Review of Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online
I watched Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online. Just to clarify, this is the single-cour anime which aired during Spring 2018. Here are my thoughts: This is just a short review strictly addressing the SAO Alternative: GGO anime. Nothing I've written here is targeted towards the rest of the SAO franchise. For the record, I have seen (a few years ago) the second season of SAO where the GGO setting is featured. Again, I'm not going to discuss SAO as a whole, just the SAO Alternative: GGO anime. Some people have really strong opinions about SAO and I'm not looking to start arguments. SAO Alternative: GGOis unique from the rest of the SAO anime in that it is made by Studio 3Hz, instead of the usual A-1 Pictures. The visuals of this anime could be better, but they weren't bad either. I expected a slightly higher level of visual production quality from an anime bearing the SAO brand. However, there were a lot of action scenes to animate so I can't blame the studio if the budget was a little stretched. Still, I think that improving the animation quality would have enhanced the show considerably, particularly during the battle scenes. Art style was fairly generic.
In case you couldn't tell from the all-pink gun-carrying girl with a bunny-ear hat in the promo art, this anime is fairly silly. It is not something you should take seriously. This goes without saying, but don't expect realism from this anime (this sentence is directed at all the armchair Navy SEALs out there on the internet). That said, it is a pretty fun show to watch. The battle scenes are fun and entertaining. Although often silly, there is a fair amount of suspense during the battle scenes. I found them engaging.
The main character LLENN is likable and cute. All of her facial expressions, particularly during the battle scenes, enhanced my enjoyment of the show. In fact, her reactions to things in general were enjoyable. I liked her as a main character. However, I didn't like anyone else in the cast. Thankfully LLENN is almost constantly on-screen.
The writing is really bad. Don't expect a good story from this because you won't get it. All I will say is that the writing is ridiculous but in a bad way. If this anime didn't have a firearm-combat theme then it could probably pass as a kids' show (perhaps this is an intentional artistic decision). The story feels like a 14-year-old wrote it (maybe not surprising considering the SAO audience demographics). Fortunately, the story is not very intrusive and can be fairly easily ignored by the viewer. Although the exception to that is the last ~2 episodes, which are very plot-centric because this is when the story climaxes -- unsurprisingly these are also probably the worst episodes in the entire anime, in my opinion. Also, the ending of the story is very underwhelming -- don't get your hopes up for any kind of satisfying conclusion. I should mention that the writer for the source material (a light novel) of this anime is different than the writer of the original SAO series. Interestingly, the author for SAO Alternative: GGO is the same person who wrote Kino no Tabi.
The sound effects are alright, could have been better. From what I could hear between sounds of gunfire and explosions, the OST was decent. However, they kept plugging this singer into the story under a fictional name, and apparently this singer made her IRL debut using her real name shortly after the anime aired. It seemed like some kind of promotional deal but I don't know the specifics. I'm fine with promoting vocalists in anime since music is a major source of my enjoyment of the medium, but I wish that the promotional arrangements were less transparent than they seemed here. I don't know the full story but it simply irked me a little. As for voice acting, LLENN's VA actually did a great job, but nobody else impressed me.
My overall rating: 7/10
This anime is very easy to watch -- I completed the entire thing within three days of watching the first episode. It was really fun (particularly the battle scenes), although the writing is quite bad. In terms of characters, LLENN pretty much carried the entire show.
The simple fact is that watching a girl dressed in all pink run around and shoot opponents with her P90 submachine gun ("P-chan"), all the while making cute facial expressions and reactions, is entertaining as hell. I would definitely watch a second season, even if the writing were just as awful.
My advice to someone planning to watch this: set your expectations based on the positive and negative attributes identified here. Don't take this anime seriously. Fun things are fun.
Lastly, this anime can be enjoyed by people who haven't seen any other SAO show. However, there are some infrequent references to the second season of SAO, so the optimal time to view this is after watching season two of the original series. It's no big deal either way though.