Review of Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

I like SAO. There are parts that I just simply don't like, SAO3 didn't do much for me at all, neither did the movie, and I started thinking that SAO kind of already peaked with the first half of the first season. This made me reevaluate that question. With that I binge watched this in 3 days. This anime starts out really promising, it almost doesn't seem like SAO, I kept trying to separate it in my mind to see if it could be it's own thing but it makes more sense why it's in this universe later on and has a bit more relevance togaming.

Why didn't I watch this sooner? From the research I've done, it doesn't have any relevance to SAO's main story and doesn't have the characters as well as the main being a cute pink avatar that you can't take seriously. All this is from an outsider's point of view. I looked into Fatal Bullet (the PS4 game) and it wasn't as good as I hoped but I figured I'd stick with the theme and see this series just to say I watched all the SAOs other than Offline.

All I want from any SAO series now is Death Gun, to see some closure. I knew going in that this wasn't going to give it to me but maybe it could offer something different. So enough foreplay, let's get into it. This series starts out great. I was honestly shocked at how it hooked me, I haven't felt that from SAO in a while. It got me thinking that SAO might be able to start things really good but just have trouble continuing them. This 'alternative' is a one-season thing. I'm glad that they decided to expand out and I would watch another (different) Alternative series. They only reference stuff from the main series a few times so you don't need any other series to see this one.

We get a lot of knowledge on not just guns but also some lore and really cool combat techniques. I like the fight coordination, it takes advantage of the pink cute girl avatar and makes her relentless, taking her serious is not a problem. Real life comes into play because it talked about how "If you can drive in real life then you can in the game" which makes sense since it's VR, but it makes me believe that this game is just you basically in another body in a different dimension, same worldly rules and needs, because they eat and drink in the game when they shouldn't technically have to and they even talk about using the bathroom, which I found quite odd. They eat in regular SAO too but this one made me actually question it because food in the digital world can't translate into your real body can it? It's also pretty cool that they now have a feature for the (new) headgear that auto logs you out if your heart-rate becomes increased or you pass out.

I have a few nitpicks here and there though. For one, when the plot twist happens, the main "Llenn" Just brushes it off, it doesn't seem to impact her like you might think, it might be because of how exaggerated most anime are but I think they were just trying to move on with the plot. Minor spoilers and stuff out of context for those who watched it. Her gun talks, Clarence is the start of treading into that bad SAO territory, they made a joke out of it at first but then moved on and did stuff anyway. She says "Pechon" specifically with the promise but it didn't happen like that at the end and 'Llenn' never actually picked a place.

I make all my reviews differently so this time I'll have a breakdown:

STORY: 8, They carried over a concept that fits with the series without straying too far from the source.

ART: 8, It's SAO, they have good art, it isn't appealing to see the characters before watching but it makes up for it later so only an 8.

SOUND: 7, Nothing that stood out to me, this is mostly a null for me in most anime though.

CHARACTER: 7, Peto treats people like trash, they went with more accurate than likable but it at least strays away from SAO standards for the most part.

ENJOYMENT: 7.5? Can I do that? I'll round it to an 8 on the actual rubric.

OVERALL: 7, I'll admit the second half started to lower in quality compared to how impressed I was with the first half, if it wasn't for this being only one season, I imagine it would have gotten worse but it at least did a good job for a lot of it, good structure.