Rbastid

It’s like déjà vu all over again.

Story - 3/10

Some time has passed since the last series ended, as noted by the current iteration of “Bullet of Bullets” that’s about to take place. As for our crew of characters, they all seem to be more immersed than ever in gaming, as they jump around from MMO to MMO. Kirito is also still helping develop new technology, but this time he’s beta testing a new type of full dive gear developed by Kikuoka, one that has the ability to condense hours of game time in to just minutes of real life playing, similar to how the brain processes dreams. The only real downside Kirito sees is that once you leave the game you forget everything that happened, so he’s unable to fully inform his friends on all the details about his playtime, or the new system.

Despite some worries about the virtual world, Kirito’s life appears to be in a rather good place, which doesn’t last long due to a run in with his old nemesis, Death Gun. Now the only way for Kirito to possibly have the chance of returning to a normal life is to attach himself to the new VR device and hope that it has the ability to regenerate the damaged parts of his brain. 

This whole scenario is news to Kirito’s family and friends, as he’s rushed off to an undisclosed location without anyone being informed. This sets Asuna off on a hunt to find out where he’s located, and see what is really going on. This leads her to one of the co-creators of the original Sword Art Online hardware, who teams up with her to see what’s behind Kikuoka’s shady behavior. They track him down and eventually learn the truth behind the game Kirito was testing, and where he currently is trapped away.

Now within the game Kirito is dealing with his own dilemma, as once again he can’t log out from what he knows full well isn’t reality. He runs into a young boy named Eugeeo, who’s chopping down a tree, and despite having interacted with him in previous log ins, neither have any idea of who the other is. After trying to rescue a friend, and engaging in a battle that for once looks hopeless for our hero, both boys have a vision of their past, which sets them off on a quest to rescue Alice, a young girl who was taken away for breaking the rules, in hopes that it will help Kirito escape.

This leads us into a time jump to where Kirito and Eugeeo are just at the point where they are ready to graduate to the level of senior class-men in the academy which trains all the Integrity Knights, characters that are essential the world’s “Game Masters.” In doing so even this new and unskilled character, whom Kirito is paired with, is able to turn into a top level sword fighter who can just snap his fingers to win a fight, cool so we have two Kiritos to make the show boring.

During their time at school the upperclassmen are tended to by one of their juniors, though some students take their requests a little too far. This leads to Kirito and Eugeeo confronting two of their classmates who also happen to be from higher caste families and, in the ensuing un-needed scenes, our hero’s accidentally kill someone, which now means they’ll be taken away for death, the same as their old friend Alice.

While this is certainly the part of the show that connects back to the traditional RPG aspect of the game, where our characters fight their way up a tower, facing bosses on every few floors, it is also just packed with points where they sit around and essentially read us the game manual. Too many anime series, and entertainment in generally, have decided that it’s easier to just have characters tell us all the information we need, instead of finding ways to integrate it into the scenes, which can work for short movies, but is just lazy when it comes to shows that are dozens of episodes long. They go beyond even the normal level of overused dialogue, where Kirito and Eugeeo are whisked away to a library where they literally sit around and have the show’s plot read off to them by a child in a mortar board and robe.

Things wrap up with Kirito being able to get through to the hearts and memories that these A.I. have (despite ten minutes earlier being told that isn’t how it works by little miss graduate) and the whole gang get the chance to fight the show’s mega boss. Like all boss battles in history this fight had less to do with actual tactics and more to do with the enemy’s clothes all flying off and the viewer watching strategic pieces of hair attempting to keep the shows rating below “Adult.” In the end Kirito plugs in his “Game Genie,” and again powers up to victory.

Thinking he can finally escape Kirito logs in to the game’s admin function, but coincidentally at the moment things are going completely down hill at the secret facility housing his full dive unit, so the fate of both Kirito and Asuna are now unknown.

Overall much of this feels like a retelling of season one, but with many of the roles reversed. Just as with Asuna’s second half story, Kirito is now locked in a game due to being in a coma while also hooked up to VR gear, while in the game he needs to travel up a tower to find the beautiful girl trapped on the top floor, and the whole time the actual action and story is no more than maybe ten minutes of show time. 

The reasoning behind the game and VR gear is also a bit far fetched even for the anime world. Kikuoaka admits to Asuna that the AI are created so that wars can be fought in that world, but what planet is someone living on if he thinks that two countries, or a country and a terrorist organization, will just agree to have some computers fight and declare a winner, if that was the case we’d currently be just playing games of poker instead of going to war. Another flub was how it seemed the writers completely lost their own lore somewhere along the way. They talk about how the “Taboo Index” was created and everyone followed it, but because they wanted to add their own fantasy rape scenes to the show they just decided to create a new superseding law, which goes against everything Kikuoaka talked about, including how the AI have never broken the law or had real free will, instead living their lives according to the rules written for them.

