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!

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...

... 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!

@katakislives you should watch the abridged version
@katakislives its better 

@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!

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

@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...