In this week’s episode, enter the mysterious transfer student!  Yeah, I’ll just… pull out the ol’ bingo card…

The new student is Suzuki Aika, a Japanese girl that lived overseas and seems to have gained stereotypical foreign features through… I’m going to say osmosis.  She also talks like a soldier and has the social skills of a robot.  She’s instantly popular, and students immediately swarm her desk to pester her with questions.  BINGO!  *ahem* Er, moving on…

There seems to be something off about her, though… Either that, or Itsuki’s been spending too much time playing PSO2, because he’s either seeing holograms or hallucinating.

For some reason, Aika follows Itsuki around like a bloody stalker.  We see that scene where she follows him into the bathroom and it’s about as meh as it was when we saw it in the anime preview and the episode preview.  On the plus side, there was an unexpectedly hilarious scene where Itsuki’s friend surprises Aika, who goes for the violent punch on reaction bit, but he reacts and defends himself on time.  I don’t know what the point of that was, but it was pretty amazing.

The two continue on to the dorms, and Itsuki shows her around over there as well.

Once he’s finished, he takes a quick nap in his room and has the kind of dreams I have on Wednesdays.

But gee, I WONDER WHO WILL BE THERE WHEN HE WAKES UP?!

Naturally, Itsuki gets in trouble and has to file an apology even though it’s Aika who broke into HIS room and I assume had her way with him while he was asleep.

Oh, that’s right, there was an MMO in this anime, wasn’t there?

The second plot of this episode revolves around Itsuki’s leveling experience.  He gets chewed out by SOROS for being reckless.  It turns out that he’s been attacking enemies head-on (because, again… Gunslash user) and not been evading attacks or healing properly, forcing SOROS to do nothing but support when he parties with Itsuki.  This results in Itsuki avoiding SOROS, and Izumi notices Itsuki is lying when he shows up without a PSO2 report with excuses that he just didn’t play the game.  In another one of those fun little scenes, we see Izumi struggling with her inner thoughts, wanting to chew Itsuki out but unable to afford blowing her cover as SOROS.  It’s really surprising just how much more character everyone has in this episode compared to the first one.  Still not all that much, mind you, but it’s a huge improvement.  Which is kinda sad.

Oh, and SOROS is actually famous for being a skilled veteran solo player.  So he’s kind of a big deal.  *cough* Orca *cough* Balmung *cough*

SOROS gets in trouble soloing the Hard Forest stage, as he triggers an Emergency Code: Rescue AND an Emergency Code: Duel (Rockbear).

Okay, time for education.  Emergency Codes are spontaneous events that suddenly start while you’re moving through a map.  It’s completely RNG-based if one will start up.  They can even occur right after each other.  Most are simple: kill a mob, kill waves of mobs, destroy a target, keep an ally alive… Emergency Code: Escape creates a massive cage around you while Darkers spawn inside.  You have to fend off the endlessly spawning Darkers while trying to break out.  It’s called “Rescue” because you need rescuing; it’s actually much easier for allies outside the cage to destroy the cage, though you absolutely can break out by yourself.  Emergency Code: Duel is basically a boss spawn.  The Rockbear is the main boss of the Forest stage, but Duel Emergency Codes can spawn all kinds of crazy shit.  At lower levels, the toughest is the giant Darker, Dark Ragne.

The funny thing is that the Rockbear is a Native creature while Darkers are evil invading aliens.  In-game, if Natives and Darkers spawn in the same area, they will aggro each other.  So really, SOROS could have just let the Rockbear and the Darkers fight each other while he focuses on breaking out of the cage.

Instead, we have Itsuki showing up to save the day, and he even shows off his new skills: dodging and using healing items!  Keep in mind, we literally learn that he didn’t know about this until AFTER he hit level 15.  Holy shit, that’s bad. I bet he doesn’t get his MAG unit until level 40 and he develops it around Dexterity.

So yeah, Itsuki and SOROS make up while Aika watches from the shadows again. How do they celebrate their rekindled friendship?

IRL, Aikae confronts Izumi about making Itsuki play PSO2, and we finally see the reasoning behind it.  You ready?  No you’re not.  It’s… it’s something.

Okay, so in this setting, the widely-available “Ethernet” has produced a new era of communication in the world, and it has resulted in a boost in the success of PSO2, which for some reason comes preinstalled with the most popular Ethernet OS…  Yeah, this is a blatant ripoff of The World’s backstory from .hack.  Anyway, Seiga Academy wants to ban PSO2 from the schools, reasoning that it’s a distraction from studies.  Izumi wants to prove them wrong and show that PSO2 is, like, the greatest thing ever.  Maybe not in so much words, but we do know that she’s a huuuuuuge PSO2 fan (her room is completely decorated with Rappies and Lillipans), so it’s entirely possible she’s just a PSO2 freak that’s abusing her position.  Still, she does make a good point about maintaining some semblance of freedom for the students.

What’s pretty funny is that Izumi asks if Aika plays PSO2 as well, probably thinking “Oh, that’s nice.”  Then Aika reveals she’s already mastered the Force, Techer, and Bouncer classes.  Here she is leveling up the Ranger for the first time, and Aika drops the mic.  Techer is the advanced version of Force, the basic magic-casting class.  Bouncer is a swift-hitting physical core class with high mobility.  This means Aika is most likely a high-level, hard-to-catch nuker.  Recognizing this, Izumi assigns her as a special officer under Itsuki to help him with his PSO2 reports.

And that’s the end of the episode.  Overall, still a bit cringey, still blatantly commercial, but a huge improvement over episode 1.

Things I’m hoping we get in the future:

Wired Lance.  Until the introduction of the Bouncer and their Jet Boots, this was the most unique weapon in the game, and still one of my favorites.  It’s what I leveled Hunter Natsume with before we got Fighters and Twin Daggers.

An episode on Weapon Grinding.  Imagine seeing Itsuki on a lucky streak, making a +9 Gunslash, only to suddenly see the RNG Gods turn against him, reducing him to a +4.  DAMN YOU, DUDU!  Well, at least he isn’t in danger of breaking the damn thing.  Oh god, and then he goes out hunting down Rappies to farm the Grinders he needs…  There’s a lot of potential here.  Do it, Sega.

An episode solely on MAG evolution.  Constantly feeding your hungry MAG junk, learning about their potential, seeing one evolve… It’s a no-brainer.

Cash Shop scratchers.  Just… address it.

PSE BURST!  Basically, killing enemies randomly triggers a PSE level of a certain color, which is determined by enemy types and what you kill them with.  Increasing PSE level to maximum triggers a PSE Burst, which starts a countdown timer and spawns mobs and increases loot.  Triggering another level increases this timer.  Triggering a PSE Burst of a different type causes a Cross Burst, which makes things totally fucking crazy – basically you’ll be swarming with loot for the next few minutes if you can trigger a Cross Burst, and it can go on for forever with the right map and the right spread of players.  Insane leveling happens during Cross Bursts, but it’s sadly still rather RNG-based.  Tons of fun though.