There were two things this series always did well, and this time both were just done horribly. First they were always able to get you to want to watch the next episode. You could go through almost the entire twenty-ish minutes not being fully engaged with whats on the TV, and then in the last thirty seconds they add something that makes you want to stay around to see what happens. Sure we’d be duped once the next episode started, and we just get five seconds to answer the question we were left with, followed by a whole show’s worth of nothing, but even knowing that you’ll still fall for it again and again. They managed to go even further this time by ending the entire series with a final ten second clip that makes you want to come back for the next installment, despite the fact you know full well it’s going to be another let down.

The other part of the show that I always enjoyed was their ability to make the video game world really feel like a video game. Here it was completely different, as nothing within the “Underworld” ever resembled a video game. Instead we were just given a bland Slice of Life series taking place in a pseudo medieval fantasy setting.

Another hallmark of this show is wasted potential. With a larger episode load you’d think they could have built a better story, or at least worked on ways to make us care about these characters, but they didn’t. They also just completely ignore so many of the people we have connected with, instead once again focusing almost exclusively on Kirito, a character who is always just positioned as the perfect gamer, which makes things completely uninteresting. Their use of Asuna was awful, as by locking Kirito in the game it gave her a chance to shine as the show’s lead, but instead she had no more than three minutes of total air time, and even ending where she again is going to be the one who needs saving by our garbage hero.

A show like this benefits from a good mix of story, character development, action, and lore, but somehow they never seem to get it right, often shifting way too far between the elements while leaving the others out completely. At this point it’s hard to not just believe that the production company behind S.A.O. realizes they can milk their fans for every penny, putting out more and more episodes that go no where.

Animation - 6/10

Everything is on par with the series before it. None of the new characters are very original, the locations aren’t that interesting, and to make things worse they had to add in a copious amount of ecchi for those who can’t just have a series be entertaining for the story and character development. If anything things are slightly worse than before, as the inhabitants and monsters we’re use to are no where to be seen, outside of a few goblins and gargoyles.

Sound - 6/10

With many of the cast from previous seasons returning we get all those same V.O. artist back to voice their characters. For our newcomers we get a mix of seasoned actors as well as names that have just broken on to the scene. Pretty much everyone did the job you’d expect for their character, and while at times sounding like a hundred different actors before them, you can still appreciate the work they put forth. 

I’ve never been a fan of the themes used for this series, as they ranged from dull to so awful you’d wonder if your TV really required speakers any longer, but this time at least a few of the songs weren’t so bad. Both openings are Japanese versions of Nu Metal with female singers, which like all Nu Metal means it’s pretty terrible, though unlike all the trash we had to endure on American radio, these ladies can at least sing well. The first ending “Iris” reminds me a many of the late nineties/early two thousands anime theme songs in style, and seems like a song you could hear over the action packed promo video they’d make to sell the DVDs. The last song we’re given isn’t too awful either, though sounding like the bad fake pop punk that once was a hit in the U.S. it’s also not something you’d want to listen to over and over.

We again get some of the signature sounds from Yuki Kajiura, and despite much of her music sounding extremely similar, it’s always a delight to hear within a series.

Characters - 2/10

The Sword Art series always had pretty awful characters, because they all came into the show at what would be “Max Level.” Kirito was a game’s beta-tester in season one, so he already knew all the tricks and was able to defeat everything in his way. In subsequent series he had to ability to transfer all his godly stats to the new games, thus once again starting off miles ahead of everyone, and don’t ya know this time around he’s able to pretty much start from the top of the pack, skilled up to levels generally held by only the strongest of knights.

As a character he’s also what we remember from past seasons; slightly full of himself, loyal to a fault, and a bit naive about the realities of being in a life or death situation. At first his main goal is to just save Alice, as his assumption is that doing so would be considered winning the game, and maybe that will lead to his release, but he instead starts to treat those in the world as if they’re real people, which in turn does slow things down. Possibly due to his past experiences with death in S.A.O. he’s more likely to act as if he were in the real world, as who knows what the consequences might be, but even when he gets full confirmation that everyone is just a computer program, he shifts back into the “AI are real,” mindset that in the past led to many creepy stories involving Yui, the fake daughter he and Asuna dreamt up for themselves, in previous seasons. They also decided at a few points in the show, especially towards the end, of just making him kind of a dick.

Paired up with Kirito is another young character named Eugeeo, a boy who, due to the way the game is configured, doesn’t actually know he’s an NPC. After being unable to save his friend when he was a child, he now decides to go to the capital with Kirito to try and become an Integrity Knight, in hopes of finding out what happened to her a few years earlier. The problem with his character is that even basic game NPCs have more to them, as he just acted like your typical dim companion for most of the series, despite that we’re told that these characters have all evolved into AI with human like qualities. Only when he gets into a fit of rage is he able break out of his dopey boy routine, which seems like the exact opposite thing the creators of the AI would want, so hopefully they completely erased his data. The had Kirito’s skills rub off on Eugeeo, where he later becomes stronger than even the greatest knights in the kingdom, they also made Kirito’s arrogance and a-holery rub off on him towards the end.

