Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season

Alternative Titles

English: Sword Art Online Alicization War of Underworld Part 2

Synonyms: Sword Art Online: Alicization 3rd Season, Sword Art Online III 3rd Season, SAO Alicization 3rd Season, Sword Art Online 3 3rd Season, SAO 3 3rd Season, SAO III 3rd Season, Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld - The Last Season

Japanese: ソードアート・オンラインアリシゼーション War of Underworld

Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 11

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Jul 12, 2020 to Sep 20, 2020

Premiered: Summer 2020

Broadcast: Sundays at 00:00 (JST)

Producers: Aniplex, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Egg Firm, Straight Edge, Kadokawa

Licensors: Aniplex of America

Studios: A-1 Pictures

Source: Light novel

Genres: Action, Game, Adventure, Romance, Fantasy

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 7.43¹ (scored by 138,447 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1824²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #462

Members: 299,859

Favorites: 3,037

7.43

Ranked #1824Popularity #462Members 299,859

Summer 2020TVA-1 Pictures

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Synopsis

The final battle against the Dark Territory drags on, as players from all over the world flood the Underworld's servers and plunge the Human Empire into utter chaos. Asuna Yuuki and her friends defend their new allies with everything they have, but their numbers are falling. Meanwhile, Alice Zuberg heads toward the World's End Altar while Gabriel "Vecta" Miller relentlessly pursues her.

Meanwhile, members of Rath strategize a plan in an attempt to restore Kirito's damaged fluctlight. However, the intruders occupying the main control room have other plans. Surrounded by death and despair, when all hope seems to be lost, one voice reaches out to Kirito—a familiar one saying, "I will always be by your side."

Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld 2nd Season is the epic conclusion to Akihiko Kayaba's dream of creating artificial human intelligence. Now it is up to Kirito and his friends to protect this collapsing world from the people that still think it is just a game.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld is an adaptation of volumes 15 through 18 of Reki Kawahara's Sword Art Online light novel series.

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Sword Art Online
Prequel:	Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld, Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld Recap

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

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

Kirigaya, Suguha

Supporting

Taketatsu, Ayana
Japanese

Bercouli Synthesis One

Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi
Japanese

Shtolienen, Tiese

Supporting

Ishihara, Kaori
Japanese

Nochizawa, Eiji

Supporting

Ayano, Keiko

Supporting

Hidaka, Rina
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Nakajuu, Shunsuke

Episode Director, Storyboard, Animation Director

Nakayama, Naomi

Storyboard

Aoi, Eir

Theme Song Performance

ReoNa

Theme Song Performance

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Opening Theme

"ANIMA" by ReoNa (eps 1-10)

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Ending Theme

#1: "I will..." by Eir Aoi (eps 1-10)
#2: "ANIMA" by ReoNa (ep 11)

More reviews

Reviews

Sep 25, 2020

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 3

RebelPanda (All reviews)

674 people found this review helpful

“Jesus shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead; and his kingdom shall have no end."
-Corinthians 15:23

I used to be an atheist until I watched Sword Art Online: Alicization: War of Underworld Part 2. History has proven Jesus was a real man, but the second coming of Christ was merely a myth to me. I never truly believed Christ would return from the heavens to liberate us… until now. Reki Kawahara has created the final chapter of the Bible. This tale rivals Shakespeare, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and The Odyssea. It is the most spectacular writing I have seen in the entire franchise, maybe even of all time. War of Underworld Part 1 began this mythological story. Kirito, the holy spirit, was trapped within the vessel of a sleeping man. The fake news viciously scrutinized Kirito, causing him to fall into a coma. These blind fools, Youtubers, and MAL reviewers howled like banshees of how Kirito was overpowered, lacking any personality, and every girl illogically fell in love with him. But Kirito overcame these haters in a triumphant return that will go down in history as the most epic piece of fiction ever created.

