Review of Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld Part 2

As the Alicization arc is dubbed by many as the best arc of the SAO series, I had hopes when I first started the anime adaptation of SAO Alicization. The setting itself is great: the creation of a 'true AI' would mean that many ethical and philosophical questions and values would be at stake in the process of creating and interacting with said true AI. I was hoping that the plot would go much deeper into those topics rather than use said topics as a stepping stone for typical, cliche anime plot armour and the power of love and friendship... but of course, love andfriendship always win...

Let's start with the positive elements of this anime: great animation, typical industry-standard sound design and decent soundtracks. The work put into the fights are what stand out the most in terms of animation. The sound design is of the same quality as the previously aired anime adaptations of SAO, which means good choice of sound effects (aside for the swords clashing with each other sometimes, they sound like metal pans instead of real swords but that's just my opinion) and suitable choice of soundtracks to support the narration.

Now onto the bad stuff.
[WARNING: the following part is rather messy and resembles more of a rant than a review.]
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The characters are as one-dimensional as they can get: Kirito is a god-tier character who has and gains super powers continuously, and of course, is surrounded by a bunch of tertiary characters--his waifus. Speaking of his waifus, they are ranked as follow in terms of importance: Asuna, the rest. Even worse, every time the waifus were given screen time, they would always follow this exact pattern: they first look really strong by killing a lot of enemies, then for some odd reason, they lose their will to fight, get thrashed around or end up in an apparently hopeless situation, then rise up thanks to the power of love and friendship (aiyaaaa...), then fall again because friendship does not match up to Kirito, their lord and saviour. Then, Kirito comes and wins the whole thing. Along the way, lots of melodrama is created thanks to all the tertiary characters--the waifus--and the quaternary characters--everyone else that is not Kirito or the waifus--suddenly finding themselves in hopeless situations. Moreover, all villains are psychopaths who just want to kill people... and that's not the worst part in all of this.

The worst part is that all female characters--or almost--are depicted as being completely powerless, and that they need to be saved by love and/or friendship. Even Dr. Rinko is saved by a robot who is possessed by her lover... And of course, all the waifus go from having some form of independence to becoming insignificant puppet cheerleaders the moment Kirito shows up. This really proves that all the waifus exist solely to love and worship Kirito, who is quite literally depicted as some kind of messiah in this anime.

Finally, the story. The story is complete garbage. Remember how I talked about going into ethical and philosophical issues? Yeah no, there's none of that in this anime. For example, pretty much all deaths are meaningless, and I shall explain: the death of some players are depicted as being very tragic, for example the "deaths" of Rue and Sakuya--yes, quaternary characters. However, it is clearly stated that players--people from the "real world"--do not lose their lives when they are killed in the Underworld. Thus, these deaths cannot be tragic because they have no value, nothing is at stake.

Then how about the deaths of the native inhabitants of the Underworld--both humans and non-humans? This anime suggests that an AI can only obtain humanity if it gains true autonomy and intellect equivalent to that of a human being. This criterion is represented by their defiance of the system--the right eye blowing up or whatever that is. Because all the dead native inhabitants of the Underworld have not been proven to have satisfied this condition, they cannot be considered humans or even some kind of sentient being: they are just big blocks of code. For that reason, these deaths, again, are meaningless as nothing is at stake.

In conclusion, Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season is an anime made of empty characters, shit-tier dialogue, plot armour and the power of love and friendship. I had to continuously skip bits of 10 to 20 seconds to avoid all that vomit-inducing dialogue. The only episodes I have almost watched in full length are the last two episodes, as they talk a bit about some of the ethical stakes I was hoping the author would explore in this Alicization arc.