this being a review i think it's only fair to start with the obvious ..
this is the best season of SAO yet.
with the first half we hit the reset and are going almost fresh in this world .. that lead to new characters (some of the best characters of SAO strictly speaking) that lead us into a conflict .. together with what was happening in the real world lead into certain consequences .. which we start up this half of the story with.
with avoiding as much spoiler as i humainly can .. we start with kirito taking a major hit and is being taken care of by alice ..doing so out of sense of responsability and gratitude .. knight alice facing the consequences of her lost memories .. and the church knights lead by berculi are facing the consequences of quintella's mistakes along with basically their world's creators setting a trial for them.
diving a bit into it the current villain is basically a 3rd party asked to do a certain job .. the guy is a psychopath .. the bad side is Sao's previous villains were bad and often categorized as psychopaths as well which is kinda off since personally all i see in them is bad written characters forced into that path which might make the current villain feel as such which is quite sad since the good part is the current villain is acutally a decent character .. as we saw he isn't' some horny villain made just to be hated ..and it doesn't seem like he's going that route at all which i really like .. he's drive is clear and his madness is explained and is believable at the very least .. which is a step up in writting villains for this series along with quintella herself.
as for the animation and art, can't say much about it .. SAO alicization is the best that SAO has ever looked ..the fights in cgi are a bit laking with thier 3 hits pre determined pattern of movement that is too obvious to be camouflaged by setting the fights in small groups and setting them to move in different times to create the illusion of them moving independently but oter than that every thing looks stunning
OST and OP/ED: i'm not that much of a fan when it comes to haruka's op especially with the treat that is asca's op last season but the ED is not only SAO's best ED and music in general as well as the best ED of this season .. but it's the best ED of this year to me..OST is as good as exxpected of SAO .. since this was one of the things mostly praised by both extremes of SAO (fans and haters).
my biggest worry i have is how is asuna's arrival would affect the story ... i do want it to be a helping factor for kirito to return .. i don't want it to be the main/the only reason for it tho since that would ruin what was basically buillt .. i'm kinda waiting and wanting a conflict between alice and asuna and i'm expecting it but i'm afraid they follow the regular comical cliched my man cat fight followed by welcome to the not harem club of rejected waifus of kirito .. i want it to be the center of conflict .. to be taken seriously and to be the trigger to explore how ar ethese flauctlights feel about knowing thier world is made up and so are they ..and hw to deal with someone unknown coming from an unknown world that seems t be kirito's world .. i hope that doesn't ruin what alicization built so far but actually enhances it .. sicne one of the biggest flaws of this show is wanting to be serious and try to build a decent 'sometimes solid even) fundation only to laze out at the end and ruin it all so as a token of my hopefullness i'll give this season 8/10 so far in hopes of it keeping that or even going higher instead of ruining it all and going down