…

*Ahem*

Sword Art Online has gained a massively negative reputation for popularizing the isekai harem power fantasy genre. Alicization: War of Underworld 2 sought to rebrand the franchise as a deep and mature survival thriller with philosophical themes, emotional character arcs, and commentary on the future of artificial intelligence. Alicization attempted to accomplish these goals, but it missed the mark. Part one was wasted on a virtual war between one-dimensional characters. It wasn’t worth caring about any of them because they were artificial intelligence. Their deaths are meaningless. There is no tension when no one can die. The AI soldiers are not real, and the nameless gamers only risk losing their in-game avatars. Why are there no police trying to save the people trapped within the game, you ask? Because the whole show works on video game logic!
(Read my review of Part 1 for more information)

Part 2 does nothing to raise the stakes. Characters from prior seasons hack their way into the video game, but they are wrapped head to toe in plot armor. What do you do when all your characters suck? Just add the old ones! With the power of deus ex machinas, every human gamer is granted superpowers. The first part focused on the one-dimensional inhabitants of the underworld. In this season, they are useless. SAO momentarily cared about humanizing these computerized soldiers. There was potential it could’ve had deep themes. But who cares about that boring shit? They threw all of that away to make room for epic battles and technobabble! Part two is surface-level action shlock for the fans who crave shock value but are not willing to seek out something deeper, or better written. Around 30% of this season takes place in the real world. And it’s all dead air. It focuses on forgettable characters monitoring the game with convoluted motives. Who cares about pseudo-scientific explanations of things that never needed to be explained? Everyone gains new abilities and weapons at random. If they’re in danger, the show will remind us they have a secret weapon or a ghost will come to rescue them. Yes, ghosts. No joke, there are characters who DON’T die after they’re killed. It’s never explained why. There’s no logic. There’s no point in explaining how the main characters get SOME powers when you can just show how they got them and how they work. But SAO is a Very Deep anime for intellectuals, so it must make sense! Now and then, we get a long-winded explanation that no one asked for. Seven years and SAO still hasn’t learned what “Show don’t tell,” means. Go back to an elementary school English class! The scientist people use technological terminology to sound smart. Fluctlights, STL, Self-image. It’s all made up bullshit! This is so intelligent! All this with some techno music in the background makes a great baby's first sci-fi show. They aimed for the Matrix but landed closer to Transformers. I don’t care about the pseudo-scientific reasons for why Leafa gets a gigantic sword. Most of the time, new powers are thrown in at will. Stop pretending like any of this makes sense! Does anyone watch SAO for the boring exposition dumps? No, they don’t. It’s just to save the animation budget.

From a critical standpoint, SAO is utter nonsense. There’s one narrative thread that ties every piece of this rancid rotting carcass of an anime together. Wish fulfillment. This is an otaku's wet dream. Beginning with the first plot point, Kirito is waking up. The best character development he’s had four seasons was becoming a vegetable. Without our God-tier main character, there was some threat of danger. Unfortunately, we need our overpowered pussy slaying MC back. Kirito is, and always has been, a hollow placeholder for all of the men in the audience to project their personalities onto—with none of his own. Once his harem entered the game and told him how much they loved him, he began to wake up. Seriously, this is what happened. One by one the girls say they love him and they cry because he’s a vegetable. Time after time, Kirito’s harem uses the power of stroking his ego to make him more powerful than God himself. Unfortunately, every girl loves Kirito. They each have their own story, but it will never be told. There’s more to know about them. In season 2, the Mother’s Rosario arc showed us Asuna could get her own story. It emphasized her friendship, rather than romance. She wasn’t overpowered. Even though it was rushed, there were actual stakes. When she’s with Kirito, she becomes a lobotomized puppet, just like all the other girls. After the girls join his harem, their personalities cease to exist. They become vacuous waifu-bait. Another cell is added to the prison–Kirito’s harem. They are no longer people with lives and goals. They are Kirito’s cheerleaders, existing to love him, to massage his ego, and to provide fan service.

