PHANTOM BULLET ARC (1/10):
This arc is one of the worst story arcs I have ever seen. What could have been an interesting look into the mental state and psyche of Kirito, just becomes an aimless mess with no sense of direction, followed by glaring pacing issues and awful characters as well as a terrible villain. This arc does so much wrong that's insanely annoying to watch and I constantly wanted to consume cyanide during my viewing to taste the sweet, sweet relief of death. The second season of SAO takes place a year after the events of the first season and opens up with Kirito and Asuna on a date, happily reminiscing about their time in Sword Art Online. Y'know... that place where thousands of people met their horrible demise? Perhaps they view the entire experience as some sort of romantic honeymoon or something. Anyway, whilst on this date, Kirito is asked by some government dude if he could speak to him about some strange incidences involving the massively popular game known as "Gun Gale Online". Government-kun tells Kirito-sama that in this game, a player has been able to successively kill other plays in the game, resulting in their real-life deaths. The viewer learns of this player, called "Death Gun" from the opening scene of the show. Not only is the character design a lesser version of Darth Vader, but the name "Death Gun" just seems silly and stupid. A gun's primary use is that of a weapon; to kill people and bring about death. So, I guess the gun is double the death then...? I guess it does make sense in the context of the show since this "double death gun" does result in the avatar and the real-life death of the person controlling said avatar, but the name does seem a little silly for someone trying to be so intimidating and feels more like a cheap knock off, of the Death Note than anything else.
Anyway, Government-kun asks Kirito-sama if he will work with him by going inside Gun Gale Online to try and put a stop to Death Gun, and, after some reluctance at first, Kirito agrees and the rest of the arc sees Kirito attempting to find out Death Gun's true identity. Now, this sounds fine on paper, but the execution for this arc is terrible. First of all, let's discuss Kirito's character and the HUGE waste in potential this anime throws out the window in regards to his PTSD. At some point in the show, while Kirito is about to enter a tournament in the game (I'll get to the specifics of this in a bit) we learn that Death Gun was a part of a group called "Laughing Coffin" in Sword Art Online; a group that Kirito and Asuna fought and was forced to kill some of their members. This triggers Kirito's PTSD and this is easily one of the most interesting things that have ever happened to his character since he actually exhibits symptoms of actually being a real, genuine person for once; it helps his character feel more grounded and relatable than simply being a generic self-insert. Kirito's psychological stress and hang-ups in regards to actually killing someone and having this link into the main villain was a smart idea and could have allowed for so much development and understanding of his character and just really how much damage SAO had done to his mental well being. This COULD have been the case if the show expanded on it at all. Kirito's physiological hang-ups barely last for even one episode, which means that his character hardly develops as a person and, instead, is completely absolved of his stress and worries after only a five-minute talk with some nurse at a hospital! They throw out the only interesting thing that has ever happened to this character in only one episode! After this, Kirito just devolves back into the boring, self-insert that he is and his character ceases to ever be interesting ever again. The fact that the show throws out its only redeeming quality is just a flick in the nuts to the audience and, again, is such wasted potential. The show should have started with Kirito waking up in bed or something, after having a dream about the time in which he killed someone in SAO, which would imply that Kirito has been suffering from his PTSD for a while now, as the rest of the show sees him come to terms with what he has done in the past and slowly learn to accept it and move on with his life. It could have made for a fantastic character study, but is just thrown to the side like a child with a toy.
