⭐Accel World Episodes 3 & 4: Watch Along & Analysis

Everything up to now has been adapting the first Light Novel in the series and episode 4 finished adapting chapter 7. Next episode should be the end of volume 1, but is only halfway through the first arc, The Start-Up Arc which goes through the first 2 volumes (And yes that’s the name Reki gave the arc). Moving forward there will be a slightly different way the studio decided to adapt AW. They combine the main part of the series with the side-stories that appear in volume 10, putting them in chronological order with the rest of the arcs. They adapt all of the side-stories except for the “Versus” side-story. Anyway, with that I would point out the connections to SAO in these episodes, but there weren’t any that I could catch. Also, the exact year this is going on is 2046, basically 20 years after Alicization. I also wanted to mention that while checking if I was correct about the year AW was taking place, I accidentally came across some information from the newest volume of AW which hasn’t been translated to English and got spoiled on a pretty big detail regarding the Brain Burst game. I won’t be spoiling it for you but let me just say that it’s pretty interesting. I don’t know if you misheard the details about the requirements for Brain Burst, or maybe you just misspoke, but the whole thing of them needing to have worn the Neuro Linker since they were young doesn’t just apply to the kings. It is a base requirement for anyone that wants to have Brain-Burst, those Kings were just the strongest out of every other player and they had a pure colored avatar. You will get more information on this later. And yeah, I meant to mention that this series has more Slice of Life moments than SAO (Unless I did at some point). Even while reading the novels I felt like the most interesting out of the two aspects of the series, virtual and real world, I preferred the real-world stuff much more. The only bad part of the anime is that it really doesn’t get to the good stuff about the other characters in the series (Except maybe Chiyu). This series really delves deep into all its side-characters and makes them really likable. I hope after you finish the anime you can catch up with the novels.

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