Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld

Of all the Alicization parts, this is probably the best one. We really get to see Alice shine as the MC. I really like her, much better than Kirito anyways. That's not to say I dislike Kirito, but his personality can come off as annoying just by how polite he tries to be. It's like sometimes he has no personality, ya know? Anyways onto this review. I'll keep it short. Story: So after the very boring first part of Alicization where a bunch of people you don't care about die, this arc concentrates on the invasion of the dark territory. It's.....alright. Nothing special- and they don't try to make it so, which I appreciate, because it's been done a thousand times before. Story is really bland, which is somewhat of a shame because the original SAO was insanely legendary. It is what it is. Characters: Probably the best part of the show, and what kept me watching. You see the growth of Alice and as I've said before, you will adore her. Honestly, she is too good that I hated when she became a side character again. However, there is someone who is just as amazing- Bercouli. What a badass. If Kirito had his demeanor, I could stand him more. The rest of the Integrity Knights get some back story too. Nothing big, but it's interesting. As for the real world characters, uh they're okay. Action: The action looks good, but the meaning before the fights are stale. You really don't care who wins or loses except for maybe 1 or 2 duels. I think that's what's been bothering me with this show. Over all, it's it's alright. It's easily the 3rd best arc behind the original SAO story and Gun Gale Online.

SAO : Alicization - War of Underworld. First review on MAL, so much to review. Okay this is an incredibly series in my personal & honest option & here's why it is. The evolution from the very first season is noticeable & how it's progressed is wonderful. We have og characters & new characters that are part of the current season. Alicization does a great job on it's production value & it can be seen from season 3. The quality of the animation is beautiful and vibrant, character design is top tier, environment is captivating & the sound oh don't get me started on that, it is just great to hear. These are the foundations that set SAO Alicization on it's way. Okay here is what I appreciate about SAO Alicization. The new characters are incredible & work well with the setting of the project. They have such depth in them, their personalities, sense of life, perspectives & how they interact with one another. Alice, Bercouli, Eldrie(has a boss moment) to name a few. Kirito & Eugeo have a friendship that is worthwhile in anime that I like, I found annoying parts in the season that bother me in regard to the story or setting, you know cause how deep I dive into it. The antagonist really is dry af & not captivating. I have seen many antagonists in anime that bring a point to the anime but not Gabriel, no sir, just a plain psychopath like Quinella(boring & uninspired) they are just the for driving the characters with their self centered ideals & logic. The fight are amazing & meaningful between both sides and they do an incredible job depicting how some people are just annoying & insufferable from SAO & life & the value of having a conscious. SAO is worthwhile anime & that is way it is still here, I stan it, even through the oversaturated hate, which is okay alright, you don't like, okay then. Kiritio is among best anime Mc's, he's a vibe. Asuna & Alice are Waifu's af. Peace, I think this is an okay not bad first review, yeah. Peace.

So unlike a lot of people, I don't have anything against sword art and it's pretty enjoyable to watch but War of Underworld was weird to me, the first like 6 episodes were a great continuation of alicization but after that, the story kinda fell apart and they just added new villans and now plot lines came out of nowhere and it didn't make much sense (slight spoiler warning) but there was once where I audibly said WHAT THE FUCK because they were adding weird ass stuff like players from other countries being controlled by? I'm not really sure but I guess hatred? it doesn't have much context or reason for why the villain is doing what he's doing just that he's mad at people and it makes him seem very like just a character thrown in for the characters to battle. but in all honesty, if you don't care much for the actual story or plot then it has absolutely stunning animation and great fight scenes.

