Let's ignore the appalling and totally out of place tentacle rape from the very first episode and move on just to the story element of SAO S3.
SAO takes the route of typical shonen powerup system, aka. power of friendship/ power of love, but executes them in the most generic , uncreative, boring, cliche, unbearable way possible.
The problem is the pacing overall is just very bad and it just doesn't get the point of why these powerup is significant, especially with those comedic villains that just happens to have infinite hp as long as the killing blow is not done by Kirito.
When 50k enemy trope invaded UW, instead of coming up strategies to fight back, instead of retreat, instead of doing anything meaningful, instead of discuss with the Knights and the soldiers about what to do, all stupid Kirito's harem do is praying for Kirito to fight off 50k tropes for them. Like wth? Why do they assume Kirito can fight 50k tropes at once, w/o knowing how the incarnation works in UW world?
So basically everyone just worship him as god, and assume that as soon as he wake up, 50k tropes will be a cake to deal with and everything will be fine. And then Kirito ofc woke up and able to do exactly what everyone expected him to do and become Jesus.
This is terrible writing and characterization.
Also don't get me started how pointless that trauma part and wake up part is.
You can put this wake up sequence on the first episode of season 2 and it'd make absolutely no difference because all of those things done in S2/ S3 are unrelated to what makes Kirito wakes up, and unrelated to Kirito's trauma.
The fact that they never mention/ showcase any sign of trauma throughout the entirety of Alicization story during Kirito's time in UW world before he went into coma further proves how pointless the whole trauma scene is.
You can skip the whole war thing, whole Alice with Kirito thing, whole everyone talking to Kirito thing and the whole wakeup sequence would be unaffected whatsoever. Apparently all you need to do is let the outside ppl connect 4 of his harems' memories.
Screw all the development, screw every other characters that try to help Kirito, screw the whole war, they're completely unrelated. Even w/o the war Kirito will wake up anyway.
Also not just Kirito, the characterization and asspull of all the villains are even worse.
PoH being the worst villain so far with all the bullshit and infinite life.
As if he's the only guy out of all the 80000 players that have sad/ hateful memory , what gives him right to do all those asspull?
Apparently out of all the 80000 otakus, there're only 2 guys with infinite will power and imagination to do whatever they want in UW world, which is Kirito and PoH, all the rest are bunch of idiots that can't do shit with no past , no memory, and no will of their own. Yeah, it's just heavy plot armours for the the convenience of story.
Overall, good animation and soundtrack can no longer save this dumpster fire plot and characters for SAO: Alicization.
Back in day when I watched the first half of SAO: Alicization season 1, I once thought SAO has the potential for being something good, but this season has proven me wrong in the most disheartening fashion.
