EPISODES 1-14
Following my trend of watching the best anime of 2014 I find myself facing off against my old nemesis, a show that’s popularity is almost as mind-boggling as figuring out the ages of the people who wrote it (my bet is fourteen!). It took a lot of work to finally get myself to sit down and watch Sword Art Online II if only because I knew it would be awful and could be spending my time watching it doing something more productive, like playing a real MMORPG. But sometimes, you do things that you’re not proud of and watching SAO II may be something I hate, but somewhere deep down inside, there’s something I like that keeps me watching.
Let me preface the following review by saying that the animation and music are excellent.
There, now allow me to assault you with my spoiler-ridden, overlong attack on my arch-nemesis.
Sword Art Online came out in 2012 and was pretty much the most popular anime of the time, the popularity pervading even to the present. This was because it fell into a category I call “easily accessible garbage”, something that requires little thought, takes you on a ride, and appeals to everything people, in this case horny teenagers with angst issues, enjoy. Swords, boobs, butts, angst. It was all there in droves. And, seeing as SAO was so popular, it only makes sense a second season would come out that has absolutely nothing to do with the titular game (most likely because the fans would be too confused in they changed the name to something more prevalent).
SAO II starts off exceptionally boring, plodding along for so long I nearly quit just to save my sanity. The first episode comprises of Kirito and Asuna on a date and a long discussion at a table. The date, where we should be exposed to the romantic development between our two main characters instead cements that they are the most boring main characters in anime history. The discussions they have are nothing normal teenagers would be talking about and you don’t even see them kiss or anything, we just see lots of hand holding and blank stares. Which is weird since later on Silica and Liz tell us that Asuna and Kirito are making out at every opportunity.
Inserted in the middle of this episode is our exposition. People are dying playing a virtual RPG called Gun Gale Online and the government is recruiting Kirito to help them figure out what’s going on from inside. Two people have died, both of heart failure.
“You mean their hearts stopped?” Kirito asks completely serious.
Yes Kirito, that’s what heart failure means.
Just one of dozens of examples of the exemplary writing of this series, which shouldn’t surprise me considering the first season had the same juvenile writing (Don’t fall off that balcony Asuna, that would suck!).
The first three episodes, as stated, are boring as hell. Nothing happens. To give you an idea of how boring the first three episodes are, I barely remember anything that happened in them, and I watched those three episodes yesterday. We’re reintroduced to characters and then introduced to Sinon, a sniper in Gun Gale Online who also happens to wear very revealing clothing and have a great ass. And I’m not saying that because I was focusing on it the whole show, I’m only saying that because the camera was focusing on it.
So anyway, Kirito, in a bid to stop this villain named “Death Gun” (I guess “Bad Guy”, “Evil Weapon”, and “Kill Firearm” were taken) jumps out of Alfheim Online to join Gun Gale where he…immediately gets the rarest avatar in the game. Avatars are apparently randomly generated and somehow Kirito gets the one that’s a male avatar that looks like a female.
You see, the Phantom Bullet arc doesn’t have enough masturbation material to appeal to people who like this show. Asuna, Liz, and Silica are side-lined (though you do get a repeat of the Silica getting raped by a tentacle plant monster scene from Aincrad) so the creator decided it’d probably be best to make sure the show doesn’t lose fans because there’s only a single girl to masturbate to and she’s really depressing. So here’s Kirito, who’s a girl with a penis. And instead of being truthful about his identity with people, he uses it to get his way.
This is especially prevalent when he meets Sinon and she happily helps Kirito as there’s a scarcity of female players in GGO. While helping him choose his weapons he does another thing that we can only expect out of the most badass unbeatable guy in gaming…
He wins a game that nobody has been able to win. On his first try, in his first hour of playing GGO.
So in one episode he gets the rarest avatar and also beats an unbeatable minigame.
I shouldn’t have expected any less. Especially after the two sign up to be part of a tournament called Bullet of Bullets (again, great title there). Here there is an option to give your real life name and address in order to earn real cash. And…this is where things start to get retarded.
The center of the Phantom Bullet Arc is a mystery of how Death Gun kills players in the real world since the headsets from SAO are not in use anymore and stopping someone’s heart through a game makes no sense. But once we understand that the top players are being killed and they give away their address to win prize money, it’s pretty fucking obvious that the bad guy is using that information he gets in the game to kill these people.
This revelation doesn’t come up for another five or six episodes, which is pretty pathetic. I guess Kirito has the mystery solving skills of your average Scooby-Doo viewer.