[WARNING: There may be spoilers] SAO Alicization - War of Underworld had great production value. It's visually pleasing both in artwork and animation. The voice performances were great, and I definitely enjoyed the OP and ED. Unfortunately, it's writing was weak and that dragged everything down. Like most of SAO, it had a lot of exposition. Exposition itself isn't bad, but SAO's was excessive. Most of it could have been done through action whether it be direction or visual language. It's an anime after all, which means that SAO could have taken advantage of its medium. I already know that Kirito was admired, so why did I have to constantly listen to the cast praise him? And when Kirito subconsciously protected Alice from the air dagger, why did I need to hear a long conversation about how he's still in there somewhere and will be the key to winning this war? Why did I need to hear the characters commentate on how Kirito seemed to be trying to help even though his fluclight was damaged? I could clearly see his struggles on screen. Show, not tell. Speaking of which, the fact that he's the key to winning this war meant that as long as he's unconscious there wouldn't be much progress in the war effort. No matter how strong the allies were or how much effort or desperation they put in, I knew that it wouldn't really mean anything. The way the show prolonged the war into a series of episodes made this obvious. Furthermore, the battlefield was set in a long canyon-like tunnel. It's basically an empty hallway so opportunities for demonstrating intelligent war fare and resourcefulness were so and so. The antagonists were unlikeable and remind me of every antagonists in SAO. While I liked the way SAO attempted to show their treachery by making them join the Underworld with dangerous avatars, I still didn't find them compelling. The blond one in particular tried to be a cold sociopath, but he's just as crazy as everyone else with the same insane expressions and his desire to "suck souls" was the only interesting thing about him. Kirito never got to grow as a character during this season because he was comatose throughout. Rather than focus on characters who just recently existed for plot reasons, maybe SAO could spend some time exploring Kirito's psyche or express his subconscious desperation to wake up only to be trapped in the corner of his mind. I mean, one episode of that during part 2 was nice but not enough to express the trauma he went through. Overall, despite its production value SAO was a series that suffered from poor writing. It's such a shame because there were genuinely some interesting ideas in the show.

Took me awhile, but I've finally caught up with the SAO series! Let's get right into the anime basics. Story; After defeating Quinella (the ruler of the underworld) Alice finds Kirito helpless. Against everyone's words, Alice takes Kirito back to her hometown to take care of him and hoping he'll become his usual self once more. However not everything is calm; The Dark Territory (with a mix of wild races) being lead by real world idiots(AKA, Gabriel) decide to attack the Human Empire that way they can live happy lives in the light. While in the real world, Asuna is trying to save Kirito along with her friends... I loved following along with this story, and am very happy with the ending. I love how they took every aspect from the series (SAO, ALO, GGO and Ordinal Scale) and used it in the second half of the series. Art; A-1 Pictures can never do anything wrong, I swear to god. I don't think they were lazy with the animation this time around, and the effects and colours of every fight scene got me SO PUMPED!!! Sound; No surprise here, but I also think they've nailed the OST. I loved listening to the LiSA, and Haruka added a sweet touch. Characters; Man ohhhhh man, the SAO cast makes me so damn emotionally... -SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER- the one thing that threw me off the fact that Eugeo that is technically dead was STRONG THEN HE WAS PREVIOUSLY!?!?!? Was his body this entire time a handy cap, and his soul/fluctlight just that strong because of the emotions he learnt while spending time with Kirito? Overall, I really enjoyed finishing this series. Sound like Alicization will no longer continue, but will see Kirito again in the future? I'll watch it no matter what!

tldr; SAO if it was like those action movies that are screened at cinemas Fighting, fighting, and more fighting - there's like only 1 episode or so that has little to no fighting scenes lol But somehow in the midst of all that fighting back to back, I still found the opportunity to cry/tear up three times, so there's that. Usually, I'm pretty impressed with the art and animations and all that, but in this one- maybe it's because it's literally about a war, there's a whole lot of soldiers fighting each other and that's a lot of effort required to be put in if you really want to not half ass it - I was lowkey disappointed with the wonky scenes whenever it shows a whole bunch of guys marching or fighting. Scenes with 1v1s or 1v5s are good, though. The story barely progressed in this one, which is largely due to all the characters that are involved in this season, they literally start talking about the Dark territory people that did not exist in the prior season as well as new ones that we did not even know of their existence on "our side". Another excuse for this could be "it's because of the super speedy time in the Underworld".

