Name: A shockingly terrible final part. I don't think there's much else to say. At least it was watchable?
Item: Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld Part 2
Rating: 61
Author: Fractured

Waifra

A shockingly terrible final part. I don't think there's much else to say. At least it was watchable? · Waifora

Shorter, less fleshed out review since I'm a bit frustrated with this season.

This season was such a hit or miss it ruined the entire Alicization arc for me. The animation of the characters was amazing, they were all designed well and had good facial/fighting animations. On the other hand, the background animations in the underworld weren't that great, especially the CGI on the background extras. They stuck out so much.

The intro and outro music was amazing, although that's nothing really new from Sword Art Online. I especially liked the animation of the outro, it helped convey the feeling of the arc. All the rest of the music was great as well, but there is one track that get used again and again and again and again... you get the point, when Kirito shows up to do something COOL and AMAZING AND OH MY GOD STOP THE TRACK FROM PLAYING. It drove me insane at points.

The characters are starting to piss me off too. Outside of Kirito and to an extent Asuna, all the characters feel fake, and thrown together just to support the main. All their emotions feel fake, and it annoyed the hell out of me. It's worse than the previous seasons. There's more motivational speeches, more crying, more flash backs, it's absurd. On the mains side, it is much better though, but I can't quite place how much. You have Kirito, suffering from a sort of PTSD, but I don't think it's portrayed well enough in his outward facing character to justify some of the well made "inside" moments. Then you have Asuna who just wants to be there for him, which is understandable, but I'm not sure if she was ever written well enough to show she wanted to help.

The story was a interesting idea, but executed poorly, as is the Sword Art Online method. Much of the power system was never explained, and I had to go to Reddit to figure out what the hell was going on. There's some pretty good summaries in the comments there, I'd recommend it if you're actually interested. Or click the spoiler below. There were some great driving motives for the side characters, really only the "evil" ones. Focusing on the main "evil" guy, his motives and beliefs were honestly among the best I've seen in a character. It just goes to show that evil characters can have interesting motives outside of material wealth if authors want them to.

Spoiler, click to view

https://old.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/iekoy8/sword_art_online_alicization_explaining_the/ They sort of just imagine what they want to happen so much that it actually happens. The fluctlight system is somewhat of a lucid dream that's propagated between the people, and because of this, if one person believes something so much, it's propagated to the other people. It's pretty dumb as a power system but unique enough as a concept.

Also WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ENDING? Can this series get any ridiculous?

I hope the Progressive movie will do well enough that they try a bit harder on the series, but who knows seeing as how they're making it a movie rather than a multi-season show...