Speaking of wasted potential, this also brings me to the other main character of this arc, Shion. Shion does have a bit more in the way of investment and drive in this narrative but is just as poorly handled like every other element in the show. As a child, Shion was caught up in a post office robbery, in which she manages to get the gun of the robber and shoot him, effectively killing him and saving the lives of everyone in the post office. This, however, has given her a severe phobia of guns, to the point where she throws up at the very sight of them. In order to overcome her phobia, she plays Gun Gale Online, a game all about battling it out with guns in an attempt to overcome her fear of them and she believes that, by winning the Bullet of Bullets tournament (the same one as Kirito enters) , she will be finally strong enough to overcome her fear and move on with her life. Her motivation in this narrative is not so bad but it lacks intrigue. Shion, herself, is a boring character since her characterisation is minimal and I always found it hard to connect to her or care for her struggles or goal. She consistently repeats some of the corniest and irritating lines in the entire show, most prominently during a fight in the second episode where she proclaims that another player is "strong enough to smile on the battlefield". The entire show is filled with these corny lines, and I understand that, to this character, the game is a huge deal in overcoming her ordeal but it feels like the show is trying to force drama and narrative stakes with cheesy, hyperbolic lines; it feels superficial and clunky. Shion's character is effectively ruined once she meets big strong Kirito who saves her at every hurdle and sorts out every problem for her. Like every other girl in this series, Shion does begin to feel feelings towards Kirito and she simply becomes just another boring, uninteresting love interest. Her character feels lazily thrown together, with all of the typical Tsundere traits you'd expect. She slaps Kirito after seeing her in minimal clothing (despite it being a video game), she has an apprehensive personality and her character is as inconsistent as a corrupt politician's views. The main problem I have with her character is how quickly the show is willing to let her become the damsel in distress who needs Kirito to save her when it should be the other way around. Shion should have been a side character Kirito meets inside the game, who helps Kirito work out his own mental hang-ups, but instead, she is used for pandering to the Otakus and all the teenagers who see Mr Kirito Mclovin as a self-insert for themselves.
The Villain, Death Gun, is just as bad as these two characters, if not worse in many regards. Myself and many others were able to figure out the identity of who Death Gun really was only after the first episode. Once I saw the opening, I pretty much figured it out since A-1 Pictures doesn't understand subtleties in the slightest. Whilst watching the opening, we see a shot of Shion's friend, Shinkawa, reach out his hand to her while she is on a swing. As he does so, the screen explodes into flames with Death Gun riding on a horse. This visual queue was more than enough for me to understand and suspect that he was Death Gun, which later proved to be correct, but even without this blunder, it is painfully easy to get since Shinkawa seems too nice to be true to Shion and the hints they drop are not exactly subtle. Not only that, but the way the author wrote the way around how Death Gun kills people is needlessly convoluted and stupid. It turns out that Death Gun was working as part of a three-man team, and one person out of this team would go the player's house in the real world, with a lethal injection, ready to inject the person with this stuff, once Death Gun's bullet connects with said person in the game. This would mean that the person at the house would have to be watching a live stream of the tournament, waiting until the bullet connects in order to inject the person. There is so much goddamn wrong with this. For starters, there was no need for such an overly complicated scenario since we already know that this is a fantasy world in which anything is possible. Why couldn't Death Gun kill someone in the game without resorting to this overly complicated and frankly, messy, idea? Not only that, but what happens when the person ready to inject the medicine believes that the bullet connected but it didn't really? What happens if the player is hit but he doesn't see it? This is so stupid it hurts...
Another huge problem is the lack of tension in this arc. Kirito, as usual, is a damn God who can do anything the plot demands from him, just because he is Kirito. One of the things I was most looking forward to in this arc was the fact that Kirito was playing a gun game, a weapon he was not accustomed to and he would have had to learn how to properly yield one and adapt to this world. Much like how the audience wouldn't know anything about this game, Kirito wouldn't either and we could grow attached to this character, seeing him learn the rules and get better the more he played. It would have created, y'know... NARRATIVE TENSION AND STAKES! But, no, Kirito finds a light saber, and thus is now unstoppable since we already know he can use a sword with no trouble whatsoever. Not only that, but despite this game being for hardcore players, Kirito pretty much destroys every single one of them instantly, learns how to use the very hard to control buggies straight away and pretty much deduces the entire plot for the audience through very long and drawn out monologues and exposition scenes. And holy hell is the exposition for this arc terrible! There are so many cafe exposition scenes in this show that it is insane and all of them just essentially tell the audience directly about the plot or how the characters are feeling. Setting exposition scenes in cafes is one of the laziest and boring ways to push a story forward and there are so many scenes like this that I almost fell asleep on many occasions. It's visually boring and only serves to pad out time, and the pacing for this arc is also pretty bad. Stretching out the source material into such a length was a bad idea since it leads to many scenes feeling as if they're dragging on for far too long. Take for example the episodes where Kirito and Shion are taking refuge inside a cave during the Bullet of Bullets tournament. We spend nearly two whole episodes in this god damn cave as we see both characters explain their predicaments and back stories to one another in slow and dull ways. We don't learn anything about the characters nor do we see them grow either, only in that Shion wants Kirito's dick a little more as a result. It's incredibly boring to watch since they just explain their backstories once again to the audience, which, at this point, only serves to pad out the arc and episodes.