This has been a real wild ride, so much epicness packed in this season alone. I was sad that some things happened but am happy with how everything has gone thus far. I have grown to love many of the new characters and hope to see them again one day, and am looking forward to seeing what is to come next. The art has gotten even better the effects and music really get my hyped for what goes on. It has been a long and fun journey and I would not trade it for anything. The plot was great and they know how to get you wanting to come back for more. Story 8/10 Art 10/10 Sound 8/10 Character 10/10

After the highs of the Alicization arc, everything just plummets to absolute trash in it's Underworld continuation. It's one of the most artificially contrived and poorly written sequels I've ever seen. It's like the author died and a simple-minded buffoon took up the reins, throwing out all the characterization and buildup from the previous arc and jumping the shark to create a meaningless war with some of the worst battles and confrontations and deus ex machina I've ever seen in anime history that's so bad even a five year old will lose interest because it's so fake and unrealistic. I soldiered on for 16 episodes but could not stand it anymore. Let's get this out of the way first. There is a strong anti-American prejudice throughout the story, from multiple fronts. I tried to keep an open mind, but it just got worse and worse. Every villain and every evil deed ties back to America. The antagonist leads a para-military mercenary group tied to the CIA. He's a blonde haired white guy with a sadistic taste for indulging in the suffering of others and apparently, eating their digital souls. His right-hand man was also one of the chief player killers in the original Sword Art Online. The evil Americans are trying to steal the Alice AI so it can be used for drone warfare. They also fuel a war by having hundreds of thousands of violent, bloodthirsty Americans log in to the server to slaughter everything. The less than subtle smearing becomes even more obvious when players from China and Korea join in. The Americans were told to come join in to relish in a bloody war without sensory limits, while everyone else was told the server was being hacked and they needed to come "save" the server admins, because they were clearly in mortal danger in their own virtual world. If that sounds really stupid, it's because it is. The nail in the coffin is when the mole inside the research facility, revealed to be a principal offender during the Alfheim arc (complete with images of Asuna tentacle rape), shoots the innocent Japanese geek programmer and goes on an evil rant about how his diabolical plan to subvert the system was thwarted, how he wanted to kill Kirito, and how the NSA was very eager to hire him. It's especially ironic when this anti-American spiel relies so heavily on western fantasy for it's appeal and half the dialogue is nothing but poorly incorporated Engrish. The mole even ends his little rant by saying en-do ro-u-do, for end of the road. It's an odd existence, hating America but so delusional you continue to use the language of the people you hate in lieu of your own. Even ignoring all the anti-American sentiment, the anime is still an absolute dumpster fire. Kirito is put out of commission in a made up subconscious coma so the other characters can have an excuse to exist. Asuna and others get god-tier accounts, but just like Kirito's made up coma, they have made up limitations, things like headaches that hurt their psyche if they abuse a god power too many times, and limited health even though they are supposed to be gods. They swap back and forth from nuking entire enemy hordes to acting tired, bloodied, and in utter despair, to nuking again. They are in absolutely zero danger but can't spend five minutes without dramatizing their plight against an endless sea of low level cannon fodder. Having their converted character disappear after death is contrived BS, and the fear of it disappearing forever even moreso. Even being able to convert to the server, and retaining god-tier equipment and stats not native to the code, is BS. Then we have the biggest horseshit of all: having hundreds of thousands of players from across the globe wirelessly beaming into one private server on a turtle in the middle of the Pacific. This is supposed to be a highly specialized, closed network in a classified, secure, advanced research facility that requires an STL within the facility to dive into the virtual world. One they had to fucking fly a braindead Kirito over to connect to. Yet somehow with a push of a few keystrokes, the whole globe can connect to it with zero latency and full destructive capability. You are also introduced to some new characters who are just cannon fodder for the war. Leaders of each of the dark horde races, from orc to werewolf to dark mage. Their anguish is shoe-horned at the very last minute, right before their demise, hollow and contrived. And I wasn't joking when I said the battles were ridiculously laughable. There is zero strategy. They just stand there and get nuked. It's like a video game where you stand in a corner by a bonfire and watch one zombie after another walk into the flames and burn to death, because competent AI is hard. The axiom knights are ridiculously overpowered, bouncing from nuking everything to utter despair to nuking again, much like the pointless battles Asuna and co wage, the overdramatization of grief and suffering never ceasing. If the zounds of evil red knights besieging the highly stylized hero characters with flashy weapons and powers didn't make the situation obvious enough, then these players really need to get shot or at least sterilized so they don't spread their stupidity if they actually thought they were fighting for some false sense of chivalry. The story literally does not advance at all. Endless wave after wave of pointless battles and unimportant characters dying and manufactured despair. Contrived powers and struggles between non-dying immortal god-tier virtual characters. And against the evil American onslaught, the faultless and benevolent Kirito and co continue to fight for all that is good and just. Oh wait, didn't the Japanese copy the souls of babies to alter and corrupt in a virtual environment to create the ultimate killing machine AI, leading to this mess? Let's just forget about that part...

