Sword Art Online: Alicization Episode 23 Review: Administrator

So the Cardinal is dead, Eugeo is a sword now, Kirito remembered than he is actually the awesome Black Swordsman that everyone is dying to see back in action, and the Administrator is still naked. This basically sums up everything that happened in this episode of Sword Art Online: Alicization.

Japanese Original Episode Title: アドミニストレータ

Plot

The Administrator traps the Cardinal and the rest into a dark void space in order to annihilate her. She then explains that the source of all the divine swords that make up the Golem are from converted human units in the human empire, and the source of its life is the piety module gathered from all the Integrity Knights. The Golem is only the prototype of an army that she is planning to build in order to fight the Dark Territory that will need almost half of the human’s empire population to create. After hearing all this, the Cardinal proposes to make a deal with Administrator, give up her own life for the freedom of Kirito, Alice, and Eugeo, which she accepts. The Administrator fatally wounds the Cardinal but before she leaves her last breath, she grants Eugeo’s wish of wanting to be fused with his own sword in order to fight the Golem and the Administrator. As a sword, he manages to shatter the golem’s piety module and then attacks the Administrator and cuts off her arm, but administrator breaks Eugeo into two pieces. Kirito, furious by everything that is going on, decides to step in and take the situation in his hands.

Episode Highlights

The one who controls all the programs: This is something that dazzled me from the very first time we got introduced to Quinella. If she is the Administrator of that world and has access to everything, how does she allow these people to do anything they want around her? She could easily just erase or overwrite them in any second. She even lets her Golem warrior get destroyed by mere CODE instead of just writing a command to extinguish them. Am I wrong or am I missing something here?

Kirito do something: Eugeo figured out the whole ceiling situation and Alice protected him during his transformation while Kirito was just sitting there crying about the Cardinal and Charlotte being dead. Really Kirito, really? You hear that half of the Underworld’s population is going to be turned into weapons and don’t do anything about it but you react only when Quinella decides to start fighting one-on-one?

He cut off her hand: Best ma- sorry sword Eugeo, cuts off her hand and Quinella decides to turn her hand into a weapon instead of putting it back into its place? I am starting to doubt her admin authorities in this world.

Themes & Trivia

What exactly is the Cardinal? There is a mention in this episode about what the Cardinal actually does but in case you forgot this was analyzed way back in first season. The ‘Cardinal System’ serves as the primary driving and management force of nearly all Virtual Reality MMOs in the Sword Art Online Universe. The system was originally developed by Kayaba Akihiko to manage all resources, processes, and events within Sword Art Online. A portable version of the Cardinal System was included in the World Seed to facilitate the easy management of new VR worlds.

Comments

Okay, allow me to get a little mean here. Why is everyone just sitting there chilling when people get hurt or attack or turn themselves into weapons? The fact that the Administrator was just standing there doing nothing while Eugeo was asking the Cardinal to turn him into a sword is kind of ridiculous. And at this point I am not taking the: ‘Oh, but she is doing it to entertain herself’ excuse, because this is just denying the fact of not being able to realize that the whole scene is actually just lamely written. There you go, I said it. And Kirito has been through so much shit by now that he actually needs to see people dying and getting hurt in front of him in order to get his ass moving and do something about it? What happened to his character development and all the ideas that he has of protecting anyone that means something to him?