The game of Gun Gale Online itself feels so badly done and I imagine that, if this game were real, nobody would be playing this damn game! I have a lot more respect for a show that goes the extra mile to make their world believable but here, the game mechanics that the author thought of to put in the game feel so stupid. For starters, we are told that Gun Gale Online is the only game that has professional, hardcore players which is just a ridiculous notion since I can think of plenty of games off the top of my head that already have pro players, but the customisation option presented in the game is stupid too. We learn that in this game the player has no control over their avatar and it is randomly selected for you! Why on Earth is this a thing? In games, developers are constantly trying to expand on customisation, and the fact that Gun Gale Online locks you into only one playable class only adds to the fact that this game is broken! Moreover, if the avatars are randomly selected for you, then why the hell does Shion look like herself just with blue hair as well as Kirito, only now with longer hair and his character model is that of a female, while other avatars look nothing like their real-life owners? You may call these pedantic things to complain about, and perhaps they are, but when the show is this boring and dull, my mind wonders over to such things since I am not immersed in anything that is happening.
Even the animation wasn't that stellar with frequent use of recap footage and many of the scenes set inside cafes with two characters simply taking. Even the final fight between Kirito and Death Gun is incredibly dull and anti-climatic to boot. This arc is just SO bad on every level from the insanely bad writing, to the stupid as hell plot, to the wasted potential and characters. Everything about the Phantom Bullet arc is awful and I still have even more things to complain and talk about, but I'm getting way ahead of myself. I still have two more arcs to go!
CALIBUR ARC (4/10):
I actually don't have too much to say with this arc since it is rather simple. After Gun Gale Online had finished airing its episodes, many people were tired out from the experience, and for many fans of the series, this was the arc that brought them back to enjoying SAO once again. This arc is a lot more simple in its complexity and is essentially about Kirito and his harem, dicking around in Alfheim Online. Essentially, Kirito and friends hear news of the legendary item, Calibur, has been found and set off on a mission to get this item, along with newcomer to the harem, Shion, who is now put on pause forever and is now part of Kirito's harem bitches. It's an arc that fans of the series will enjoy since it is mostly just comedic hi-jinks and while I did find some of the jokes funny, mostly regarding Klien, I found the arc to be pretty boring since I don't have a modicum of interest for any of these characters at all. It's not a bad arc, but an incredibly boring one for those who, like me, do not like these characters.
MOTHER'S ROSARIO ARC (6/10):
Now, I believe it is time to give some credit where I believe credit is due. This arc is actually not terrible and manages to do quite a lot that actually managed to impress me while handing a character death in a mature and even quite sad way too. This arc focuses more so on Asuna as the main character which I was happy for considering that Asuna is the only character that has anything going for her and luckily her character is not completely ruined and gets some small development. This arc focuses mainly on a girl called Yuki, who is a fantastic player in the game of Alfheim Online, who actually manages to beat Kirito in a fight! Can you believe it?! Anyway, we learn that this character actually has aids and is close to her death, but what is great is that this death and character is actually handled with a lot of care and heart. Yuki's character is simply not there just so that she can be used as a cheap plot device to evoke tears and drama into the story, but actually develops nicely over the course of this story arc into a respectable character, and, while I didn't cry at her death, the show was successful enough to evoke sadness in such a cynical cunt such as myself.
It's easy to feel emphatic towards Yuki's character since she is very lovable and easy to care about. She feels like a real kid going through such a horrible ordeal and her final moments were surprisingly well done. The arc isn't great, however, since the pacing, again, is pretty bad and the newly introduced characters, other than Yuki, don't get much attention and are pushed to the sides, but overall, this arc was a massive improvement. Not only that, but the animation quality and fight choreography are a bit better than that of Gun Gale Online and the arc has a killer opening too. There is much to like about this arc but it ultimately doesn't absolve all of the crap that Gun Gale Online put me through either.
CONCLUSION:
In conclusion, SAO II is a mess. It has frequent tonal shifts, the narrative is terrible with glaring plot holes and other glaring writing issues and even the few things that are worthy of praise, are not enough to raise the bar or change my stance on this show. I know that recently, it has become very trendy and hip to hate on SAO, and while I don't think this show is the worst anime ever made, it certainly is far from good, and every aspect of the show is so lazily produced and boring.
