©2023 Keiichi Shigurezawa/KADOKAWA/GGO2 Project
At the end of the day, this is easily my favorite episode of season two so far. That’s because, more than anything, this is an episode of Pitohui. As a villain, her performance in the first season was even better than Lian. After all, without Pitohui and her Death Game, the stakes wouldn’t be there, and Ren might never have bothered to join Squad Jam 2.
There’s a big question looming for Season 2: now that Pitohui’s obsession has gone from re-creating Sword Art Online Lian’s own experience? How will her obsession with Lian affect her actions? In this episode, we get the answer.
Just like before, Pitohui is chasing the highs. However, the climax this time did not come from a life-and-death struggle, but from an all-out confrontation with Lian, because Pitohui is a genius who is good at reading people’s emotions. She knew Ren had no interest in fighting her anymore, and certainly not as seriously as Pitoue was dying. Therefore, the real problem facing Pitohui this season is not how to win the game, but how to make Lian want to fight her.
As a master manipulator, Pitovi knows that the easiest way to control someone is to piss them off—provoking them until they act contrary to their normal nature. In this case, all she has to do is make herself the object of Lian’s wrath. When you look back at the season so far, you can clearly see that all of Pitohui’s actions against Lian were designed to do just that. She often forces Lian to do things she doesn’t want to do – such as becoming bait – and then makes fun of Lian.
It’s likely that Pitohui’s original plan was to take out the SHINC team herself in some anticlimactic fashion, depriving Ren of the chance to fight the team honorably like they promised. To her, the announcement of the entire team of betrayers was almost certainly an unexpected gift from God. This allows her to do two things: 1) use an expendable team (the Betrayer) to eliminate as many other teams as possible, leaving a separate battlefield for her and Lian; 2) allows her to fight in a way Betrayal Lotus: is doubly personal.
Since Ren is the true traitor, Pitoue joins the team of betrayers so that she can pretend that she and Ren are still on the same team. In Lian’s mind, she and Pitohui still work together, even against her friends Fukaziroh and M. But when it’s revealed that Pitohui has been pretending all along, it becomes clear to Lian that everything Pitohui has done with the Betrayer team is to ruin her experience in Squad Jam 3. Not only did she manipulate Lian’s emotions, she also went to great lengths to ensure that the battle between SHINC and Lian wouldn’t happen as Lian wanted.
Ren was blinded by rage, and everything looked like Pitoue would get the fight she wanted. However, this incident shows that this does not come without a cost. As proven last season, Pitohui is self-destructive. She is more than willing to risk her life in pursuit of the top. In the real world, she’s a pop star fresh off an exhausting tour. Instead of resting, she competed in a high-stakes tournament that required her to run at 100 percent to get the results she wanted. Knowing this was dangerous, she purposely logged in using NerveGear instead of AmuSphere to bypass any automatic security features that forced her to log out.
While it’s doubtful whether Pitohui’s life is in danger this time around, her current health condition certainly is. She’s currently nearing her mental limit, and more than once in this episode we see her on the verge of passing out. Unlike last time Ren tried her best to protect Pit Hye, this time she only focused on her anger. Since no one is paying attention to Pitohui, her self-destructive nature will likely cause more than a little actual harm.
grade:
Random thoughts:
• Ah, I discovered that Pitohui understands the old adage: “Why have one when you can have two?”
• I bet Fukaziroh and M figured out Ren was the real traitor from the beginning and just wanted to see how things would turn out (one just for laughs, one because he was completely loyal to Pitohui and her wishes).
• Pitohui caused a huge death toll in this episode by crashing a ship into one team and electrocuting another – and that’s not even counting the people she killed up close and personal with her photon sword.
• If Lian really wants to hurt Pitohui, all she has to do is deny her the fight she wants – although at this point, it looks like Lian is just as hungry for a fight as Pitohui.
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation and the majority shareholder of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.
