Overview
Hello, welcome back to Kangaeru Sensei where we make learning fun by talking about how our favorite media that we consume have been carefully crafted to create spectacles that are truly wonderful. Today I want to have a little look at Accel World’s light novels. You’d be surprised that despite how niche this series is it has 25 light novels and to this day is still ongoing. The story is made by Reki Kawahara, the creator of SAO, who started writing Accel World in October 2007. Initially, he was just trying to have some fun but in 2008 he won the Dengeki prize and got the first volume published! SAO was also a web novel before Kawahara submitted it into Dengeki’s prize in 2002.
You might be wondering, why am I telling you all this? Well, I want to make it clear that I’m not particularly fond of SAO as a series despite loving Accel World. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Kawahara’s writing greatly developed when he initially began writing Accel World. Maybe SAO’s later seasons are great? Who knows and who cares, point is while it’s good SAO has a strong loving fanbase, I wish Accel World had something resembling its older brother’s success. Of course, don’t take this as me being a salty Accel world fan, just know that Reki Kawahara wrote Accel World very differently from SAO.
Anime Comparison:
In my opinion, Accel World’s anime is a great representation of the light novel overall, although I do have some minor gripes. For one, the way how the anime imagines the descriptions of the different stages and scenery within the Accelerated World is respectable. However, while the way these stages look matches how these locations were described in the light novels, the scenery all have a very generic anime-looking style, which makes it blend in with every other anime or JRPG in existence. Characters have big distinct eyes with not much going on with their faces or body, a kind of cutesy art style. Not being stylised like One Piece, or better yet, The Great Pretender, which uses varying numbers of colours in its art to make it truly feel like you’re exploring the world. The various terrains in Brain Burst consisting of: forest, lava or earth settings with maybe a dark gritty hellscape that’s fitting as the final dungeon. Although I’m probably just nitpicking as this could be said to be a problem with all anime in existence. This might be down to the fact that the anime is matching the illustrations made by HIMA; whose art style is so beautiful that they’ve made *ahem* other kinds of art, though that’s beside the point. I promise…
Thinking back, on the surface, many things about Accel World don’t actually seem to stand out. If you turned your brain off to most of the dialogue, you’d just see another generic anime that’s just halfway decent, after airing that season, fated to fade into obscurity. In fact, this is exactly what happened to Accel World in the end, and it could have had a chance for a season 2. And it’s honestly sad as people would have probably come to appreciate it more if they at least got to Hermes’ cord, those who’ve read the light novels know what I’m not talking about. Damn you Love Live! Damn you Infinite Burst! What a disgrace you two are, and if there are any fans for these abominations come take me on!
The Dusk Taker arc while good in the wider context of Accel World’s story is such a sour note to end the series on. Which isn’t the fault of the anime. Dusk Taker is an obdurate villain who’s motivated by the pleasure of people’s failures and suffering. Classic sadist, classic generic antagonist, correct? Well, when brain burst by design is such a cutthroat system that drops players for losing enough fights, we see how the people in different legions attempt to go against the implications the rules bring that ‘everyone is an enemy but you’. Further exemplified that if any king were to die once, they’d lose all their points in an instant. And reaching level 10 would mean killing every last king. So, when the characters are all looking to have some good fun at Hermes’ Cord and Rust Jigsaw ruins that, it makes what they’re doing feel all the more threatening. Breaking apart a safe space these kids have created for themselves in Brain Burst; burst linkers also got to worry about facing their own mental scars!!! They need a break sometimes you know.
In terms of subtly and foreshadowing, Kawahara was a king in the light novels, planting seeds for certain events through his unique wordplay that helped to show different perspectives on characters. Thankfully the anime kept this for the most part, especially for characters like Sky Raker and Takumu. There was one scene in the light novel which said
“He casually raised the enormous needle in his right hand and lightly pierced the insect’s back.”
The anime luckily enough kept it in, not fully but it’s still there and carries out its desired purpose well.
(Insert anime clip)
This subtle moment was great because for so long Takumu had been jealous of Haruyuki, he was better than him at everything and still he felt Haruyuki challenged him. Challenged him for Chiyuri who was supposed to be his girlfriend, leading to all this raw hatred being released on this innocent virtual bug.
In Sky Raker’s case, all of the dialogue essential to her development remained.
“I decided to get rid of my legs which held my greatest attack abilities.”
(Insert clip from the anime.)
Accel World’s anime is definitely worth a watch. Personally, especially because it had been so long, I simply read the books the anime covered and slowly continued on into the new content only the light novels possessed. Though jumping straight into volume 5 isn’t an issue either. One thing to keep in mind is the light novel will help give a better understanding for what Accel World’s story is truly about. This could possibly be due to the fact that I was young so I just didn’t pay attention to the story as well as I should have or maybe some details cut should have been kept. If you’ve watched the anime recently or will watch it after this video let me know if it was just me or the anime.
Volume 1
Volume 1 is a good beginning volume that sets the foundations for what Accel World could possibly be in future volumes. From volume 1 we learn about a world called the Accelerated World, living in this program known as Brain Burst. Haruyuki meets the student vice president who introduces him to this world and fulfils his dream of escapism from the real world like none could ever imagine. From the start the goal had been outlined to reach level 10 and ask the creator of Brain Burst what compelled him to make a world like this?
