Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld

Despite the defeat of Quinella—the pontifex of the Axiom Church—things have not seemed to calm down yet. Upon contacting the real world, Kazuto "Kirito" Kirigaya finds out that the Ocean Turtle—a mega-float controlled by Rath—was raided. Due to a sudden short-circuit caused by the raiders, Kirito's fluctlight is damaged, leaving him comatose. Feeling insecure about the people at the Axiom Church, Alice brings the unconscious Kirito back to their hometown—Rulid Village, disregarding her banishment due to an unabsolved crime. Now, Alice is living an ordinary and peaceful life close by the village, wishing for Kirito to wake up.

However, tragedy strikes when Alice notices that the Dark Territory has already started to invade the Human Empire. Reassuming her previous alias, Alice Synthesis Thirty, she promises to defeat the Dark Territory in order to defend the world that Kirito and Eugeo worked so hard to protect.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kirigaya, Kazuto Main

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu Japanese

Yuuki, Asuna Main

Tomatsu, Haruka Japanese

Zuberg, Alice Main

Kayano, Ai Japanese

Asada, Shino Supporting

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Eugeo Supporting

Shimazaki, Nobunaga Japanese

Yui Supporting

Itou, Kanae Japanese

Kirigaya, Suguha Supporting

Taketatsu, Ayana Japanese

Tsuboi, Ryoutarou Supporting

Hirata, Hiroaki Japanese

Ayano, Keiko Supporting

Hidaka, Rina Japanese

Shinozaki, Rika Supporting

Takagaki, Ayahi Japanese

Kaneko, Atsushi Producer

Niwa, Masami Producer

Futami, Yousuke Producer

Kawakami, Ryuutarou Producer

Reviews

Aug 26, 2024

kireikana

Recommended

absolutely amazing, incredible, fantastic!!this is truly a masterpiece!

sound:
- the background music perfectly captures the essence of a fantasy world, with dense forests, the lively chirping of birds, and the soothing sound of flutes that make your heart feel at peace... (ahhh, how beautiful it would be to live in that world).

- the ost during battle scenes is so dramatic and fitting, all the elements just come together. sadness, burning passion, and the warriors who keep pushing forward.

- the opening song 'resolution' by haruka tomatsu is so cool, i almost never skipped it, LMAO.

- the ending song 'unlasting' by lisa was popular back in the day, ... slow but full of emotion poured into every episode's end. both the opening and ending songs are just too good to skip.

- the sound effects, once again, are pure ear candy. the clashing of swords, the massive skill explosions, and the intro sound before they unleash their sword techniques; it's all just incredible. i’ve watched a lot of fantasy anime, but none have delivered sound effects as epic and thorough as this. one that might come close, or even better, could be 'enen no shouboutai,' but that’s not a fantasy/isekai genre.

- lastly, the voice acting; how are they so good at picking voice actors that perfectly match the characters?? i’m still focused on alice, the main character in the underworld. her voice is so commanding, like a true knight. every taunt she throws at the enemy feels like it's coming straight from a king. even a minor character like that pig lady, who only appeared for a few minutes, had an amazing and beautiful voice.

quality:
- the animation is really good, maybe even better than the previous seasons. character design is amazing. even the characters that only appear for less than 5 minutes are designed really well.

story:
- this continues from part 1, where the ai technology testing is in its final stages. it’s a simulation where thousands of enemy troops will invade human territory, forcing them to fight like in a real war.

- oh, kirito, how lucky you are. in both the real and virtual worlds, even when you're on the brink of death, you're still surrounded by women.

- the psychological mind games of the main villain, gabriel miller, made me question my beliefs a bit; i found myself wondering, 'does the soul really exist, and can i actually see it too?' damn, maybe i’m getting too wrapped up in this series, lol.

- i know the characters in the underworld are just creations of technology, but the story is truly touching. a sweet, beautiful village girl has her memories altered and becomes a loyal knight. i’m not talking about alice, but 'dakira - synthesis twenty-two.' and it’s not just her; 'eldrie woolsburg' also leaves behind the person he loved and respected twice. the sad stories are presented briefly, and i wish i didn’t care, but my soft heart can’t lie.