You don't need a god-like character to create a blood pumping anime. Story: Best, story arc, out of all of the others. You don't need a god-like character to drive the plot, you don't need Kirito to get the audience in the mood. Just like Re:0, a normal protagonist is enough to drive the audience up, and that is just why this story arc is better than any other arcs. 10/10 Art: A-1 picture, please, stop slacking, your work is weeping for your ignorance and shit ass fucking artwork. Hell, even some money-sucking hentais have better artwork than this. please. I beg you. 3/10 Sound: This season's SoundFX is considerably worse than in previous seasons, but the selection of music is fine. 6/10 Character: Again, you don't need god to drive the plot, you don't need Kirito to make the plot blood pumping. 9/10 Enjoyment: 9/10

First off, I would like to point out that i have only watched the SAO series and have not read the manga. Therefore, my review is just based on the anime and not comparing it to the manga. Overall, I like SAO. I would'nt say i'm IN LOVE with it but i enjoy it. I really liked the first and second seasons since they were kind of connected in some aspects. After binging and catching up to the rest of the anime series, I felt that this season was a bit bland and predictable. (MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD!--->) Given the state that Kirito was left off at in the last ep of the last season (where he's basically "immobilized" since his soul is "gone" due to the trauma he experienced etc.....), it's understandable why the plot development wasn't as fast in this season. The plot mostly focuses on the constant fighting/war between the good/evil in the Underground world as the final battle comes up. Every once and a while the plot shifts back to Kirito and the real world where his friends are trying to save him. With this being the only thing the plot is revolving around, the constant battles and real life friends jumping into the world to save him feels a bit repetitive. Rather than all his friends joining in at once, they are spaced out; and as each friend joins, they wipe out all the enemies in their site. It's nice that Kirito's friends are coming to help, but the constant pattern of "Friend arrives"-->"more battle" becomes a bit stale. With Kirito's immobilized state, he isn't able to contribute much to the plot/action happening, which is understandable. However, I feel that the plot died a bit in terms of action/story since there was basically NO DEVELOPMENT of his state AT ALL. It would be more tolerable if we got some small changes/development to his "immobilized state," but NOTHING CHANGED WITH HIM FOR 12 WHOLE EPISODES. Although I felt that the overall plot was slow, the character art and animation was really nice. You can really see such an improvement in art and how smooth the animation has become since the start of the series. I would also like to point out that the constant battles also had small goals. So it's not like they were completely pointless, but i guess they served more along the lines of being "fillers" in building up to the grande finale rather than propelling the plot forward. That being said, I can already feel what that the upcoming season will somewhat mirror this format with the constant battles and hoping that Kiritio will wake up. I just hope that there will be more development and that Kirito DOES wake up or something. Cause honestly, I live for those Kirito and Asuna moments <3 So if you're interested in the series, I would recommend watching this. But don't expect any major plot developments.

