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

Disclaimer: my opinions are shit. This is more of an all-encompassing review of the SAO series as a whole from someone who was never a big hand. As a whole, I disliked SAO from after the Aincrad arc onward and only really watched it out of nostalgia. I just didn't like the second season of alicization (or most of SAO for that matter). Things I dislike: I found that the fights were boring, the character development was non-existent, the animation style felt incredibly dated, and thought that the plot was incoherent. 3/10 The plot was a jumbled mess with all of these time skips and old copy-and-paste characters thatI couldn't remember and bored me to no end. They had many characters with the personalities of wet rags being the focal point of parts of this season. There were also some new characters I found equally uninteresting and I'm positive the original author is just bad at writing interesting characters and dialogue. They could have made the arc what I initially thought it would be, an arc which would've been about them developing as people and filling in the void that Kirito left, instead they ended up relying on him anyway to finish of the bad guy and it feels as though we are right back where we started imo.

6/10
The fights I didn't like but maybe I've been spoiled by other shows and the animation style seems lazy and dated to me but that may be down to personal preference.

3/10
As characters, I've felt essentially every character with potential in the past (Asuna, Alice, his sister etc.) always gets boiled down into being reliant on Kirito and never end up striving for anything more outside of him. For example, Asuna initially was a strong, swords women who wouldn't take anyone's' shit and then Kirito comes into the picture and she becomes a boring, submissive damsel in distress. While technically character development, I think its bad character development since your developing someone from an interesting character into a bland, submissive person. I thing single-handily the worst part of this whole series is Kirito. He's incredibly bland, he's too OP, he's unlikable yet everyone around him seems to like him, he's shallow etc. I just wish there was more to him and he had a bit more depth.

Things I like for the SAO fans:

- I think the premise of the show is decent, especially the original SAO
- I like some fights and I thought the sword in Gun Gale to be cool
- The show is okay at cliffhangers
- I appreciate the attempt to make the watcher think about the ethics of AIs and simulations even if the observations seemed mostly surface level.
- Music was fine

Overall: 4/10

Conclusion: If the only animes you have watched are SAO, AOT etc., I recommend that you broaden your horizones and search for other anime. Good 'action' shounen shows I recommend are Death Note, Steins;Gate, Mob Psycho 100, (maybe) Psycho Pass.