My favorite part of the next bit of story is when Death Gun gets involved and Kirito has no idea that the guy is Death Gun. Death Gun threatens to kill Kitiro, he wears a skull mask, and he has blazing red eyes. This guy is Death Gun Kirito!
But trust Kirito to take three or four more episodes to figure that one out.
More problems come up at this point. Death Gun has a Laughing Coffin tattoo, the symbol for the player killers in SAO which brings up an assault on Laughing Coffin’s base that was never shown in the original series, essentially shoehorning in something that could’ve brought with it continuity for the sake of actually having a plot here.
Even worse is that it makes me feel like the time skips in the Aincrad arc were only there to allow the writer to toss in anything he wants to make future events work. And, on the whole, it doesn’t work. You’d think something that resulted in Kirito killing two people, a pretty huge thing for the character, would have come up or been mentioned earlier. But instead we’re given the “I suppressed the memory” excuse. And later on, not even kidding, he realizes that Death Gun was a surviving member of Laughing Coffin whom Kirito fought during the assault on their base. In SAO, the guy wore a fucking skull mask with glowing red eyes. HEY KIRITO? YOU SEE DEATH GUN? THE GUY WITH A SKULL MASK AND GLOWING RED EYES? PROBABLY THAT GUY FROM SAO. I love how in the flashback, the player killer walks past Kirito and our hero says “I don’t want to know your name, I’ll never see you again”. Pfft, I see the writer’s understand irony…no matter how stupid that irony is.
Back to the plot. Sinon finds out Kirito’s a guy, the two are now no longer friends because he saw her avatar in its’ underwear (even though her armor outfit has half her ass hanging out of her shorts and shows off her body pretty much the same). The tournament happens. The two become friends. Final fight against Death Gun. Blah blah blah.
The middle of portion of this arc is actually pretty decently paced and entertaining. Kirito wields a lightsaber, complete with non-copyrighted lightsaber sound effects and cuts bullets out of the air as he weaves his way toward enemies. The animation here is smooth and impressive.
Sinon is the only female character present, who, of course, is in love with Kirito. This is never explicitly stated mind you, but it’s pretty obvious. And it’s sad but at the same time, I feel that Sinon may be the best developed character in the series so far and one you can actually get emotionally invested in.
In the real world, Shino Asada shot a man to protect her mother when she was only eleven and ever since the sight of a gun makes her vomit or pass out. This could have been an effectual idea if not for the fact she’s a sniper in a video game about killing people. She calls it therapy but I feel like that’s as much therapy as putting a mall shooting survivor inside a mall shooting simulator as one of the shoppers. Um…she’s scared of guns and shooting them. She’s afraid of killing. I don’t see how it makes sense she can play the game as she does but a girl pointing a finger gun at her in the real world makes her nearly pass out.
She keeps a toy gun in her desk drawer to check to see if her PTSD has passed and…well, I don’t know that it works that way. The biggest question to come out of this is why she never had survivor therapy of any sort and why her mother lets her live alone with such obvious mental health issues.
Of course, later on inside GGO, she finds solace in Kirito who killed three people in SAO and is working his way through the nightmares he never had in the Alfheim arc and never got mentioned ever before. Once again we see the piss-poor writing and plotting as the only reason for Kirito to have PTSD about those he killed was to build a bond between himself and Shino and to help her get over her mental issues.
Around episode ten the series slows down considerably. This is during the final battle royale where Kirito and Sinon team up to take down Death Gun for good. We find out that there’s someone standing in Shino’s apartment with a syringe, ready to kill her after Death Gun kills her in the game because…we can’t just kill her without beating her in-game? Huh?
Nearly two full episodes are spent with Kirito and Sinon sitting in a cave and talking, Sinon crawling all over him and the camera being sure we see her ass.
Final battle, Sinon loves Kirito…then things get freaky fucking weird.
The guy we’re meant to think is in love with Shino really is…so much he wants to kill her and be with her forever! Since the series went ten episodes without any of the females being raped, it’s about time we get another rape scene in. Thankfully, Kirito saves the day, some complete bullshit happens when the syringe injects him full of heart-deadening fluid (but not really because there was a quarter sized suction cup left on him from the doctor’s office that this guy just happened to inject the fluid onto…yeah, right), and Shino is cured of her PTSD.
