Anime is a big inspiration to me. In fact, it is the bottom line, the de-facto inspiration from which most of my stories and characters and even philosophical ideas have been roused from. Whatever stories I write, though I credit them as being from God, they were kick-started by my watching anime, almost every single time across over three-hundred shows and movies. So trust me when I say, even in the most commercial of anime, there is usually a lot to unpack, specifically because the human connection is always at the root and in the leaves of the issue, in the skin and in the heart. That means posthumanism gets to nestle there in the trunk, right in the meat of the muscle, between the two layers of humanist interaction.
Sword Art Online is one such show. One about gamers trapped in a virtual world, trying their best to go on living despite the fact that this is both their new lives and yet not living at all. It will be tricky to explain, but it can be done.
Sword Art Online, also known as SAO, is a super-hyped virtual reality game in the anime of the same name. We begin with the game’s worldwide launch, where 10,000 people log in to the server through a helmet-like piece of equipment called the “Nervegear.” The game is a fantasy RPG, where you battle and fight in an almost “realistic” world. In fact, it’s more like living in a different world than playing a game (this show was the one that started the huge boom in a genre known as “Isekai.” Keep that term in the back of your mind for later). The day of the launch, Kirito, our protagonist, discovers that he is not able to log out. But he’s not the only one; every single player across the server is stuck in the game, unable to disconnect the Nervegear. It turns out that the creator of the game, Kayaba Akihiko, designed both SAO and the Nervegear to be inescapable; if you die in the game or are forcibly disconnected from outside, the Nervegear will fry your brain, killing you. So, it turns out that the program of SAO, a 100-level world called “Aincrad,” will become the new true reality of Kirito and the 10,000 hostage gamers.
Or will it?
Yes and no, actually. In the first month, still trapped on the first level, 2,000 players lose their lives. Even Kirito, a beta-tester who is heads and tails above the rest because he retained experience from playing the game early, is unable to make any progress. But one can still level up on the first floor, raising HP and defense to levels that would make one still more resilient than any normal human in the same situation. So how on Earth did a fifth of SAO players lose their lives on the very first level, within the span of one month? A possible answer to this nasty question is given in Episode 3.
In Episode 3, Kirito joins up with a small guild to go on regular dungeon raids. He seems to develop a bond with them, and feels a desire to protect the group. He is an asset, but tries to not be too conspicuous as a beta-tester around them, as beta-testers are considered cheaters and generally disliked. He manages in this pseudo-paradise for a while, since this might be the first time in a long time that the game actually feels like a game, but nothing good that is false lasts very long. Venturing into a trickier dungeon, Kirito and his guild fall into a trap with mass-spawning, high-level monsters. Kirito fights as well as he can, letting loose, but he is unable to protect the rest of his team; only he and the leader, Keita, survive. Keita blames the deaths of their friends on Kirito, and throws himself off the edge of Aincrad to his death.
Out of the 2,000 who died in the first month, how many of those deaths were suicides? This number is never really given to us, perhaps because Sword Art Online is an anime not really concerned with anything other than entertainment (it’s latest seasons have been criticized for that sort of wish-fulfillment shallowness). But I am genuinely curious, if people found they were trapped in a virtual world where death in the game means death in real life, how many would find that sort of existence futile?
The majority of Sword Art Online’s early episodes are about life in the game, and how the players plan to work their way to level 100 and escape the game. Many seem to adapt, with some choosing the paths of the warriors to level up, some choosing to be merchants, some helping to raise the children trapped in the game, and so on and so forth. Besides the fantasy elements, life in the game is being lived as normally as possible, and not like a game at all. But then, is that really life?
Heidegger might be in agreement with this sort of acceptance and harmony. He states that “we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it” (Heidegger 4). However, in this improbable scenario he might not have foreseen as even an avenue of fiction, Heidegger seems to be at odds with himself. “One says: Technology is a means to an end. The other says: Technology is a human activity. The two definitions of technology being together. For to posit ends and procure and utilize the means to them is a human activity” (Heidegger 4). Trapped in a game apart from your life outside of it, is there an end? When even the first level seemed impossible for everyone, was there even an apparent means? Rather than extend the human being or provide purpose, the Nervegear strove real purpose away; any attempts to move with purpose in the game world was to simply restore what had been taken. And, by that point, what had been taken (relationships, jobs, schooling, etc.) might even be beyond repair with the players’ absences.
or the first few episodes, Kirito has no purpose. He’s not sure he wants to get stronger, already being one of the strongest players in the game, and he basically wanders around doing favors. When he finds Asuna, a player whose strength was close to his despite not being a beta-tester, he finds a new purpose in his love for her. They even get married after a year since they were held hostage by Kayaba. When he escapes the game at the end of the first arc, but she is still trapped inside, Kirito’s life never picks up; his whole purpose is still wrapped up in her. But when he frees her, it takes them a while to recapture their love from within the game, and years for Kirito to finally propose again. What happened? Was that reality full of different value than the real world, despite the same function and connections?
Yes, the value was different in that there was no value. In the Posthuman world of Aincrad, the loss of value was required for players to find the will to keep living. Because what they achieved in the game did nothing to further their real lives outside the game, but only extend their survival within the game, value must be re-situated from tangible product, from something that lasts and extends well-being, to simple experience. Many of those two-thousand people who died in the first month, I am certain killed themselves when they saw that existing past the heartbreak or the loss of lasting purpose was a futile act that didn’t even count as an act.
To survive this would require an ignorance of Heidegger’s first supposition, and a denial of the second, though he meant these two suppositions to work together. But when the reality supported by technology is a false one, in that the whole existence is supported by the desire to escape that existence, then is living in the game living at all? What it certainly isn’t is suggesting that the “technology is means to an end” (Heidegger 4). “A means is that whereby something is effected and thus attained” (Heidegger 6). But in a forced and extended virtual reality, set apart from real life, nothing can be attained or effected because the two worlds are isolated from each other. The technology is self-sustaining, and erasing any possibility of an end beyond the Nervegear’s virtual reality. Technology and man are isolated, and man consequently, stuck within cyclical technological pattern and code, loses meaning.
Therefore, to survive without reaching the point of Nihilism, the survivors must focus on the idea that “human activity” is all that matters. Considering Kirito’s marriage meant little outside of Aincrad, and that the non-existence of Asuna’s conscience in his real world was devastating, it is probable that Kirito’s whole rationale of existence had changed to focus only on that activity of simply being. He’s not a hero, he’s not a husband, and now he seems to have no future because of all the time he’s lost; there is definitely a culture shock in that transition between a virtual and a tangible world. Keita, in committing suicide, was making a statement that nothing they did towards finding a place in the virtual world mattered, because none of it lasted and that experience did not matter if it did not further their grasps for security.
So, would we commit suicide if we were hopelessly trapped in a virtual reality? Is living an existence that does not rationalize or push itself towards a lasting end make sense? How is it different from all the time we spend in those virtual realities that we are able to pull ourselves out of? I do not quite know any of these questions, because something as integrated as the Nervegear is still far, far away from being developed. Unfortunately, as another caveat to critically analyzing Popular Culture, Sword Art Online is primarily a commercial show; it’s not really concerned with asking deep questions like these.
But we are still grateful that its illusions are at least substantive enough to make us question our reality. That’s not enough to give purpose, but it’s enough to give direction.
Works Cited: Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology.” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Garland Publishing Inc, 1977. 3-35
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