was a really early indication of how different she was from the rest of the group. She had plenty of bad times too (YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE over her soaked panties being one of the worst) but I weight genuinely good moments more than the simple absence of bad ones. Anyway, enough :words:, let’s get creepy.

Oh for fuck’s sake. Do all these bedroom scenes begin with the girl in question just teleporting unexpectedly under Kirito’s sheets? Or are they all Hangover-esque ontological mysteries?

“Yeah but you’re kind of half-naked in my bed-“

“Are we… are we doing the Shino/Sinon dichotomy justifying your stripper outfit thing?”
“… I… don’t know…”

“Believe me. The couch and I are well acquainted.”

“Pretty easily. I mean have you seen the mobs? They’re still sub-100 on floor 90!”

“I’ll just go sleep in my wife’s bed instead.”
“… I totally forgot about that.”
“You know what sometimes I do too.”

The scene fades to black as I can only assume Kirito tries to nod off. This fails, and I’ll spare you the three beat-panels of the pair staring at each other awkwardly.

I’m going to be the one sleeping first at this rate. Also how the fuck are you doing that with your mouth, Sinon.

OH THE IRONY

[The two continue to stare at each other for six hours]

“I SAID YOUR DICK IS CURING MY PTSD”
“Oh okay. Carry on.”

“Snipers work best with live bait after all.”

“Counting on you to not die immediately like you always seem to do. Seriously, you’re level 120 and Silica is tougher than you.”

I wasn’t kidding by the way.

Seriously look at this shit. Sinon is 8 levels higher than Silica but has worse HP, Attack, Defence, Strength and Vitality. This is probably an opportune time to talk about Infinity Moment/Hollow Fragment’s stat system. It’s deceptively simple. Two points of Strength = one point of Attack, two of Vitality is one point of Defence, two of Agility is one of Dodge, two of Dex is one of Hit. HP isn’t derived from anything, different characters just have different growth rates for some goddamn reason. So in exchange for being generally weaker, more fragile, and all-around shittier than the lower-levelled Silica, Sinon gets… an extra 24 points of Hit and Dodge. Yaaaaay?