- finally, a lesson i took away from lizbeth/rika’s words. a lot of people escape by immersing themselves in games, getting lost in the fictional joy they bring... especially if the game feels real and full of enough beauty to forget all the problems in the real world. but when a game starts to intertwine with 'reality,' it’s no longer just a game. many players ignore this, thinking they can just stop, delete, or restart their accounts whenever and wherever they want.

this series offers a lot from various aspects and elements of life. it shows when to give up and fight, or when to sacrifice for others.

score: 9/10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by kireikana (14)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Nov 4, 2024

CaptainSalty

Mixed Feelings

Being a continuation of the previous season, the beginning of the story felt well paced after the very action packed second half of the last season. And gives other characters time to shine since our protagonist is taking a backseat. Which I greatly appreciate giving weight to Kirito's actions at the end of Alicization. The world is forever changed, and seemingly he's doomed them while not being able to help himself. It's a great concept that actually felt like it was followed through, him getting the backseat while the world moves without him. My main issue with this lies in the fact that we don't ... really advance any already existing character that get screen time and instead (mild spoiler ahead) we get a small episode dedicated to a general who's very unlikeable due to him being afraid to go to war, despite the fact that even normal soldiers are willing to die, and many die because of his cowardice. That starts him off great to be at fault for losing lives but nothing comes of it other than "I'm not afraid now" and then we don't really see him at all for the rest of the show. This is a reoccurring issue with supporting characters.
Like characters on the other side of the war, when we get to see their perspective its not that I feel malice, but its the fact I don't care about any of them other than a surface level connection. When bad things happen to people around them, I don't feel too terrible outside "oh no that's bad." It feels as though the progression of characters is more time wasted than anything. The certain character that meets my description here isn't seen almost at all past the first half.
Another issue I had was Alice as a character in this season, yes I'm happy she got the spotlight to build her up. I do like her relationship with Bercouli, I like that we see the payoff of her living again with her sister. But I don't like that they made her fall for Kirito. It feels disingenuous when apparently the author has stated that her appreciation for him lies in loyalty and admiration, not love. Her knowing later that he is in a relationship with Asuna yet still seems to insist her own feelings for him makes her less likeable. All for the audience to have one more girl to ship with Kirito. I liked it in the last season where they had just a companion relationship with the same goal in mind. But, (from my knowledge) this is the fault of the adaptation rather than the source material. So I won't fault the author for this change.
Besides these two issues, I didn't have many more issues on this season. Small things like Gabriel being a seemingly flat villain, or that the battles start to feel unnecessarily drawn out. Everything else is more nit-picky than anything, like the same animation given to soldiers on the battlefield. Overall enjoyable but still not as good as the last season and doesn't offer much other than story progression. Unfortunately characters don't grow outside new introduction characters whom we don't care for much.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by CaptainSalty (79)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Mar 18, 2023

Thund3r1

Not Recommended

*No spoilers*

Sword Art Online is an anime known for not being great, but this is by far the worst SAO has ever been. From consistent plot holes and contradictions to entire episode long exposition dumps, this anime hardly does anything right or has any redeeming qualities. There is so much wrong with this anime, even by SAO standards, it is actually a drag to get through.

Story: 1/10
The story has always been the worst part of SAO, but this time its actually irredeemable. There are plot holes everywhere you look and the story contradicts itself multiple times. Also, despite trying to be a war, both ... sides consistently make the worst tactical decisions possible making it even harder to watch if you're using your brain in any capacity.

Beyond this, characters regularly break the established rules of the world, in some cases they just develop new abilities out of the blue and in others forget about or just refuse to use powers they were previously shown to have.

Art: 9/10
Basically the only thing good about this is the animation which is incredible all the way through. Most of the major fights are restricted to Part 2, but the moments of action in this anime look CRISP. There is noticeable use of CG which is hard to miss, but aside from that the animation is great.