To me after reading a little further ahead I can make an educated guess as to the reason, though we’ll get back to that. The main plot line in this volume, besides learning of what brain burst is, revolves around the mysterious duel avatar Cyan Pile, who relentlessly stalks Kuroyukihime to challenge her for points; abusing the brain burst program for his own benefit in reality. Such as in tests or especially in Kendo where man can just mutter ‘burst link’. He literally has an infinite amount of time to properly assess what to do next, completely defeating the purpose of playing Kendo.
Anyway, near the end Haruyuki challenges him to a duel, during the whole fiasco getting a pair of majestic wings, and Kuroyukihime reveals herself to be the long-lost black king from the defunct legion, Nega Nebulus. Now, it’s important to note the clear distinct differences between the first and second halves of volume 1. The first half focused a lot on the worldbuilding of the Accelerated World, the second half focusing more on developing the characters. Usually by the end of a light novel’s first volume you’d have a pretty good idea what the story will most focus on, the only thing audiences don’t know is how well things will be executed. In Accel World its main focus isn’t made apparent until volumes 3 and 4; the answer for what the focus of the story is will undoubtedly surprise you, though again we’ll circle back to that later on in the video.
We aren’t at volume 3 or 4 yet, for the sake of keeping things simple let’s say the focus is for Haruyuki to reach level 10 so they can maybe reach the world’s creator and ask him what the purpose was behind constructing such a complex program. It’d make more sense for Haruyuki to help Kuroyukihime reach level 10 since, she’s wayyy closer. Regardless of that, when she was dying she entrusted her wish to him so…oh wait…she came back...(cricket noise). Well, she isn’t the main character, screw her!
Haruyuki himself can make or break the series for some, especially since a character with low self-esteem isn’t what people look for in stories. You want someone like Spiderman who despite his flaws as a teen growing up trying to figure himself out, too cool for villains, he has fundamental beliefs. Making him make him someone admirable. He has as a responsibility to protect the people in New York, transforming a previous mistake he’s made into his life code. That’s beyond inspiring and people would look up to someone like that because people make decisions, they regret every day and to see someone take that mistake as inspiration to do great things motivates people to do better. Realistically people aren’t going to read Spiderman and decide ‘let me go fight those thugs in the street, the only right thing to do uhuhhu’ cause that’s stupid. However, the unrealistic glorified outcome presented in Peter Parker’s story allows people to view their own lives in the same way so they can rectify their own mistakes.
In contrast, Haruyuki has no belief in himself, making it very difficult to have readers have belief in him or his ability to change. ‘How can this story make me care about this character if they don’t even care about themselves?’ Even with all that being said I feel it’s worth giving Haruyuki a chance as because he’s a character who has so little faith in himself the author has a lot of room to make substantial changes in him, allowing his character development to be flexible and long lasting. Characters like Spiderman won’t have that luxury as once their character arc is done, forcing anymore would undermine what first made the character great in the first place.
In some ways you want the best for Haruyuki as while in some cases he’s isolated because of his own actions, such as staying away from his friend Chiyu because she has a boyfriend now, who’s his best friend. Bruh, if you’ve been friends with someone for a long-lasting period you should be able to speak to them, whether they got a partner or not, if their partners are upset. Well… guess your friends simply dodged a bullet, what else to say? In the case of the bullies, it’s a little different since, while he could report them, they wouldn’t get expelled for bullying a student; especially when they always take him outside the view of the social cameras.
You feel this sort of sympathy for Haruyuki as he has so little self-worth that he feels like he almost deserves to be punished, so while he can be frustrating there’s this sense of understanding. Especially from the light novel since it’s a third person perspective so it comes off less like self-pity. Even the anime got this right, he’s more concerned about things being his fault than wallowing in misery at how pathetic his life is. Though the moments of self-pity do still exist.
To finish off this review of volume 1 we must talk about Kuroyukihime. Oh lord, Kuroyukihime; Reki Kawahara struck gold with this character, even if I like Sky Raker more Kuroyukihime is by far the best character in the series. Kawahara probably thought the same thing considering she’s literally on nearly every light novel cover! But I digress, Kuroyukihime’s character being slowly unraveled to readers through the course of Accel World is a fun element of the series. The more you learn about her the more interesting she becomes. For example, she calls her avatar ugly despite the fact you’d think swords for arms would be cool. After reading volume 2 you find out this is because those very same arms killed a fellow burst linker she’d known as a friendly acquaintance; Kuroyukihime killing him because she wanted to reach level 10. And when she realised how this affected those around her it eventually led to this deep hatred for her own avatar.
Kawahara has constructed this formula where Kuroyukihime has an abundance of mysteries surrounding who she is and the motives behind her actions. When those mysteries are solved in a satisfying way, there is this intrigue and excitement making readers intrigued for how the next mystery will be solved. Changing the perception of her from a mysterious princess to a well-developed character.
Conclusion:
That’s all we’ve got time for today. Tune in for the next video where we’ll be having a look at volume 2 of Accel World. Is it better, worse? Only time will tell, always think my friends.
(Outro plays)
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