Review of Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

It's better than SAO proper, but not by much. Story: A girl plays a game because she can be short in a video game (she is very tall in real life). She goes on misadventures for no particular reason other than they are there. Why does she want to be good at the game? How did she become so good at the game? None of this is ever explained. That effectively sums up the plot of the show. You may as well just be watching a "Let's Play" of the game featured in the show. The most criminal aspectof this is the lengthy exposition dumps we get multiple times from characters that establish the seemingly arbitrary rules of the game, flag poling the fact the main characters will find some "clever" way to bend or exploit them. There is also a "twist" you can figure out from literally the second episode, so look forward to that.

Art: It looks fine. Serviceable. Character designs are what you'd expect from this genre.

Sound: The gun sounds are pretty accurate (as far as I am aware). At least they put in the effort to get that right. The ED is quite good, believe it or not, but everything else is forgettable.

Character: There's one single character with any real established motivation in this show, and he is a side character. He is also the only character that shows a third dimension to his personality. Everyone else, including our main character is as thin as paper. None of the characters are shown to have any stakes or motivation for their actions. They simply do what the plot dictates.

Enjoyment: I watched all of this on a second monitor while playing Doom. I was hoping it would go somewhere interesting at some point, or at least shock me or show me something interesting, but that never happens. Even the ending does not even hint at a resolution for the single "mystery" of the show. At least the pacing wasn't insane like it's counterpart, SAO proper.