Accel World and why it made me get a Kindle
I'm a huge fan of the anime series Accel World. Or, at least, I'm getting to where veteran fans would allow me to call myself that.
For those who aren't aware: Accel World (below) is a Japanese anime/manga/light novel series about a bunch of middle school students in an anarchical war inside of a secret VR fighting game that effectively pauses time while you play it -- by "accelerating" your cognitive processes by several times. It's made by all the same people as Sword Art Online and Gun Gale Online, if that means anything to you.
After watching the whole TV series, and subsequently watching the movie "Infinite Burst," I really wished I could spend more time in the amazing and fascinating world of Brain Burst. The series was just the perfect amount emotional, quite action-packed, and overall pretty amazing. The movie, on the other hand, left a lot to be desired. When you see that your favorite anime series has a follow-up movie, you assume it's an immediate sequel, right? At least, I do. However, this time around, I was quite wrong.
Infinite Burst (right) was a movie adaptation of a light novel story I didn't even yet know existed. The issue was, it offered no indication of this fact. After a half-hour recap of the main Accel World series, a major time-lapse, and an epic but nearly unexplained intro sequence, what you get is Haruyuki, Kuroyukihime, and their fellow Nega Nebulous members talking to a bunch of people you've never met about a Global Net outage. Also, the Bouncer chick (Aqua Current) is there, as is Sky Raker, with no real explanation. There's also several new characters whose names escape me.
The issue here is, these characters have no proper introduction or development. They're just there, and you're intended to care about them. This is something the series never did. At first, I thought this was either a really horrible mistake on the translators' part, or it was a major screw-up by Sunrise in which they completely failed to create any sense of importance about a single new character. In reality, however, it was neither. As the movie progressed (particularly at the moment where the new character Metatron appeared out of nowhere), I realized more and more that I was truly intended to know something I didn't -- as if I'd skipped a second season of the show or something.
Realizing this, I began to research.
To my complete surprise (and subsequent excitement), there were plenty of adventures in the Accelerated World left to experience -- through light novels (left) which actually provided the source material for the anime. The novels are still being written and translated into English.
I'll be totally honest with you: I've never been much of a reader, really. I only recently got back into it because a girl I got to know at a church camp sent me home with a copy of Black Bird of the Gallows and made me read it. (That's definitely a book I never would have voluntarily read, but it was a pretty good one. The author unfortunately escapes me.) Once I finished that book and returned it to her, she loaned me The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa (another one I wouldn't have picked up myself but am quite enjoying).
When I learned about the Accel World light novels, I knew I was going to be reading a lot more than I used to. So, I talked my mom's ear off about how excited I was, then, the next day, I had my dad order me a brand-new Kindle PaperWhite. I've always been in love with e-reader technology, because of the eInk display if nothing else, so finally having an excuse to get one instead of occasionally borrowing my mom's Kindle Voyage for a homework assignment was particularly exciting to me.
I then started coming up with other things to read -- Ready Player One and each of the Myst novels are definitely on the list -- and hyped myself up even more. Finally, today, right about the time I was about to get out of bed, my mom brought an Amazon package in my bedroom. I opened the (unnecessarily large) package and revealed my newest acquisition: the 2018 Kindle PaperWhite. The very first thing I read on it was...its user's manual. But then I bought and downloaded Kuroyukihime's Return for a modest $8 and read the first chapter soon after. At ~220 pages, it's a pretty short read, but the thing is...there's 23 of them, 16 (about to be 17) of them in English. Assuming they're all an average of 250 pages, that gives 5,750 pages of Accel World goodness. The show only covered the first 4 books!
Sword Art Online and Gun Gale Online have received the same treatment, but I'll get to them at a later date. For now, I'm going to continue my imaginary second life in a future I would legitimately love to live in.
I may come back to review the novels at a later date.
--Sidney
For those who aren't aware: Accel World (below) is a Japanese anime/manga/light novel series about a bunch of middle school students in an anarchical war inside of a secret VR fighting game that effectively pauses time while you play it -- by "accelerating" your cognitive processes by several times. It's made by all the same people as Sword Art Online and Gun Gale Online, if that means anything to you.
 |
| Source: Random Curiosity |
 |
| Source: Random Curiosity |
After watching the whole TV series, and subsequently watching the movie "Infinite Burst," I really wished I could spend more time in the amazing and fascinating world of Brain Burst. The series was just the perfect amount emotional, quite action-packed, and overall pretty amazing. The movie, on the other hand, left a lot to be desired. When you see that your favorite anime series has a follow-up movie, you assume it's an immediate sequel, right? At least, I do. However, this time around, I was quite wrong.
 |
| Source: IMDB |
The issue here is, these characters have no proper introduction or development. They're just there, and you're intended to care about them. This is something the series never did. At first, I thought this was either a really horrible mistake on the translators' part, or it was a major screw-up by Sunrise in which they completely failed to create any sense of importance about a single new character. In reality, however, it was neither. As the movie progressed (particularly at the moment where the new character Metatron appeared out of nowhere), I realized more and more that I was truly intended to know something I didn't -- as if I'd skipped a second season of the show or something.
Realizing this, I began to research.
 |
| Source: Amazon.com |
I'll be totally honest with you: I've never been much of a reader, really. I only recently got back into it because a girl I got to know at a church camp sent me home with a copy of Black Bird of the Gallows and made me read it. (That's definitely a book I never would have voluntarily read, but it was a pretty good one. The author unfortunately escapes me.) Once I finished that book and returned it to her, she loaned me The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa (another one I wouldn't have picked up myself but am quite enjoying).
When I learned about the Accel World light novels, I knew I was going to be reading a lot more than I used to. So, I talked my mom's ear off about how excited I was, then, the next day, I had my dad order me a brand-new Kindle PaperWhite. I've always been in love with e-reader technology, because of the eInk display if nothing else, so finally having an excuse to get one instead of occasionally borrowing my mom's Kindle Voyage for a homework assignment was particularly exciting to me.
I then started coming up with other things to read -- Ready Player One and each of the Myst novels are definitely on the list -- and hyped myself up even more. Finally, today, right about the time I was about to get out of bed, my mom brought an Amazon package in my bedroom. I opened the (unnecessarily large) package and revealed my newest acquisition: the 2018 Kindle PaperWhite. The very first thing I read on it was...its user's manual. But then I bought and downloaded Kuroyukihime's Return for a modest $8 and read the first chapter soon after. At ~220 pages, it's a pretty short read, but the thing is...there's 23 of them, 16 (about to be 17) of them in English. Assuming they're all an average of 250 pages, that gives 5,750 pages of Accel World goodness. The show only covered the first 4 books!
Sword Art Online and Gun Gale Online have received the same treatment, but I'll get to them at a later date. For now, I'm going to continue my imaginary second life in a future I would legitimately love to live in.
I may come back to review the novels at a later date.
--Sidney
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