So, how’s this arc fare compared to the other two? It’s actually, surprisingly, not as God-awful as I expected. It’s pervaded with issues from the writing to the plot to the fact Kirito is still a shitty, boring character. It’s still tinged with the angst that the first season had running through it. It’s paced way too slow, something you’d never believe after how fast the Aincrad arc was.
It may be the focus is only on two characters with everyone else tossed to the sidelines. Sinon is a flawed character but the PTSD thing is unique and despite how weak she can be, she’s also really strong. Just like with the other girls, Kirito winds up saving the day in the end, but she’s got emotions that the series lacks otherwise. And on top of that, even flawed and weak as she may be at points, at others she can be a total badass. In that regard, she’s a blend of Leafa and Asuna.
Kirito is still awful and boring and there’s no emotion to be found in his PTSD. He’s everyone’s favorite angst machine complete with all black clothes, monotone voice, and he even rides a motorcycle now!
So just as Leafa saved the Alfheim arc slightly, Sinon saves this arc by injecting some emotion.
Not good, and not really terrible either, the Phantom Bullet arc is a solid average in my book.
PART TWO
EPISODES 15-26
Wow…what just happened?
The first arc of the second season of Sword Art Online was best reviewed from a plot standpoint, which is why I essentially reviewed it episode to episode. While it was full of issues, it was a lot more enjoyable than anything the first season produced. In other words: it didn’t offend me so much as it came across as a badly written shonen-esque adventure.
The Mother’s Rosario Arc is a much different specimen from the previous arcs of this series in that it comes across as tender and emotional, builds up Asuna while also introducing us to a depressing and decently rounded secondary lead, and never offended me in the least. It was so tame in fact, I can’t even think of an excuse it used for some kind of untoward and sexually explicit shot.
But before I can dissect this arc, I’m going to do a little bit of complaining about a completely useless side arc starting with episode fifteen. This arc concerns the fate of Alfheim Online being inextricably tied to our heroes completing a quest to obtain Excalibur. Before they can they must defeat a giant boss and revel in an attempt at being smart.
What I mean by this is the “I’ve read a book about Norse mythology, meaning I can write all this stuff in to sound smart” idea that this small arc has. And it’s not particularly offensive, but it seems kind of useless in an arc that is completely useless. It’s essentially a bunch of people dicking around in an MMO. The only difference is that they add this end of the world stipulation to the quest they pursue to make it seem like the arc actually matters and has some sort of implications.
iIf you want to reenact these three episodes, play Skyrim for an hour, come back, and then watch episodes eighteen on. You’ve pretty much accomplished what the Excalibur Arc did. And by that I mean you accomplished nothing.
The biggest problem I have is that, toward the end, Kirito tosses Excalibur away because it’s too heavy and Sinon randomly gets it from midair with a grapple arrow and hands it back to him. There’s not much explanation as to why he did what he did and suddenly accepts the sword back, it just kind of happens.
Another issue with this arc is that, since all the girls are together, everyone can hit on Kirito despite his being engaged to Asuna. And Asuna does act a little peeved but not as peeved as what you’d think. Sinon especially hits on him a little too hard and he takes it in stride, obviously happy for all the attention. And Asuna takes it pretty much in stride as well. Have boundaries not been established? Or is Asuna in an open relationship with Kirito?
This is an arc that doesn’t need to exist, adds nothing, and I assume is meant as a segue into the next arc. The problem is that it doesn’t segue characters as much as the world they’re playing in. Sinon could have been left out of this section and it would be no different. She’s just kind of there, and while there are interactions with her nothing feels natural. It’s just another time skip story much like what the Aincrad Arc did.
Now let’s talk about the arc that I think will be my most remembered Sword Art arc, an arc that didn’t in any way show me that Sword Art is good, but showed me that the series has potential for actual emotion.
The arc focuses on Asuna, which may be the greatest thing the writers could have done. Kirito is stale and no amount of screen time will develop him beyond being anything more than a 2×4 clad in black. Asuna, meanwhile, has a lot of potential for development as she is one of the more interesting characters in the series. She was the badass of the first arc that devolved into a whiny damsel-in-distress. So we know that underneath that soft exterior, she can be a really cool warrior.
In this arc we see her home life and the stresses of being the daughter of a rich guy who sends suitors her way and a mother who believes she should be going to a better school and doesn’t understand her constantly being jacked into her game. This leads Asuna to feeling like she isn’t strong enough, something that isn’t compelling in and of itself as this was a huge part of the Phantom Bullet Arc and is kind of annoying considering, once again, Asuna was a total badass to start.
