Review of Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online is not an alternative to Sword Art Online. Instead it assumes you've watched the first two seasons of SAO and is simply a story set in the same universe. That means that instead of the story being about Kirito and friends, it is about a girl with a height complex who plays in Gun Gale Online as a pink loli and talks to her gun. The story initially is not bad and the plot makes sense. As the anime goes on however, it starts taking GGO way too seriously and treating it as if it's real life insteadof what it truly is, a game. This causes many scenes to feel very unnatural since people care way too much about dying in a game. It then goes on to try to raise the stakes even more by bringing death in real life into the mix but this time it makes no sense at all and make the scenes feel even more out of touch with reality. Another detail is that the gun of the main character starts talking back to her at several occasions which isn't something that happens in SAO and is kind of weird. If the anime would have kept it at a simple tournament in GGO it would've been fun to watch and a good anime but the way it tries to raise the stakes in a stupid way kind of ruins the story.
The characters aren't bad but they're weirdly written. We're shown that the main character has a height complex since she is tall and it bothers her a lot. Then at some point in the anime she magically gets over it because "She fought for her life multiple times" aka she played a shooter game. The way characters act in the game also often feels unnatural since the game is treated as real life. Characters do also have good moments though and can be fun to watch.
The animation is solid, it's not perfect but it works well enough for the story it's trying to convey. The sound is good and matches the anime well if you don't care about the stakes that were raised for no reason. The voice acting is fine and it's neat to hear that characters and their avatar sound different.
Overall this anime can be fun to watch if you don't care too much about the story but just want to see a pink loli killing people in a game. The story however isn't good and seeing as it doesn't add anything to SAO I don't see much reason for watching this.