Oh, boy. Where to begin? [NOTE: I WATCH THE ANIME BEFORE READING MANGA/LIGHT NOVELS, SO AS NOT TO JUDGE IT AGAINST AN OFT-SUPERIOR MEDIUM. NOTHING IN MY REVIEW IS MEANT TO INFLUENCE YOUR OPINION OF THE ANIME, OR HINDER YOUR ENJOYMENT.] I was really pumped about this season. Alicization was my favorite installment of the SAO franchise, (Ordinal Scale was the first one I didn't hate, and I liked Alicization because of the promise) and I was excited to see it continue, hoping for more of the stuff that Alicization did that I liked. Unfortunately, not only did it not live up to my expectations, it also went back on the things that I considered the best moves in the anime franchise history. Story - 5 I, mean, to be fair, story was never really an exceptionally strong point of SAO. But at least the first two seasons weren't in the realm of so absurd as to be totally disregarded as impossible. As soon as the franchise tried to discuss the place of a soul, and quantify it physically, I lost some interest and the story lost credibility to me. The question of the nature of the soul is a really interesting question, and it's a good discussion to have, or to think about alone even, but in this medium, it just felt out of place. Or like it was only there to make us feel sympathy for the AIs in the Underworld. Another thing about SAO that steadily becomes a bigger nuisance is the info dumps that get thrown on us, made-up science in an attempt to justify the technology that exists. You could say it's magic, but terms like Fluctlight, FLA, STL, and the numerous other explanation drops that are thrown in essentially amount to "We want this to be sci-fi, so we have to use some scientific-sounding principles to get you to believe it." It boils down to plot conveniences to explain technology that, honestly, didn't really need an explanation. It was at least interesting to see their take on it. The pacing, though. Geez, I'd have had an aneurysm if I were watching this weekly as it came out. Over most episodes, nothing of consequence really happened. Even when it got the ball rolling, it was slow. 12 episodes later, and I feel I got about an hour, maybe two at max, of useful content that furthered the story. Art - 9 It's SAO. It's always been one of the best animated and most visually appealing anime of the year whenever it comes out. My only real gripe would be the addition of more and more CGI. I tend to dislike 3D in anime if it feels tasteless, and the placement of it here definitely felt tacky and gave it an unnatural look. It's slightly understandable because this was about a war. There's supposed to be thousands of people involved, so in group shots, character design is going to be at a minimum, and 3D will be at a max. Sound - 7 The opening didn't really do it for me, and most of the insert music annoyed me for some reason. I give it points for being memorable, though. However, sound effects were absolutely on point, and the ending song just slapped. Loved the lyrics. Voice acting was good, as usual. Character - 4 This is where the majority of my problems with WoU lie. Something I really liked about Alicization was the starting over from scratch. Creating new characters, and leaving behind the bland ones from previous seasons, who at this point, are fairly static. Watching Kirito develop in Alicization with Eugeo and Alice, completely free from his worst defining personality trait of "I like to play VRMMOS" was so refreshing! Kirito: Unfortunately, now he's a vegetable and no advances are made with his character. The only purpose of Sword Art Online: Vegetation is seemingly to bring back the characters I didn't really enjoy, and the traits that made me dislike these characters seeped into this season as well. Let's take a look. The tertiary/side characters: Side characters that had potential usually got a 5-minute backstory. They were then either killed or became badasses, never to receive as much screentime as in their small exposition. There were also a fair amount of the generic loyal sidekick characters, willing to die for their respective friends. Asuna & Co.: As usual, willing to drop everything at any given time at the behest of Yui to rescue Kirito because (A-girls) they are either in love with him or (B-guys) have such a strong bro-ly bond and feel indebted to him. It's consistent, if annoying. And then they have the audacity to ask people they don't know to help them in the war by converting their characters to a game they might not even be able to recover their accounts from. And presumably, it worked. Asuna specifically: Her whole jealousy thing with Alice. No matter what the anime wants you to believe, Alice isn't really a real person. She's fine with Kirito being surrounded by his unrequited love harem IRL, but he spends a few virtual years without her, and she's jealous? Kind of understandable, but still pretty clingy. Which leads to... Alice [SLIGHT LOVE INTEREST SPOILERS]: Oh, poor Alice. I was really disappointed when they went back on the great things they did for her character in the previous season. She was established as a strong, largely independent girl, driven from within, but in this season, they shackled her. She's given up her sword to live an unremarkable, ordinary life and care for Kirito. Not only that, they decided to add the same personality trait as every other important female in the series: they decided to make her fall in love with Kirito. I liked it better when she, Eugeo, and Kirito were just friends, and would rather her have ended up with Eugeo or ,,,, the purple-haired guy who had unrequited love for her. Even AIs fall for Kirito. Jesus, what a time to be alive. The villain [SLIGHT SPOILERS]: Another psychopath. No motivations other than, "Yeah, he's just kind of a bad guy." Presumably, he's killed multiple people in his past, not just Alicia. He started from childhood, too! Makes me wonder how the hell he got to be in a prominent, comfortable job. Enjoyment - 6 Not as bad as being bored, or not wanting to watch it, but I found myself waiting for stuff to actually happen a lot. The ED theme was my favorite part of each episode (not just because it means the episode is over), but half the time the episode just played it in the background because story stuff was still happening. Overall - 6 It looked really good, but didn't accomplish much besides that. Asuna took a ridiculously long time to appear, and I don't even like her. Mainly, her character design is always good, so teaser poster and OP made me wanna see the design, even if I don't like her as a character. A good watch for SAO fans, or people who want SAO to be "redeemed". A lot of people seemed to like it more than I did, so I seem to be the exception! Have fun! :)

