Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Rio dressed like Kirito, flying because we’re supposed to take it for granted that he learned how in the year the show skipped over so that he can get to Yagumo in time for the series to adapt that part of the novels!
I do understand what Seirei Gensouki is trying to do, and not only because dozens of light novel adaptations have done it before this show came along. There are, after all, only so many episodes in a series, and with just the English translation of novels already up to volume sixteen (or soon to be there), that means that the adaptors have to be very selective with what they choose to show us. Adaptation is much more an art than a science, and sometimes you have to make concessions where you can. But from the perspective of Vaguely Grumpy Anime Viewer, this episode tries to do way too much far too quickly,…
