Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-71.82.164.213-20150409225706/@comment-1173941-20150410011447

Well, I guess a discussion couldn't hurt. (Speculated) Fact 3 - Kirito states that he beileves Yuuki would have been awarded the dual-wielding unique skill if she had been in SAO. However, Kirito's stated opinion simply doesn't overrule the fact that Yuuki could not believe that he cut magic spells in half due to how fast they are. Normally, we would hope to use someone's stated word as evidence, but in this case his opinion goes against all evidence provided throughout the show. This goes back to your first Fact, about the context. Yuuki has not played this game very long, and simply didn't know that you could cut through spells, using Sword Skills aimed at the "core" of the spells. It wasn't that they were amazingly too fast, it just wasn't thought to be possible without another spell.

Kirito is just more aware of ALO's mechanics than Yuuki. But Yuuki is in fact faster than Kirito. Side-content has shown that Kirito has trouble keeping up with Asuna's fighting style, and has to resort to tricks and feints to even land a hit, while Yuuki was able to keep up with her for a good long while, and saw through all of her attacks.

(Speculated) Fact 4 - It is implied throughout the series, & shown specifically in GGO, that if the stakes are not high to Kirito he will go easy on someone if he thinks it matters more to them than it does to him (was going to let Sinon shoot him & win the preliminary qualifiers in the BoB). In addition, it is implied he is soft on females. "Going easy" on someone isn't what he does. He simply doesn't take every fight as having "dire consequences" and thus, doesn't fight desperately/seriously. The EXACT same thing can be said about Yuuki just having fun in her duel, and not needing to fight for her life.

This isn't something we can measure, without throwing them into a life-or-death fight. Him going easy on females, is only to the extent that he won't do any more than necessary, seeing how against Musketeer X, he merely killed her mid-sentence, as she was introducing herself to him.

(Speculated) Fact 5 - Kirito is FAR better with a second sword in ALO. He was getting crushed by Eugene before taking his sister's sword, afterward he defeated him handily. This is also a context-specific outcome. Even with one sword, Kirito could have fought Eugene, had he used an equally powerful sword that didn't phase through his original sword. Using a second sword allowed Kirito to counter Eugene's phasing ability. Not make him stronger.

Fact 6 - Kirito SOLO'd the 74th floor boss in SAO. Even with a full party of 7, the Sleeping Knights with Yuuki wiped to the 27th floor boss. The mechanics are surely different between the games & this does not imply that Kirito could do the same in ALO, but it is worth noting the difference in their levels of feats between the games. Kirito soloing a boss has given me so many head-aches, especially because it doesn't match up with everything else in SAO, one way or another.

However, there are some theories to this, but in the end it's merely a consequence of Kirito overpowering the boss by level alone (considering he killed the damn thing with only one combo)

C) Kirito was analyzing his opponent during the fight & correctly (magically) deduced that she was a Medicuboid patient.

D) Kirito acknowledged to Asuna that it wasn't entirely untrue that he held back because of Yuuki's gender. He DENIED holding back on Yuuki. There seems to be some kind of translation discrepancy here. Here's the line from the fan-translations of the novel:

"I didn’t go easy because she’s a girl. I really fought seriously. Really... At least until halfway."

The way this is worded implied that he fought her seriously, and then half-way through he didn't, but he also rejects that the reason is because she was a girl.

Battle 2 - Kirito's second encounter with Yuuki he is defeated by a small margin, in this case due to a time limit. Lets get this straight for a moment; this fight never occurred in the novel, other than a single line that mentioned it, with the only detail being that Kirito didn't use Duel Wielding. Thus the fight in the anime is just a portrayal by the Animators/Director of how they felt it happened. (even the fact she used Mother's Rosario)

HOWEVER, even going by the anime, Kirito would have lost by just a scratch or two, and Yuuki has enough health to survive a hit or two, even if directly.

On top of that you put them at their peaks when Kirito was fighting in SAO for 2 years and the gap grows larger and larger. SAO was level based, while ALO wasn't. Get a high enough level, and you can solo mini-bosses, unlike in ALO. The only real difference between SAO Kirito and ALO Kirito is the level of desperation he held, and the absolute rule of "losing means death".

In the end, Kirito's comment was about Yuuki having much faster reaction time, which would have made her the owner of Dual Wielding, had she played SAO (and probably would have been able to cut bullets too, if she played GGO and used a sword/knife). Nothing in the show was said about who was a better swordsman or fighter, but the fact remained that the score between them is 2-0, with Yuuki in the lead.

What you fail to realize is that all fights are contextual, and you can't truly know who was better, and statistically, you'd need hundreds of fights to make out who was better, and a significant difference in the percentage of wins.