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW Oh boy, its that time of year again. INTRODUCTION At this point, I feel like I'll have to preface all my SAO reviews with this: No, I do not hate SAO, I thoroughly enjoyed the first season and a little bit of the second. I get that the fan base is almost oppressed to the point of bullying. If you look at my anime list you'll see that I've watched all of SAO, and Sword Art Offline, and the OVA, and the Sword Art Offline for the OVA. I haven't seem Ordinal Scale because I haven't felt like it. I see lots of potential within SAO and would love to see that be brought to life, but it just isn't. This is not my first review on SAO, if you'd like to check out my review on Alicization 1 then feel free too, although a few of my opinions have differed. A few months after I finished SAO II, I heard about Alicization, and it sounded good. Light novel readers were preaching it to be the be-all end-all to fix all of Sword Art Online. Now it could've, but it didn't. STORY: 3.5 (Poor-Decent) A good story should be paced well, full of impact, and be a catalyst for much character development. A story playing on the strengths of Sword Art Online would be very fast paced, and jam-packed with fights. Now this is not to mean to shoulder the story to make way for action, but instead to use the action to further the story. I cannot stress enough how much fight scenes are just thrown away in lots of stories. I don't mean that they don't write them in, but they aren't used to their fullest potential. A good example of fight scenes being used correctly is in My Hero Academia. Now if you know me, you know that I am really not a big fan of My Hero Academia, I can point out it faults for hours, but I still have to admit that they are able to consistently convey characters emotions, motivations, and feelings through the fight scenes, maybe a little bit too much. Now take this in comparison to Sword Art Online. Sword Art Online is able to do this somewhat well in the first half of the first season, but falls off completely in Alicization 2. The story is introducing tons of new characters, and its fights are a great way to explore those character's past and feelings. Instead, they only use this opportunity for a few characters in the show, making both the action and development shallow. Now don't get me wrong, too much development in a fight scene can be terrible, as flashbacks can disrupt the flow of the fight scene itself, and not all fights need development. However, no development at all leaves a fight scene empty and this goes for almost all the conflicts in Alicization 2. One argument that can be thrown against what I've just said is that lots of characters don't get development because they received plenty in Alicization 1. If so, then this should had freed up the pacing of the show. My second complaint against the shows story apart from its shallow development/bad use of fight scenes is the horrendous pacing. An action/adventure series like Sword Art Online should always be paced fast to deliver for action and development as soon as possible and to not bog the story down in too many irrelevancies. The Aincrad arc does this beautifully by shortening and varying arcs, which keeps the viewer on their toes. Alicization 2 is a mess. Battles take too long, important developments take too long to have an impact on the story which creates a disconnect, and sometimes we don't even see the main protagonist- who is supposed to be the shining light of the show- for whole episodes. Aincrad went through two years in twelve episodes feeling maybe a little bit too short, Alicization went through not much more than a week in the same amount of episodes. Its ridiculous, its slow, it bores the viewer, and it destroys the pacing. My final complaint about the story is that the atmosphere and tone is very strange. You can tell Reki Kawahara desperately wanted to darken the series, but fails a lot of the event's impact, which takes out