I'm sure coL remembers my reactions to the first few episodes of the series back in the summer, and anyone else who remembers them will know too, but I had really high hopes for SAO. I mean really high. The worst thing I had read about SAO going in was that the mc was a Mary Sue, but that didn't bother me at all. I wasn't expecting anything intellectual, I didn't care if the MC was 'perfection incarnate' because I wasn't interested in him, I was interested in the setting. A story about thousands of people being locked in an VRMMO for years, where death in the game results in death IRL? I can't even imagine something that appeals to me more than that. It's like they took my two favorite things, fantasy settings and video games, and flawlessly merged them together into something I've dreamt about since I first opened the door to Seyda Neen so many moons ago: a virtual world.

Sounds simple. Liberally enough almost every game since the mediums inception has been one, more specific and you can say the hundreds of MMO's since the genre blossomed out of MUDs has each featured a "virutal world." But the truth is, really, that none of them have. No single game has every truly featured a virtual world, they haven't even come close. The game will always be just a game to some, if not most, people. They're always going to act in the game in ways they'd never even think of acting IRL. They're going to troll, they're going to grief, they're going to just act like imbeciles because "lol it's just a game who cares nerd get a lyfe 4 real." But by making SAO a "death game," by locking people in, the vast majority of that's eliminated. And even more than that, even more than forcing people to take it seriously, you have people treating it like it's a life. Agil and Lisbeth both open a blacksmith, because you have to make money somehow and you can't always be out progressing, that chick in the early Yui episodes creates an orphanage for the kids in the game, the IT guy becomes a fisherman, people buy houses and open businesses and offer services. Because when you're locked in the game, when you can't leave, when death is really death, it stops being a game. The food they eat tastes real, the air and the sun feel real, the life they're living is real, even if it's not "in the real world."

And that's what I wanted. I wanted a 2 cour anime that explored the world of the game. The mechanics, how people were adapting, how they were living, how the game worked, because like I said early on, and it's still true: I would sign up for SAO even knowing about the death mechanic. I don't know what I'd do when I played it, I don't know if I'd join a progression guild or just open a black smith or a tavern or what, but I would sign up in a heart beat. My god that'd be amazing.

Let's take SAO. Let's tidy up the plot devices a little bit, make the whole "locked in the game" a little bit more believable. Now let's remove Kirito. Lets' remove Asuna. Let's make, instead of Kirito or Asuna, let's make the main character someone completely unlikely as a hero. Let's have multiple main characters, none of whom know each other. A ten year old who bought SAO day 1 with birthday money, a 15 year old who isn't destined to be the MC so doesn't have plot armor, and a 35 year old who's married and has kids in the single digit age range. None of them join a progression guild because none of them want to risk their life. They all go about the SAO game as if it was the real world, doing labor and business to get by, socializing, just living. Now without Kirito what happens? The progression groups get demolished in the higher floors. When those guilds are all gone progression's over. What was a 2 year time frame in the show now becomes, let's say 20 years. The game only ends when Kayaba dies, well let's pretend Kayaba has a heart attack and dies 20 years after SAO starts.

What if the story focused on those characters, the progression of their lives through those 20 years in SAO, and, more importantly, how they adapted to the real world once it was over? The 10 year old gets adopted by a couple in the game within a year or two of it starting. He grows up in the game with a new family. How does his life go when the game finally ends? He's now 30, the mother and father waiting for him, holding onto hope he'll come out of the death game, they're not the mother and father he remembers, they're not his family any more. His family is the family from the game. So now these people who've come to his bedside every day for 20 years, who've only wanted their son back, finally have him but he doesn't care about them. Then you have the 15 year old, he's lost his youth completely. He's at an age where most people would be well on their way to the peak of their careers and he hasn't even completed high school. And the 35 year old? That's easy. His wife's moved on and married someone else, his parents have died, and his kids don't remember him. When he entered the game he had a perfect life, now that he's left it he's alone in a foreign world. And that's important, too. The world is foreign to them. They've spent the last 20 years doing everything from cooking to buying things using UI's. They've missed 20 years of technology, of world political changes, of cultural changes. They're all people out of time.

I'm thinking Cast Away, combined with Rip Van Winkle, put together with a modern tilt. I'll be honest, this one's been eating at me since it first came to me. I've never in my life wanted to write a fanfic but damned if I didn't start jotting down ideas when this came to me. Admittedly it probably wouldn't work as a TV show, the format wouldn't fit, but it would work as a book I think, and that's what SAO originally is.

Speaking of Vietnam, can you imagine what went on at that "party"? Bunch of people with PTSD getting together at a bar, those conversations can't have been nearly as happy as they looked.

"Hey Kirito, how you doin?"
"Fine. Thinking about Sachi."
"Yea man I feel ya, we lost a lot of good people in there."