The other characters within this new game are as dull as our co-star. The young girl Alice, who has now become one of the few Integrity Knights guarding the kingdom, is nothing more than your typical “female warrior” that many shows get. They can’t even blame it on the ritual that turned her into a knight, as all the other Integrity Knights we meet still have a personality and critical thinking skill, where as she’s basically a meathead with a sword. That is until she meets Kirito, and then at points she becomes the same helpless damsel in distress that anime writers create, in hopes they can one day save. 

The main villain within the game, the administrator, could have been somewhat interesting, as she’s clearly evolved faster and with more depth than the other AI, but instead she’s just your typical crazy super boss bent on unlimited power. While she uses her sexuality to control and gain the trust of other characters, it was disappointing to see the designers decided to just make her a completely naked swimsuit model who’s entire fight sequences revolved around making her do the most bouncing, thus relegating her character to not much more than sleaze bait.

The helpful AI character follows suit in this series of being very unoriginal. They made her appear as if she was every other “scholar” class character in JRPGs, and her entire reason for being is just a story of convenience, especially since she basically acts as a restart button or a cheat code, jumping in right when someone needs saving.

The few other characters who get story time range from rich snobs who believe they can do whatever they want to all these peasant folk, helpless females who swoon over our heroes and come running to them for help, and the knights who all have the same story arc but literally get snuffed out before they could make the show interesting. So clearly the creators weren’t putting in full days on work on this series.

Most of the characters from the past few seasons are only there for a few minutes to be used as an excuse for someone to explain a concept or situation to. The only one who plays a major part is, not surprisingly, Kirito’s girlfriend Asuna. Her role in the series starts off as the person who is trying to find the whereabouts of Kirito after he’s transferred from the hospital, but they so quickly resolved that plot line, so she just faded away into the background. Her only other addition to the show was to bring up this somewhat creepy new idea people have that AI are just like humans; that they have feelings and shouldn’t be taken advantage of……while completely ignoring that the use of AI for the show’s reasons would mean that actual humans don’t die in war, so they’re trying to say AI lives are equally as important as humans.

With so many episodes you’d think they could at least try to build good characters, but right at the start there’s a hint of whats to come, as our companion Eugeeo tells us that he’s done absolutely nothing but try to chop down a tree for years, thus letting us know that he is a completely empty character.

Overall - 3/10

The thing that really felt like it was missing in this season was a reason for everything. In past years you wanted Kirito to succeed, because if he didn’t people in S.O.A. would die, Asuna would be forced to marry a psychopath, or Deathgun would claim another victim; but in these twenty four episodes the biggest tragedy, if Kirito failed, was that a bunch of AI would be erased and the company would start over, big whoop. Without any real world consequences you lose any drama or thrill of watching the show. Something as simple as saying Kirito’s brain can be altered by the bad events happening in this new world, could have easily made you at least care about the outcome, as it affects the overall storyline.

What says so much to me about this part of the series is that I came back to update some stuff on my reviews, and I had no problem remembering everything about the other three shows before this, but I completely forgot what went on, despite it being my most recently viewed show from this franchise. 

So much of the show really seemed like a writer trying to justify why he just had a marriage ceremony for himself and his new ‘real doll.” The amount of time and tears spent on telling us that computer graphics “are people too,” is worrisome for the future of mankind, unless you’re the type of person who glances at your blender and thinks “oooo baby.” If anything I guess the writers are trying to position them selves for a pardon when the robot overlords take over the country, by showing them this and saying they were always for AI rights.

The next season looks like it could be interesting and action packed, and perhaps even have a meaning to it, but that would all the more lead me to believe this season should have been nothing more than a small OVA between series, as the entire uselessness of this arc can be condensed into under two hours easily, and you wouldn’t miss a thing. 

Positive Reasons for Score:

 * The story is good, just not in the format used, as it’s now just a slice of life show, instead of an MMORPG style show.

 * They again have to thank Yuki Kaijura’s soundtrack for giving them the only bright spot in this series.

 * Ummmm, I guess the swords were cool…..

Negative Reasons for Score:

 * The attempts to care about code, and act like theses NPCs are real and worth expending emotion on is pretty disturbing and worthy of getting help over.

 * The show has lost all connection to “Being in a video game” as the time in the Underworld had no video game elements.

 * They break the golden rule of “Show, Don’t Tell” where they fall in to these long episodes that just explain the situation instead of building it in to the story.

Ways to make the show better:

 * Make better use of Asuna, but remember she’s an eighteen year old, and shouldn’t be outsmarting some of the best minds in the world.

 * Return to the RPG aspect of the Game World, as there is no resemblance to it at all after the few scenes of basically chopping down a tree.

 * Replace so much of the wasted time in the Underworld, with giving returning characters a decent side story.