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

After 47 episodes over the course of nearly two years, Alicization has finally drawn to a close. I can see why there was so much excitement going into it; as a whole, this arc has had some of the franchise’s best moments, albeit also some of its worst. But when I look at just this last quarter, I can’t help but feel disappointed that this is how it all ended. Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of Underworld 2nd Season is a series of well animated fight scenes. As the culmination of the arc, there’s an effort to give every character a moment in the spotlight,though as impressive as all of these fights are, I just wish there was more going on. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a show that’s primarily composed of fight scenes, as SAO has demonstrated before with Alicization Rising. But whereas that arc had a constant sense of forward momentum, most of the encounters here feel superfluous, as if the show is just spinning its wheels until it’s time to advance the main plot.

By which, I mean Kirito. At this point, it’s basically established that Kirito will win any fight that he takes seriously, so there are really only two ways that the series can create meaningful tension: either by putting him in situations he can’t fight his way out of (it would be neat if this happened more often!) or by removing him from the equation so that the other characters are the focus of the conflict. In this sense, putting Kirito in a coma was inevitable.

But at the same time, the franchise is so obsessed with Kirito that no one else is allowed to do anything meaningful. Rather than taking this chance to demonstrate how capable the others are on their own, we just got a season and a half of everyone waiting for Kirito to come solve all of their problems. Like, there were two major antagonists in this arc; would it have been that unreasonable for someone other than Kirito to defeat one of them?

Speaking of, SAO still needs to work on its villains. Between xenophobic serial killer and sociopathic serial killer, we’re not exactly dealing in shades of gray. They’re cartoonishly evil and not terribly interesting, and I hope that Reki Kawahara eventually figures out a way to establish how bad a character is by means other than either exposition or sexual assault. In this case, we’re told how evil PoH is, but wouldn’t it have been more compelling if we had actually seen all of the murders he had been responsible for back in season 1? I’ve read enough fanfiction about Aincrad’s supporting cast that he still had some sense of magnitude for me, but I think for most people, he was just another one-dimensional baddie.

Still, for all of my criticisms, War of Underworld is not without its virtues. For one, it’s SAO’s gayest arc yet.