The mother portion isn’t that important though, it’s the introduction of Yuuki inside of Alfheim. She’s a silly, determined girl who has been fighting everyone who will duel her in a bid to find the best swordsman in ALO. Asuna does a good enough job that Yuuki recruits her to be the seventh member of her guild, who hopes to win a boss fight with just themselves and not the usual forty-nine players necessary. In doing this their names will be memorialized on a wall in the game’s main city.
While things seem pretty normal they start getting intense once we find out Yuuki has AIDS and the entire guild she heads is comprised of terminally ill teens.
Red Band Society: The Anime.
This can end one of one ways: Really fucking sad.
And it does. Yuuki is developed enough for you to care about her and for the slow degrade of her health to affect you badly. Especially when it affects Asuna so bad, who has become the emotional focal point of the show once again. Asuna is being developed pretty well here, showing us a side of her that is a mix between that of her badass and her more feminine. We see this in the juxtaposition between herself being a healer as well as a swordswoman and the show itself does a pretty decent job of showing how Yuuki teaches her to stand up for herself and show how strong she is to her overbearing mother.
While the Phantom Bullet Arc forced the emotional connection between Sinon and Kirito through the killing of Laughing Coffin members in a sequence never shown in the Aincrad arc, the connection between Asuna and Yuuki is very deep and well-developed. Yuuki sees a lot of her sister in Asuna, Asuna sees a strong girl fighting on despite her illness. But Yuuki herself isn’t strong on the inside. So we see through the time these girls spend together a bond that builds both of them up and does a really good job of getting the viewer emotionally invested.
People who hate on Sword Art Online are going to ravage me for saying all of these things because these are things SAO has never gotten right, nor has any right to do well. But somehow the show does. And I can see arguments from the side that this was forced and the whole “terminal guild” was only added to fool people like me into thinking this show is emotional and deep.
First of all, this show isn’t deep but this arc is touching. Just because a singular arc is really well done and emotional doesn’t mean the rest isn’t garbage. And nowhere will I defend watching this show just to watch the seven or eight episodes comprising the Mother’s Rosario Arc. But after watching nearly fifty episodes of SAO, to see the series do something like this completely out of left field, is quite spectacular.
It works because it gives up a lot of what the series had been doing previously. It’s not a sexual fantasy. Kirito isn’t the main character. There are real emotions. This was a very good arc that has its faults but I feel may be the best thing Sword Art Online has managed.
What are those faults? Some bad writing that boils down to stupid questions being asked, much like the rest of the series. Instead of asking for an explanation of something the character dumbly repeats what the other person said with a questioning glance. I felt that the inclusion of Kirito being a badass at one point was only there to remind us that Kirito is a badass. And I was especially put off by the ending, a picnic that seems really happy after watching the funeral of one of the best, if not the best, character in the series. It’s a weird transition. Add in the strange “let’s do homework in the virtual world instead of meeting up and doing it together because that’d mean going outside” scene and the bothersome idea of people in a game spending money for recreational eating despite that having no affect on their actual bodies and you have enough problems to puncture quite a large hole in an otherwise well-done set of episodes.
The Mother’s Rosario Arc is well-done. There, I said it. One of my least favorite anime actually pulled me in and made me have feelings. Are you happy?
So what do I think of Sword Art Online II overall? It’s a pretty big step up from the previous season. It doesn’t jump around enough to be annoying, it wasn’t oversexualized to an offensive point (though, don’t get me wrong, it is full of pointless crotch and ass shots). The season starts really boring, picks up, and then slows down considerably. The Phantom Bullet Arc as a whole is unimpressive but better than Aincrad or Alfheim even with all the problems. The Excalibur Arc was bad and unneeded. The Mother’s Rosario Arc was actually pretty good, especially given what show I was watching.
As a whole it’s inconsistent in pacing, pretty average in writing, but does a decent job handling the new characters and giving them enough time to develop compared to the one episode given Silica and Lis (meaning you might actually give a shit about what happens). It’s…hard for me to talk about given the relationship I have with the franchise and my inherent hate for anything related to it. It’s so plebeian in execution, so base in appeal…but there’s something here that I enjoyed.
Now it’s time to get ostracized by all my fellow critics for not flambéing Sword Art Online II. But it is what it is and what it is is two-thirds of mildly entertaining, average shounen topped off with a surprisingly touching finale. Fans of the show will find a lot to love, critics a lot to hate, and me? I might actually go into Sword Art Online III with a better mindset than I went into this season with.