In a good story, the heroes work for their powers. In SAO they are given powers. There is no tension because Kirito is so powerful, but how does his harem fare alone? While Kirito is in a vegetative state, psychopathic villains from past arcs return to torment his harem. Of course, when they feel hopeless they pray to Kirito for hope. Jesus is to Christians what Kirito is to his harem. The moment they say his name they get motivated to keep fighting. In many scenes, his girls hold each other, say how much they love Kirito, cry, and then they're filled with hope. He is the only source of hope in the entire world, despite still being a vegetable. When Kirito’s around, his harem becomes even more pathetic. They know they’re useless compared to him. Rather than helping him fight, they stand by and watch. Usually praying for his safety and help. Kirito summons ghosts, he freezes armies, and he creates healing rain. Why? Because he’s God! Even though he’s asleep, EVERYONE still relies on him. This must be female empowerment!

The women are treated as motivation for the audience to hate the villains rather than actual characters, and their pain is used to make Kirito seem godly. They’re tortured in violent gore porn scenes meant to evoke emotion, but it just bored me. Gore and rape don’t equal maturity. It’s like watching a kid’s show trying desperately to be taken seriously. Sinon and Leafa in particular are characters who embody the women as a commodity during this season. I’m going to paint you a picture, please skip to the last paragraph if sexual assault triggers you. Leafa falls from the sky in her first appearance of this season. The camera pans down her legs and her cleavage is exposed. Moments later, an evil woman with large breasts appears out of nowhere. She sexually assaults Leafa with tentacles. She cries, yells, and is choked, meanwhile the scantily clad dressed woman laughs sadistically. She is plenty capable of killing her captor, which she says clearly. Yet she chooses to endure the pain because she doesn’t want to kill anyone. Meanwhile, alluring woodwind instruments play in the background and the woman continues torturing her. I am not describing fetishistic hentai. This is a five-minute-long scene from the first episode of War of Underworld 2. I felt nothing but disgust with the show’s staff and cringe. I’m so sorry for the artists who had to animate this vile shit. I will speak directly to the fans just once: If you see someone who’s upset by the sexual assault, do not try to defend it. Even Reki Kawahara regrets writing it. Again, torture porn does not equal maturity! The anime insists on masquerading as something smarter than the average light novel adaptation. There’s nothing intelligent about making every villain a molester.

Every major villain is a one-dimensional molester with no depth. Making your villains do horrible things without challenging their ideals is awful writing. Molestation is used as a cheap way to make the villains evil. Their one motivation is being crazy molesters. This is a lazy way to get the audience to hate them. People only care about seeing Kirito kill the assholes, not because they want him to challenge their beliefs. Ridiculous plot armor everywhere. None of the victories feel deserved. Sinon is saved by Kirito’s necklace twice, Asuna is saved by her dead friend Yuuki, Alice’s Uncle gets a random power to win a fight. Kirito saves Sinon from a rapist without even being there. His necklace saves her from being smooched by a bad guy. The female characters are portrayed as weak, cowardly, and unable to succeed without the support of someone—usually a man. This is just sad.

In 2013, Sword Art Online popularized power fantasy harem isekai anime. After four seasons, it has continued to make the same mistakes. “SAO is good now,” Are you joking? It has only gotten worse. This is normally the part where I’d praise the art for being outstanding. It’s without a doubt the best of the entire franchise, but what does it matter? No amount of glitter and gold will make this piece of shit beautiful. Since SAO opened the floodgates, we’ve been blessed with titles such as Kenga no Mago, Arifureta, Master of Ragnarok, Isekai Cheat Magician, Isekai wa Smartphone tomo ni, Death March and so many more mind-numbingly generic anime. Thank you SAO. Thank you for fucking up a generation of anime.

