SPOILER WARNING
PROFANITY WARNING

So imma just get one thing outta the way, I watched this show purely to meme it and I fricken LOOKED for shit wrong with this one, that being said I shall now commence a completely serious review of this show.

(Mainly a character breakdown)

Karen is a twenty-something year old whose height has always bothered her as she is stared at and made fun of. In fact, this is one of the things the show establishes relatively well during her time in the real world. Her "coping" mechanism is to inhabit the 4-foot tall loli avatar of LLENN where she is constantly looked at by other players and referred to as the "pink devil". You see what I did there? Initially, you might see this as an issue, because she escapes into an avatar that essentially gives her the same treatment. I'm stretching it as I know it's a height complex to her and being a little cute girl has always been a dream of hers. The issue I have with this is that it's just an escape for her. Instead of gradually accepting herself for the powerful woman she becomes; we see NO growth of her character on this MAIN issue. It wouldn't annoy me at all if this was just a small thing, but because of the early episodes we are led to believe that this is a HUGE deal for her, and it could have been implemented with one friggin line in the finale. When she meets Pitou irl a simple line commenting about Elsa Kanzaki's age and appearance and how even though she is so small she is powerful and connecting it to how Karen should look past her appearance so that she can show people the true her. This would have made the whole hate boner they had for each other in SJ2 actually mean something rather than being something done for M. It was one of MANY missed opportunities that the show has. Moving onto M, and wowie this is where shit gets crazy. M is a flat character in a l m o s t every regard. I loved SJ1 M as he was a badass shrouded in mystery who was OP and shit. As soon as they turned his character into exposition, it went to shit. They made him crazy for Pitou, which wasn't all that bad. What made this character fail was the pure amount of WE DON'T GIVE A SHIT that he let off. There is no reason why he should have fallen for Pitou in the first place as the masochist thing is aNyThInG but relatable. Plus, the fact that we knew nothing about how he fell for her until the last episode ruined any chance for actual connection. I really wanted to like his character because he was cool, and his action scenes were brilliant but I couldn't connect with his reasoning at all. If instead, we learned that he was Pitou's brother or manager and that he was worried that this yandere path was going to ruin her life. This would have been much better and I would've understood his whole "I can't do it but you can" reasoning that he gave to LLENN (a little more). In short, he's a cool sniper and an idiot pedo. Lastly onto the last main character...Pitou. I'm not gonna lie I think that Pitou was the best character in the series up until that last episode. She had death gun vibes and sure it was kind of cliche to see a character that wanted a death game but it was something that was unexpected for a girl who we saw as LLENN's only in-game friend. Her whole love for killing and fear of death really was interesting to see juggling around inside her. We had epic moments of pure destruction like when she took down 20 men at the same time (best scene of this whole show in my op), while also being able to see her crazed moments when she got shot...in the eye (plot armour but fuck it we knew it had to happen). The whole Elsa Kanzaki reveal was underwhelming as we didn't hear much about her after the end of the first half so most of us forgot. Plus, for those who remembered, she was literally the only person left who it could have been. The reason why this reveal ruined Pitou's character is that THERE IS NO BLOODY REASON FOR WHY IT SHOULD BE HER!!! We get no background on her, so how are we supposed to give a shit??? What pissed me off the most about this whole thing is that IT COULD HAVE EASILY BEEN FIXED. How? Might you ask? A fucking ending fight song sequence. So you know how the opening song plays during the final fight in some shows? Well, top make that fuckfest of an ending fight have more substance (it was fun but just so weird), how about a ten-second tidbit before where LLENN says, "I need some dope ass music from my favorite artist to hype me up for this fight". Then the song would be an Elsa Kanzaki song in which the lyrics somehow pertained to Pitou's feelings, you wouldn't even have to make a new song, just twist the lyrics and make some bs up to connect them. Then instead of M sugar feeding Elsa to Karen, Karen could have figured it out Pitou's identity on her own due to the lyrics, confronted Pitou on her hardships, and the both of them could have made up and been friends or some happy shit, thus skipping the whole letter shit because I'm sure more than one person knows who LLENN is in real life and where she lives, ugh that fan letter could not have been more of a cop out istg.
I've ranted and given my complaints, but I don't hate this show. Minus the pacing issues at the end and some useless characters (i'm sorry grenade girl but I don't even remember your name) and pointless battle sequences the majority of the show was pretty solid (and of course the writing and characters but that was already addressed). I know a lot of people complain about how LLENN is overpowered and how it's hax but in all honesty, I don't think this show would have been half as fun without it. Imagine LLENN at a disadvantage trying to formulating some master plan to come out of a situation. It doesn't fit her character at all, which is why I appreciate the short strategy talk which lets us know she knows somewhat of what she is doing while still focusing on turning gun lovers into five-minute fleshlights ;). The biggest frustration I had however and the biggest missed opportunity this show had was NOT MAKING THE MACHINE GUN LOVERS OF JAPAN WIN SQUAD JAM 2!!! That would have been such a gag I really want to see someone parody it. Just as a recap, fun show, good action and OST, lots of missed opportunities, characters that needed more work and writing.

See Y'all for season 2...maybe...