Katakis Lives

Decided to re-watch #SwordArtOnline season 1.

The first 20 or so minutes are just fine. The scream at the end... Oh, god, the scream at the end.

All those years later, #Kirito still sounds as frightening as ever!

And keep in mind, I'm wearing headphones this time! Hell, I have to wear headphones cuz my PC doesn't have speakers, and even if they did I wouldn't want to frighten others.

He legit sounds like a hydraulic press crushing a bag of wet gravel! A dying pterodactyl trying to pull-start a rusty lawnmower! A garbage disposal eating a bunch of drywall screws! A blender full of broken glass and pennies!

It's no wonder Yoshitsugu Matsuoka is known to have bled his nose, coughed blood, cut his oxygen and spent himself unable to talk for days from the many recording sessions he did on Sword Art Online all those years ago! It's no wonder why he was immediately hired to do Äs Nödt and Petelgeuse later on! He's a vocal cord sandstorm! He's an acoustic weapon of mass destruction!

At least with these characters, I know it's a villain! But with Kirito? I'm constantly wondering whether he's the hero or the villain just from the screaming alone!

Jun 7 at 4:00pmWeb
Show threadKatakis LivesJun 7

Ok, I'm watching episode 2.

Every single voice actor. All of them that aren't Matsuoka. They all sound heroic. Even when they scream in distress, they don't sound so heavily jagged. They sound just right. I feel bad for the characters they play. I want to see them survive.

I'm about to see whether Kirito still holds up in that regard, though given the years since I watched that anime, I'm afraid to recall...

Show threadKatakis LivesJun 7

... Jesus Christ!

I heard Kirito and Asuna do their scream before their trio of switches, before Kirito then dealt his final blow and...

He legit sounds like a dial-up modem trying to scream through a copper pipe filled with wet gravel!! It's horrifying! It's as if Kirito also knew from his beta testing that he could sound more terrifying than every monster in the game!

Not even Asuna sounds like she's piercing my soul with her screams! It's genuinely baffling!

And yet everyone's like "Yay!" the moment the "Congratulations!" text pops over? Nobody noticed the acoustic napalm in the slightest?! I mean, ok, it's an adaptation of a light novel, Reki never had Kirito's voice like this in mind but... Jesus christ! Somebody buy Kirito a throat lozenge!

Show threadKatakis LivesJun 7

Ok, at this point, I'm only scouring through the screams because watching the rest of the plot that I already know is tiring. I'm only here to face them...

And... Jesus christ!

I almost forgot that there's two screams in episode 3! Well, more than two, if we're technically counting!

For the fight before the nevertheless sad Sachi death, he... He sounds like a semi-automatic nail gun firing rusty screws directly into my temporal lobe!

And the scream before the boss fight with Nicholas... The one that was... Faded to white for some reason, but that's a production matter. Good god! I'm mortified!

...And yet I feel the urge to keep going. I need to remember if Matsuoka ever ends...

Show threadKatakis LivesJun 7

I did what no other person would be insane enough to do (other than whoever compiled those HORRIFYING screams into a YouTube compilation that doesn't exist anymore) and just skip to the screams that haunted me until the end of the Aincrad arc.

And... I think Imma need a "good lord" counter.

Good lord, they're as haunting as they ever were.

Guys, they're not loud! They're rough! They're gritty! They're still the screams I remember from back in 2012, with all the grit and roughness and frequency and curves and... Idk, man. Yoshitsugu Matsuoka rightfully deserved that position as Äs Nödt in Re:Zero. He deserved that position as Petelgeuse in Bleach, because the cast knew that Matsuoka can deliver sheer fear better than anyone else.

This dude is willing to leverage the lesser safety regulations around voice acting in Japan to put his health on the line for the sake of doing the shock and terror without the need for the audio team to do the kinds of auditory edits necessary to make sure they're haunting!

When Kirito described Asuna's screaming as soul-piercing in the light novels, he mixed it up! He's the one carrying the soul-piercing screams! He's the one mortifying the audiences!

I can't even begin to imagine how it must have sounded like to hear Kirito scream in IMAX theaters for the Ordinal Scale movie! It must have been TERRIFYING!

Show threadJun 7
@katakislives you should watch the abridged version
Show threadJun 7
@katakislives its better 
Show threadKatakis LivesJun 7

@Jain Oh, believe me, I'm considering it. A friend of mine in VRChat played me a clip of it LOL

I'm watching the original JP dub to understand why seemingly NOBODY else is afraid of Matsuoka's version of Kirito. That's the one I heard first, the one I've been afraid of all the way back since 2012, but I also understand the Abridged version is very silly fun!

Show threadJun 7
@katakislives Its funny that some do even have the opinion that the abridged version is better, im one of them
Show threadKatakis LivesJun 7

@Jain I mean, the original SAO is known for its myriad of plotholes either way, so it's obvious the Abridged version is better LOL

I'm definitely giving it a shot after I finish watching the OG SAO... And trying my earnest to enclose the echoes of these damn screams...