a lot of suspense for further conflicts as you know the good guy will win, and throws in scenes which brighten the tone a bit too much. The story of Alicization 2 is all over the place, yet at the same time a painful, boring drag. ART: 7 (Good) Now to switch gears, I'd really love to take this segment to slightly praise Sword Art Online for a second. The animation and art is probably the strongest takeaway of the show. While its nothing too special, lots of the flashy, ridiculous things performed in the shown are well supported by the animation and sound design. The show boasts lots of scenes where lots of people are moving, but I didn't really notice much CGI at all. As I mentioned in my Alicization 1 review, the color palette is much more vibrant and healthy compared to SAO and SAO II. Lots of the slip-ups in animation I found in Alicization 1 seemed to disappear in this new season. Character designs were also very decent. Shadows and light from weapons and such were on point. Fight scenes are handled very well as animation is fluent and smooth. A lot of this can be attested to the A-1 Pictures animation team and not Reki Kawahara, and this relatively high score can be attributed to the fact that its an improvement from previous SAOs. Still, its nice to step back and appreciate a strong aspect of the show. SOUND: 6 (Fair) The soundtrack of Alicization 2 is not anything to go out of your way to check out. I feel that a lot of the "intense" moments in the show could've been a lot more pumped up if the backing track had been stronger*, however this is sadly the case with most animes. Sucks, since I actually did notice the OST in the first season of the show, and it complimented a lot of the fight scenes. *STRONGER and not LOUDER. I've basically become desensitized to SAO openings at this point, all I can say is that it is very average and not something I would regularly listen to. CHARACTERS: 3 (Poor) My least favorite part about this show. Often a show can be redeemed of its story's fault by having incredibly strong characters (ex. Bungou Stray Dogs season 1 and Danmachi), but the characters in this show all feel like pieces of wet cardboard. Everywhere I turn people seem to be praising the main protagonist of the story, which I cannot sympathize with at all. The main protagonist is essentially a copy of several other characters with minimal differences, which makes sense given context but does not make for an interesting main character. She does not shown much flair in the decisions she makes, which is ironic since in context of the story this season would've been the perfect opportunity to give her a more prominent personality. One of the show's most powerful characters takes a backseat for this season, which originally I found as a good thing but eventually started begging for the show to reverse. Lots of the other characters are very boring and share a relatively same past. While we do get small glimpses of each's story, it is not nearly enough to make the character likable in any sense of the word. Returning characters are only there to take up screentime, make the viewer go "omg shes baaaaaaack", only to keep the shows pacing as slow as possible when you'd expect it to speed up at that point. ENJOYMENT: 4 (Decent) If you've read my other reviews, you'll know that I consider enjoyment to be the greatest factor in watching an anime. Maybe not from a critical point of view, but it could alter your experience in a way which ups the score of the show. That is not what I experienced with Alicization 2. At this point I see watching SAO as a chore as I've already watched so much that I may as well see how it ends, so please end it already. I think the main two things that kept me from enjoying the show were the slow pacing and boring characters, which is weird since fast pacing and decent characters are what kept me glued to the Aincrad arc. OVERALL: 5 (Mediocre) I think that Sword Art Online's greatest strengths are: -Strong developments …

