Sword Art Online Alternative "Gun Gale Online" Episode 01

Squad Jam (スクワッド・ジャム) is the first episode of the Sword Art Online Alternative "Gun Gale Online" anime adaptation, as well as the first episode of the 1st Squad Jam story. It aired on April 7, 2018.

Plot
On February 1, 2026, the first ever Squad Jam, a team-based iteration of the Bullet of Bullets tournament, was about to be held in Gun Gale Online. Participating in this low attention tournament were twenty-three teams of two to six members. One such team was LM, consisting of only two members: the team leader LLENN, a girl clad entirely in pink, and her partner named M, a burly veteran. Once the tournament began at 14:00, LLENN and M found themselves in the midst of a forest at the upper-right corner of the map. After confirming their position on the map and having LLENN dress in a green poncho to reduce her conspicuousness, M decided that they should head for the urban area to the south.

After ten minutes of travelling through the forest and reaching the boundary between the forest and urban area, the two stopped to inspect their Satellite Scan Terminal for the position of other teams, revealed every ten minutes. At that point, LLENN noticed another team, ZEMAL, across the road. Although M assured LLENN that the enemy team would not be able to engage in combat from a distance that exceeded two hundred metres, to LLENN's surprise, ZEMAL blindly opened fire at her with their machine guns. Per M's instructions, LLENN held her position behind a tree to protect herself from the gunfire for several minutes, until the members of ZEMAL were abruptly eliminated by Narrow, a team of pros who had been nearby.

As the flashy battle attracted three other teams to the battlefield, LLENN and M used the cover of the commotion to dart along the highway to a nearby residential area after the following satellite scan. Having defeated the survivors of the battle that had ensued, Narrow discovered that the only enemy close to them was LM during the following scan. Desiring combat experience, rather than winning the tournament, Narrow decided to pursue LM to the residential area. Ten minutes later, the leader of Narrow checked the next satellite scan, discovering, to his surprise, that the enemy was only eighty metres away.

Despite attentively surveying the area, however, none of the team members were able to locate the threat. Just when the team's leader realised that LLENN had been hiding in a suitcase that had been lying on the road, the pink girl suddenly assaulted his men, eliminating the four vanguards in a matter of moments, before retreating from the area. Deciding that LLENN was too inhuman for any further battle against her to be useful to them, the leader of Narrow had his team resign from the tournament.

Two weeks later, on February 15, the members of SHINC, a group of girls that had also participated in the tournament, finished watching a recording of the battle at the house of Kohiruimaki Karen (LLENN) in the real world.

New Characters

 * Kohiruimaki Karen (LLENN, LM)
 * M (LM)
 * Heuy (ZEMAL)
 * Max (ZEMAL)
 * Peter (ZEMAL)
 * Shinohara (ZEMAL)
 * Tomtom (ZEMAL)
 * Dashin (Narrow)
 * Hidehide (Narrow)
 * Nagama (Narrow)
 * Nobu (Narrow)
 * Saika (Narrow)
 * Yasu (Narrow)
 * Annaka Moe (Anna, SHINC)
 * Nitobe Saki (Eva, SHINC)
 * Noguchi Shiori (Rosa)
 * Fujisawa Kana (Sophie, SHINC)
 * Kusunoki Risa (Tanya, SHINC)
 * Milana Sidorova (Tohma, SHINC)

Teams

 * LM
 * ZEMAL
 * Narrow
 * SHINC

Locations

 * Gun Gale Online
 * SBC Glocken
 * Squad Jam Tournament map
 * Forest area
 * Urban area
 * Residential area


 * Real World
 * Kohiruimaki Karen's apartment

Adaptation Notes

 * Adapted from Gun Gale Online Volume 1, SECT.5 - SECT.8 and Gun Gale Online Volume 2, SECT.1


 * The anime began the story immediately from the day of the tournament, rather than the background story for how LLENN came to participate in it.
 * The narration at the beginning of the episode is an original scene.
 * LLENN did not wear her pink uniform when she arrived to the tournament's venue in the tournament. Instead, she wore a different outfit underneath her robe, as M had instructed her not to reveal her gear to the other participants before the tournament began.
 * In the novel, LLENN and M arrived at the venue for the tournament an nearly an entire hour early and waited in a private room at the bar for the competition to start, talking about Pitohui and the tournament. This scene was skipped in the anime.
 * The introduction to the tournament by the tournament's sponsor, as well as the reaction of the players to his speech, was omitted in the anime.
 * The scene of players betting on the number of bullets that would be fired during the tournament was omitted.
 * LLENN's reference to Kanzaki in the episode was not present in the respective part of the novel. Instead, at this part of the novel, LLENN remarked about Pitohui wearing a dress at the time, as Pitohui had claimed that she could not participate in the tournament due to needing to attend a wedding. The part about LLENN participating in the tournament because she could not get a concert ticket was covered in an earlier part of the novel.
 * The scene introducing the usage of the Satelite Scan Terminal was omitted in the anime.
 * The scene of M forcing LLENN to take his knife as a spare weapon, as well as lecturing her on how to use it most effectively, was omitted from the anime.
 * In the novel, LLENN and M spawned near the upper-rightmost corner of the map. The map in the anime depicts that there is still an area further to the east.
 * LLENN and M spent more time analysing the entire map before deciding on their destination.
 * When M was ordering LLENN to head south, he spoke at a barely audible voice in the novel, with their communication device adjusting the volume, thus ensuring that they could hear each other, while preventing others from hearing them.
 * LLENN did not trip over a root while running through the forest in the novel.
 * In the novel, still active opponents in the tournament were denoted on the map as white dots, rather than red.
 * The first aid kit that a player used in the anime was supposed to heal players over a period of 180 seconds, rather than healing the player nearly instantly.

Errors

 * The name SHINC was misspelled as SHNIC on the list of teams participating in the tournament.