Review of Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld Part 2
Alicization Awakening... Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season brings in ALL the sins of the previous seasons, including previous villains and brings this saga to a close. Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season leaves off the from the first season and while Kirito is still a potato, the rest of the cast outside of the Underworld comes into the fray, from Asuna and the gang to all the minor characters from SAO and ALO comes in to make this "War" even bigger, what's worse is the villains from the previous season gaslights real life people into joining the serverand sicks them onto the returning cast members. The returning characters themselves even extends to the Ordinal Scale movie and the likes. Like this season REALLY ups the stakes to how BIG this season gets.
LA was more surprised by the returning characters as well as the true villains' true identities into all this by it all. In a ways since the villains themselves had ties to previous seasons, it feels like Reki Kawahara saw the sins of the previous seasons and tried to tie it together as a finale resolution to the villains in question, heck one of the villains had ties to Kirito and his "hatred" and "love" for him that lead to the Laughing Coffin incident.
Though this season does FINALLY make Kirito "no potato" and makes him the "Gaming Jesus" he is, though somewhat justifable due to the incident with the Administrator but still what happens as a result was quite something as a shock factor for a finale (which gets quickly negated but nonetheless does have a lasting effect on Kirito). Oddly enough Alice got LESS screentime than Kirito this season as she ALMOST became a plot point and due to the massive spread of character developments this season LA was actually expecting it and really this is more or less a nitpick.
This season not only pulled some plot twists involving it's villains to the point they were interesting outside fo their blatant "evil for evil sakes", but the villains themselves kinda pushed the main characters even Kirito into developing themselves, namely Sinon, Asuna and Leafa, though Leafa got the short end of the stick throughout this season, whilst Sinon and Asuna got their GREAT screentime in resolving their personal demons from the previous seasons of Sword Art Online as a WHOLE into showing their true worth in the War, Leafa kinda got the short end of the stick however.
This season also brought up previous season villains, no LA doesn't JUST mean Alicization arc, like almost EVERY previous seasons villains in some ways comes back to sabotage the large scale craziness of Alciization's 2nd Season and yes they do have an effect on not just Kirito but the entire cast in some form or another, namely PoH to Gabriel, Quinella even gets a mention to even the Ordinal Scale who comes back in a different way altogether. Because of the concentration of major villains form previous seasons comes into play, the stakes just rises as well as their resolutions as villains/anti villains to bounce off the main cast.
The animation done once again by A1-Pictures is pretty much the same as the first season with all the pixelated goriness intact as well as the crisp movie like quality of the backgrounding, battles and character designs, expected really and heck the fight scenes didn't skimp on the batshit craziness that SAO would get into and once again it did without remorse. Overall, the animation done by A1-Pictures is consistent with the first season as well as high quality from the first season to boot, maybe more.
The voice cast is back as well as all the returning cast from the previous season' characters so LA would be talking forever about EVERY SINGLE ONE, so LA will more or less go for MVP and LA would easily say the MVP's would go to Haruka Tomatsu as Asuna, Miyuki Sawashiro as Sinon and Ayana Taketatsu as Leafa...cos of reasons and situations Leafa got into...nonetheless the returning voice cast is back and really good voice cast.
Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season by all means does some jumping the shark (not only with Kirito) but also some good plot twists tying to not only the Alicization plotline but all the rest of the subplotlines that SAO has done to varying degrees. The jumping the shark moments for LA comes in either two variations, either OMG THIS IS GOOD, or Kirito being Kirito again. On the other side of things, the plot twists also goes two directions as well, either good character development to the majority of the cast through it all.....or Kirito being the centre of everything down the villains' motives of it. The only MAJOR surprise is the interim of before the climax and that was unexpected to say the least. LA gets what this season is going for much like Alicization as a whole, Reki Kawahara's redemption and wanting to right his wrongs of his failings of his previous seasons of SAO by bringing together EVERYONE from the previous seasons and fighting over Kirito by also giving characters outside of Kirito the limelight and this season without a doubt also fleshed out Kirito and humanizing him as much of an OP edgy lord he is when he wakes up.
What SAO does after this season is anyone's guess but for this season to be the coup de grace for Reki Kawahara's redemption arc...well he redeemed himself all right and shows he's learned from his failings of previous season's arc (something LA has said in previous Alicization arcs) and to this end...Reki Kawahara you did good, now rest.
Buuut since it teased there will be more soon...
Reki can't stop now.