Board Thread:Editor Board/@comment-6697950-20140414095216/@comment-1173941-20140506061549

Personally, I find the "Arc" categories sort of pointless. For one, logically speaking, the only things that fall under "Aincrad Arc" are Volumes 1 and 2 (even 2 is a stretch) Everything else that happens in the time-skip is just random stories meant to fill in some aspect of the story, while not being part of that arc.

How do you define a story arc? Wikipedia describes, "A story arc is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media". TVTropes uses, "A story arc (a contraction of "over-arching storyline") is a sequence of series installments [...] that puts characters through their paces in response to a single impetus; basically, an ongoing storyline."

In either example, you would be limited to only including Volume 1 as part of the "Aincrad Arc", volumes 3 and 4 in "Fairy Dance Arc", and so on. The anime could be a different story, but over all, the novels don't follow this "arcs" set up very well. Volume 8 somehow ended up in both the "Fairy Dance Arc" and "Aincrad Arc", even though none of it really focuses on the "impetus", which moves said arcs. In fact, the side-story that is supposedly apart of "Fairy Dance" takes place after the Phantom Bullet Arc, which is a contradiction, if I've ever seen one.

These "Arc" categories are being misused, to simply label everything that took place within a related game-world. It's almost as bad as calling Volume 5 and 6, the "GGO Arc".

The whole "system by arcs" should be rethought. I mean, anything involved with the "Aincrad arc" (or Aincrad related events) already has it mentioned in the chronology, and such, or often even on the main page for the related game world.

Just my thoughts, seeing as someone decided to bring up the Arc categories.