Sword Art Online Alternative "Gun Gale Online" Episode 02

GGO is the second episode of the Sword Art Online Alternative "Gun Gale Online" anime adaptation, as well as the second episode of the 1st Squad Jam story. It aired on April 14, 2018.

Plot


In April 2025, nine months before the first Squad Jam, Kohiruimaki Karen, an exceedingly tall girl, moved from Obihiro, her hometown in Hokkaido, to study at a women's university in Tokyo. Although Karen was expecting to bring some change to her life by moving to a different city, she had no luck making new friends or socialising more than she did in Hokkaido, nor was she able to get a part-time job due to her parents' wishes, thus leading an uneventful life.



Several months later, in August 2025, while staying at her parents' house for her summer vacation, Karen saw a news segment about virtual reality games. Interested in the reporter's statement that such games offered a life different from reality, Karen arranged a meeting with her Hokkaido friend who was a gamer, Shinohara Miyu, to learn more about them. Under Miyu's advice, Karen bought an AmuSphere and a copy of ALfheim Online as soon as she returned to Tokyo, and installed the game when she returned home.



However, upon logging in to the game, Karen found that the height of her randomly created avatar, LLENN, was not much different from Karen's own, causing her so much shock that she was forcefully logged out of the game by the AmuSphere due to her increased heart rate. As The Seed games did not allow players to choose the appearance of their characters and Karen was reluctant to create a new character in ALfheim Online due to the shock she had endured, Miyu taught her about character conversion, which allowed transferring the player's account from one game on The Seed network to another.



From that point on, Karen began converting her account from game to game, without even checking their genre, but became dissatisfied with the avatar she obtained in each of them. After thirty-six of such failed attempts, she eventually acquired a very short and cute avatar by converting her account to Gun Gale Online. Elated at obtaining an avatar of her dreams, LLENN decided to take the tutorial, thus learning about the game's mechanics and weapon types.



After spending a month enjoying the game, LLENN decided to customise her apparel to look more cute. Although at first disheartened at the lack of cute items at a store, LLENN noticed that she could change the colour of her apparel and thus decided to dye all of it, as well as her gun, pink. One day, while waiting for a monster to trigger her grenade trap, LLENN spotted three players approaching her position.



As LLENN lay on the ground at a loss on what to do, the players passed by without noticing her presence, due to her pink outfit blending in with the pinkish shade of the sand caused by the abnormal sunlight in Gun Gale Online. Fearing that the players would kill her if they spotted her, once they were alerted to the presence of other players in the area via an explosion caused by her trap, LLENN decided to attack them before they could find her, defeating all three of the players in a surprise attack.



Ever since learning that her outfit allowed her to blend in with the desert sand and assault players by surprise, LLENN began engaging in surprise attacks in the desert whenever she saw a relatively safe opportunity, causing players to spread rumours about the so-called Pink Devil. One day, while moving through the desert, LLENN was ambushed herself by a female player named Pitohui, who had become interested in the rumours on the Pink Devil and decided to discover what they looked like. Having learnt that the Pink Devil was a girl, Pitohui invited her for some tea in town and proposed becoming friends, as there were few girls playing the game.



After a friendly discussion in town, the two girls registered as friends and, as LLENN was looking for a new gun, Pitohui led her to a shop that specialised in rare items, where LLENN decided to purchase a P90, which she later named P-chan, due to liking its appearance. Since that day, LLENN and Pitohui formed a two-person squadron and went hunting monsters whenever they had time. During one of such meetings, LLENN began talking about real world topics. This conversation led to the two girls vowing to fight each other one day, with Pitohui promising to meet LLENN in real life if the little girl won their battle.



Some time later, following the New Year, Pitohui asked if LLENN had ever heard about the Squad Jam tournament.

New Characters

 * Shinohara Miyu (Fukaziroh)
 * Donald
 * Judith
 * Pratt
 * Pitohui

Adaptation Notes

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


 * The novel's prologue and the first part of SECT.1 were omitted due to the anime changing how the Squad Jam was introduced.
 * The details about Karen's family, life in Hokkaido, and Karen's university, as well as how she enrolled to it, were omitted. These details were replaced with a short narration by Karen herself.
 * Karen hitting her head at a sign is an original scene.
 * In the novel, Karen became interested in virtual reality games after reading an article on the Internet criticising the surging popularity of the games, despite the casualties caused by the SAO incident. Instead, the anime has Karen watching a more neutral news segment about the games on TV. Additionally, in the novel, Karen focused on the phrase "a different self" (別の自分), rather than "a life different from reality" (現実とは違う人生).
 * Karen's meeting with Miyu in a cafe was mostly an original scene. The novel only mentioned that Karen had met with Miyu but did not provide details on the meeting, while in the manga, Karen just contacted Miyu via her phone.
 * The anime does not mention that Karen returned to Tokyo before buying an AmuSphere and a copy of ALfheim Online, as she felt that her parents would not allow her to do so at their house.
 * The ALfheim Online package, as well as the character generation sequence, was depicted differently than in the main series.
 * The anime did not explain that Karen chose a Sylph character due to Miyu playing the game as a Sylph, thus meaning that the two would have been able to meet in-game faster.
 * Miyu in the anime does not mention that remaking a character requires an additional fee, nor that ALfheim Online has some races that tend to have short avatars, like the Cait Sith.
 * When Karen was converting from game to game in search of an avatar that would please her, the anime does not mention that Karen only tried games that had a free trial period, or that Karen spent several days on her search.
 * In the novel, LLENN did not take the tutorial to discover the genre of the game, nor did she take it so soon after joining the game. Instead, after enjoying her short avatar for some time, LLENN decided to take the tutorial due to her serious side prompting her to take the game seriously and learn how to fight.
 * In the novel, the mechanics of Gun Gale Online were explained in a narration. The anime, instead, expanded upon the tutorial that was only briefly mentioned in the novel to explain the mechanics in-dialogue.
 * The anime omits the mention of character stats in the game, as well as the fact that LLENN primarily devoted her skill points to Agility and Dexterity.
 * In the novel, when LLENN realised that her outfit could have let her blend in with the environment, she tested this theory by leaving her pink gun on the ground and taking some distance from it, until she saw that the gun blended in so well that she could no longer see it.
 * In the novel, LLENN stopped ambushing players in the desert upon learning that some players had put a bounty on her and planned subjugation parties to deal with her.
 * The anime does not show LLENN using a green outfit in town to avoid being identified by the people she had killed.
 * LLENN first met Pitohui while window-shopping for a new gun in town in the novel, rather than encountering her in the field at gunpoint.
 * During LLENN's first encounter with Pitohui in the novel, the latter was wearing a highly revealing outfit that was not much different from a bikini.
 * Pitohui's commentaries about her gun of the day, as well as her mentioning that she had once attempted to purchase Sinon's PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II to no avail, were omitted from the anime.