Sound: 5.5/10
The music used isn't the best, but it works. Which watching it, it is apparent that some sound tracks are reused a bit and (while not as bad as in part 2) also makes use of old music for it's scenes (which also isn't the best). The SFX were okay too, but overall the sound is barely passing and is certainly nothing special.

Characters: 1/10
Every character that appears is surface level with basically no depth to them. Many are just one-note with every new character having basically no development or no real reason behind the development they get. Also that little development isn't even well done in the first place.

*Very mild spoilers for the first 5 minutes of episode 1; NOT NESSISARY TO UNDERSTAND THE FULL REVIEW, SKIP IF YOU WANT NO SPOILERS AT ALL*

Alice (despite not getting her memories back) acts just like she would if she did, killing any interesting development opportunities and her coming to terms with herself over the course of the war...instead choosing to just do 97% of it off screen. Also the main character is turned into a vegetable for a very BS reason to give other characters the spotlight, that isn't good use of characters or smart character writing in the least.

Enjoyment: 1/10
A far greater sin than everything mentioned above is that it's just boring. Entire episodes or half-episodes are just raw exposition dumps that put you to sleep, also the poorly laid out power dynamic and war scenes get old VERY fast. With all of that mixed with awful characters and story, the only thing this anime gets right is animation...but not exactly. I have to give props for the dynamic between the heroes and the villains in the real world. It is set up to be a perfect stalemate with both seeking the same goal right in front of them but being unable to reach it for entirely different and believable reasons. It builds a massive amount of suspense and perfectly makes the battle in the underworld actually have weight to it despite it being not real. Sadly, not enough time is spent fleshing this out and it isn't near enough to save the rest of the trash this anime is.

Overall Rating: 1/10
Unless you want to turn off your brain and watch cool fights, please don't watch this. It is a perfect example most all things that can go wrong in an anime (excepting the animation which, again, isn't good enough to save the show). It has so many problems that I couldn't even mention all of them here in reasonable time.

Now despite me cautioning against it, if you still want to watch this anime, please turn your brain off and actually get some enjoyment from it unlike me, because if you do you may be able to like it or at least not feel like you wasted 4 hours on it.

-Thund3r

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by Thund3r1 (2)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Complete Anime Adaptations (part 11)

by Yuriko_Sakai

50 Entries · 21 Restacks

Quick Sword Art Online guide for newcomers

by marcosocram2004

10 Entries · 4 Restacks

Sword Art Online Watch Order And Chronological Order

by Galaxy-MeOw_62

24 Entries · 12 Restacks

North American Anime & Manga Releases for June

Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases for June Week 1: June 1 - 7 Anime Releases Appare-Ranman! Blu-ray Black Clover Season 3 Part 4 Blu...read more

Jun 1, 2021 1:15 AM by ImperfectBlue | Discuss (13 comments)

Second 'Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld' Cours to Air in Spring 2020

The 12th and final episode of Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld ended with an announcement on Sunday that its second cours will premiere in April 202...read more

Dec 28, 2019 8:17 AM by Vindstot | Discuss (17 comments)

	Sword ART Online Stolen_Soul78 - Sep 27	9 replies	by vesamija8 »» Sep 28, 8:33 PM
	Poll: Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Dec 28, 2019	263 replies	by Forum »» Jul 6, 6:32 PM
	Poll: Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld Episode 8 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Nov 30, 2019	130 replies	by Forum »» Jul 6, 3:10 PM
	Poll: Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld Episode 5 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Nov 9, 2019	157 replies	by Forum »» Jul 6, 1:58 PM
	Poll: Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) Stark700 - Oct 12, 2019	217 replies	by Forum »» Jul 6, 7:55 AM

Everything You Need to Know About Sword Art Online: Progressive

The next level of SAO will take us back to where it all began.

by Shymander

57,148 views

In Numbers: The Best and Worst Anime of Fall 2019

Scores, members, favorites — everything you need to know about who won and lost Fall 2019.

by Shymander

111,651 views

Spoiler