This season was much better than the last couple of installments - mainly because the boring exposition was kept to a minimum, while the pacing and characterization was much better done. The art and animation was also far superior, with much more dynamic and engaging action scenes. Every episode felt like it was building towards something while developing one or more characters in some way. This series still isn't amazing or great, but it was a solid and enjoyable watch, especially compared to the prior seasons. It still suffers from the harem nonsense, as well as a bunch of background lore that is only interesting to nerds willing to listen to characters drone on in completely static, boring scenes. That aside, I'll still be looking forward to the next season, and I'm at least somewhat invested in Alice as a character.

How many women can one guy have, lmao. Jokes aside, the third and fourth seasons of Sword Art Online are way better than the first two. The early seasons felt rushed and never really took the time to flesh things out. Alicization, on the other hand, slows things down and puts a strong focus on worldbuilding and character development, which makes a huge difference. The story feels fresh and could almost work as a standalone anime outside of the SAO franchise. If that were the case, I honestly think people might enjoy it even more. That said, SAO has always been good at portraying authentic emotions, and this season sometimes pushes that a bit too far. There is one dead character who keeps coming back, with everyone constantly dwelling on their death. It works emotionally at first, but the impact weakens every time they reappear. It would have been much stronger if it happened only once or twice. Aside from that, this season was genuinely enjoyable. The characters are likable and well written, and the wholesomeness of humanity is once again beautifully shown on screen.

War of Underworld is a pretty reasonable sequel to Alicization. The story is a continuation of alicization and is interesting to watch with most of the things that happen making sense. Near the end of the season however the anime suddenly implies that you don't need the super fancy soul translator technology to dive into the underworld but claims this could also be achieved using a amusphere which just doesn't make sense. The characters are mostly the same as the previous season but Kirito is braindead. That's not an insult, he literally is, the power outage during the previous season fried his fluctlight. This means the story is mainly dictated by the other characters and Alice is the new main character. Overall the characters aren't outstanding but they're acceptable for the story. The animation is good overall. There is a relatively large increase in cgi usage though which is used to animate armies and is quite noticeable. The music/sound are still good. The Japanese voice acting is fine but there's a pretty large amount of English voice acting as well which has a very clear Japanese accent and isn't great to listen to. Overall this is an okay sequel that continues the story quite well. Not everything makes sense but it should still be fun to watch.

This once again proves how much better SAO can be when Kirito is out of action/not really in it. Sure the plotline itself was pretty basic, but we got to see some fairly interesting battles and more of the other characters - especially the female characters - being in the spotlight (Asuna in particular, but also Alice & co.). This begins the war between the Dark Territory and the Human Realm whilst in the 'real world' the turtle has been hijacked by Americans in order to get Alice and it's a race against time with who can get her out first, the Americans putting some pretty underhanded tactics at play in order to get what they want. Honestly, Alicization and War of the Underworld in particular took things into a lot darker route than we had previously. Sure, SAO has it's string of despicable bad guys and morality questioning, but seeing a little girl literally stabbed in the ear with a screwdriver does tend to put a dampener on things, and there's a lot more blood and severed limbs than there was before. What really brought this half of the season up for me though was the introduction of Renly - sure he's a pretty basic character all about overcoming your weakness and fighting for what is right despite being scared, but I liked his character design and his weapon was pretty cool (and a little overpowered - it's a shame we didn't get to see more of him battling), so I appreciated his introduction as it did give me something to look forward to amid all the doom and gloom.

Honestly the best season in SAO, combining everything with the previous seasons and no filler episodes! Super emotional and exhilarating, very well done by Aniplex. Lots of blood and gore but this is definitely worth watching. Weird how Quinella didn't seem half bad anymore in this half although she was the main villain in the first half of alicization but doesn't really matter. Definitely would recommend watching. Unlike Season 1 and 2 where they had the fairy tale arc which felt super cheesy and filler IMO, this is full of jam packed action with plot lines within the Underworld and outside of it too,