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

9 minutes in to the first episode and we get a Leafa groping scene, I honestly was about to drop it right then and there and I said that if that pig did what he was told to do then I would...well I'm still here so let's get on with it. I'll spoil some stuff here and there; If you saw War Part 1, I won't waste your time, I gave it a 6 and you can see that this is two points lower so it's not really worth investing into in my opinion. To start, they really wrote a way to make every time agirl interacts with Kirito, it brings him that much closer to saving his life. The writing is the downfall as usual. They amped up the fanservice too and I don't mean perverted scenes, I mean characters and scenes/references to other seasons. It's to the point where it's almost a joke because it's like playing bingo with who or what will show up, this isn't Smash Bros., it's just too obvious that they're catering. I will try to give some credit though because there are holes that they fill that I didn't even know really needed filled, so there's that. They tried to give Laughing Coffin guy a backstory. I'm not sure if that's an attempt at a redemption or just an attempt to try and give him more layering, either way it's a bad attempt. Then they have the audacity to make Asuna talk about how he's the guy from Laughing Coffin (out loud mind you) in the middle of this battle yet nobody seemed to care until they saw that he had the symbol of Laughing Coffin on his hand (for whatever reason) and only then does everybody start to take notice "Is he a member of LC?? That guy's a serial killer!" So, he's just a joke now too. "You think these people ain't cheaters?!" Says the man standing here with a big huge hole in his chest like it's nothing, what kinda health hacks are you on bro?

Rath be like "I don't expect you to understand but AI anime girls can be human too! At some point we can accept them into our society and maybe we can even marry them!" This is weeb trash and they're not even hiding it, they can make a girl say it as serious as she wants but it doesn't cover the sentence she's saying anymore than if a NEET had said it, might as well just commit.

There are some actually salvageable scenes in this where everything synchronizes and no one element drags but it's only every now and again. But there are also things that could've worked if they tweaked them a little bit, but just don't in their current form; Like the robot, why not make that his last wish and nobody thought it actually worked until that moment, it's just so out of the blue and out of place on its own. Also, what was the point of putting Kirito's "parents" in there? Was it to try and remind us that he keeps getting put in these situations where he can't live normally because he gets stuck in a game world? Was it to remind us that he's just a kid or even a wimpier version of his persona? Was it to introduce that he's still interested in working for RATH? It's just like they ignore them any other time but now they need an excuse to introduce some plot point that may not even matter. Don't go back and try to ground something at the last minute like a band-aid over a crumbling foundation.

Animation is top notch as always. I still can't really get over just how many cuts there are and where they are placed because it'll just start to get really interesting and then they'll cut, it's been a problem that I believe I mentioned in the past but it was more noticable to me here. I understand that they probably want to delegate the work and the shorter the load per person per team, the easier, which sacrifices quality for time but I guess that's a nitpick, at least it's not the other way around and full of filler episodes. The action and stuff is fine, it's just the context that fits it that's my problem. Most of the fights are like:

"Who're you?"
"Oh, well let me tell you, I'm bad."
"Good enough for me."

when there are plenty of other characters that could've taken care of them that might have something actually built up against this character to make for an interesting final battle. And I don't mean any battle specifically, I mean MOST of them. Each character gets attention but for what if it's just going to get solved by somebody else, I can't say I didn't expect it but here I am dragging more story complaints into the animation section, sorry but I think that a lot of the people that worked on this are very good, it's just dragged down by other stuff.

Well what about Sinon? She's what I was hoping for, she's more or less the reason that I'm even still in this. She gets some attention, she comes straight in during the first episode and she has about 1 or 2 battles but that's about it, it's not like I hoped, mainly because she's too bothered by Kirito (which isn't just a her problem, it's an EVERYBODY problem) but other than that her fight was kinda cool, I feel like they've been sidelining her for a while now because they didn't know what to do with her after SAO2's GGO arc (they've had that problem with other people too, not just this season either) I'd like to hope that her fight built on her overall character arc but I'm pretty neutral on the content she's in this season.

By the end, I realized that I would be fine with just seeing these characters hang out and chill. They give a glimpse into the "future of SAO" which will apparently be "the final battle" other than spinoffs and prequels which I know of one that's already announced that actually sounds interesting but the actual sequel to this looks dumb, I thought it was a joke. SAO really is the Fast and the Furious of the anime world, huh? I'm questioning whether I'll even stick around for that, this wasn't satisfying, it's messy, if anything I would've put the escape towards the beginning of the season and then work in a reason they have to go back. Alicization as a whole tried to do something different, and I respect that but it follows the same fundamental problems. It acts like it's an experiment that they'll work on along the way based on feedback but that's not what happens, yet I can't imagine this whole arc being apart of the original conception, it's very VERY odd and made me appreciate the last season more because "at least it's not this one." For those wondering, Ordinal Scale was my least favorite up to this point (even if Kirito crying over flowers takes the cake for moments) but this season tested that for me. Also, MAL has a 4 on the anime page as "bad" but when I pick it in the review column it says "decent" make up your mind!