Thank you Lord Kirito! Hail the Father, Hail Kirito! Hail the Son, Hail Kirito! Hail the Holy Spirit, HAIL KIRITO!

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Sep 19, 2020

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 4

SunlitSonata (All reviews)

457 people found this review helpful

(Note: This review covers both seasons of SAO War of Underworld, and also contains spoilers for Samurai Jack Season 5)

The end of the nine volume “epic” Alicization, the end of SAO’s original web novel, and the last of the original flawed sect. While SAO rants have been done to death on the problematic issues, including from me, I want to structure this review in a slightly different way. War of the Underworld positions itself as the end all be all of everything the series has culminated towards for nearly a decade, and it has the presentation to potentially make it an impressive achievement, but not read more

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Oct 12, 2020

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 2

Dark-Swordsman91 (All reviews)

437 people found this review helpful

Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld is the true meaning of the word (demolishing the globe). what i can say about this season? every thing I hate it about SAO I saw it in War of The Underworld Arc.
This review will only be about the final part of the Alicization War of Underworld Arc. I will write about the anime based upon Story, Characters, Art + Music, and Personal Enjoyment. I will be talking about spoilers that occurred during the anime. Now, let's get into this.

STORY:
The first season of Alicization was the turning point for my impression of the series, as a lot read more

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Sep 19, 2020

11 of 11 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 8

Pipe (All reviews)

209 people found this review helpful

SAO's franchise has always been full of disapproval babbles between the anime fans, we can look that in the continue hate and rants that we can find in every place. However, even if it is hard to accept for several fans, the light novel is considered the best of Japan's decade, where it matters. One of the arcs from that light novel is titled Alicization that concludes with these eleven episodes and that for me, it is probable the best part of SAO's plot until this date leaving aside the new arc (Unital Ring) that is being published right now.

The story follows the basic template of the light novel; we have a Kirito in a coma waiting for his return as the underworld struggles to survive. The fight allows a large number of characters to participate in the story. The action sequences and some of the subplots are concluded (for example, Bercouli), so the development of the main character is completed. We can see tears, blood, gore, betrayal, fear, and many other feelings during these episodes. Maybe the screen gets saturated with action to the point that we can't process what's happening, or perhaps the events are too fantastic to be accepted. Furthermore, those awkward and useless scenes will lead us to wonder why several fans hate SAO, and it's not a problem with the adaptation that is a problem with the novels and the need to promote them with fan service. Albeit this silly impression, the show is able to offer a charming conclusion to Alicization's story arc, leaving the door open for future development.

On the other hand, character development wasn't too impressive. I understand that various characters are introduced. However, I want to remind the audience that several of those characters have already had their development through other arcs of the story. Therefore, it is unnecessary to cover more details because the setting of the story will not allow it. They are just fillers that will help with the conclusion of the battle, and perhaps that is a negative aspect of this series. Asking for further character development when the climax was already set is not wise, but it could have enhanced the enjoyment. For example, giving Alice a bit more context would have been interesting. Still, this second season I feel like she is left behind as a supporting character, and all her development from the previous seasons froze.

From art and technical aspect, the color palette is traditional but exciting nonetheless, the adaptation focuses more on the action sequences than the personal details that could have been expanded. Even if the action was well directed, you would feel like something is missing if you are not an avid SAO fan. I can't complain about the technical aspect of the series, it's good and I think the director and the studio made an excellent adaptation. On the sound, it's okay and it helps with the dynamics of the action, but it's not great. The songs are interesting, especially Anima by ReoNa; for some reason, I like the rhythm and the lyrics.

Finally, the conclusion is acceptable, but sometimes the plot is useless and leads us to think that the story is garbage. However, I think the author is playing with some fictional elements that can give us great emotions and better development in future arcs. I can't recommend this series to all fans because you need to understand SAO's entire plot from the beginning to enjoy the full context, but I do enjoy it until the last episode. One last commentary, it was funny watching Alice coming out from a box lol.

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