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EP. REVIEW: Sword Art Online: Alicization War of Underworld Part 2

The whole idea of recreating someone's personality from other people's perceptions of them is...I don't even know what word to use to describe that. Insane? Wrong? Idiotic? Sure, in this universe they could create a personality from others' pov, but it wouldn't be anything like the Kirito that Kirito sees himself to be. It would just be a new construct labeled Kirito. It makes about as much sense as trying to rebuild a person out of fragments of their parents' DNA and expecting to get the same person again because you're using the same pieces to start from.

I know it's just a show, but given that this was aimed at angsty teenagers who feel that no one really knows them (and they would be right), I gotta wonder how well that idea will fly (or has flown up to now). I dunno, maybe, like Kirito himself, it feeds into the fantasy that other people who know the real you in all your messy, interior detail can actually exist.


Ahh, rip Bercouli. I was fond of the old man, but he went out like a champ.

Gotta say I really loved the Bercoulli fight. I also love the idea that a non-main (so not one of Kirito and Asuna's gang) was able to take down big boss Vecta; foreshadowing wise it sets up well for an "after" future of this world where Asuna isn't a goddess from on high coming down to save the day. It makes for a powerful symbol that a denizen of this world took down the big bad, even if he lost his life in the process.

As for the plan for reviving Kirito... I don't think any other anime has made me vocally chastise it while it was airing. That plan is so full of "nope" I don't even know how to fully explain it all without going into a full rant. I'll just build on what Gina Szanboti said earlier in this thread; a person's vision of themselves which creates their sense of self is different from the view of that person in other's eyes. The very fact that they aren't with you 24/7 in your head defines the fact that they can only know so much about you. I get that they tried to skirt around this by suggesting that the overlap of perceptions from three individuals can cover some of those blind spots, and the apparent suggestion this is meant to be more of a jump start rather than a complete rebuild, but it's still a very, very, tenuous at best. In fact, this is actually a good way of destroying one's sense of self, as it can be traumatic if the way you view yourself is significantly different from the way others view you.

As a Novel reader too(it’s been a while though) I need a quick reminder from Key or other fellow novel readers: the Chinese girl who is suspicious about the whole mess is anime-original right?

I thought Gabe might be a more interesting villain once he was forced into a less powerful account than the literal dark emperor but nope, of course his alt is some sort of superhuman that can put a mind-whammy on Sinon instantly.

At least Kirito will finally have a worthy foe in the "total bs" ability department.

^Not sure how someone that has watched more than a couple of SAO seasons can ask that question, but to be clear I think the reference isn't about specific abilities per se, but that The Black Swordsman beats every boss, every opponent (see Ordinal Scale), gets every woman he comes into contact with excepting bad ones like Administrator or The Murder-chan Twins whether he or she can help it or not. Across at least three LN series not counting games and OVA. And he defeated Administrator too. Fanatio being a special case since she turns out to be pregnant by someone else which would been awkward otherwise. That's a high level of BS for a protag if you ask me...

The anime version deviates from the original novel by even suggesting that Yanai was the tentacle monster who caught Asuna

I was enjoying Alicization up to Administrator's defeat but honestly, War of the Underworld has been such a neverending slog, revelling in torture and misery as the action and story move at a glacial pace, plus a newfound taste for random amputations. Like they aren't even gruesome or scary anymore, just edgy.
And let's not get into all the Kirito Kirito Kirito Kirito Kirito. Sure, they're there to save him but it's tiring to have them crying for him 95% of the time (and then getting saved by his magical spirit several times. Could they be their own characters for once?
(incidentally, I remember reading about the writer making an effort to treat his female character betters and I thought it had to be an exaggeration since by Mother's Rosario he had improved a lot already. But hoo boy little did I know...)

This episode was specially bad by abusing all that to the extreme and also further slowing down the action by reintroducing two characters from the movie. Which I didn't know, but they were so well-known by other players, the guy's seiyuu was so bad at this and ultimately their intervention was so inconsequential that there was no way that they weren't an anime original insert.

I just want this to be over and move on to the next arc.

Uh... Nobody has been saved by Kirito's "magical spirit?" Are you talking about Sinon saving herself by using Incarnation? That's completely her doing Kirito isn't doing anything. I really don't get how some people seem to forget Incarnation exists even though it keeps being used...

As for Reki Kawahara's comment about his female characters what were you expecting? This arc ended around 10 years before he said that so it obviously wasn't going to be affected lol. So if you wanna see improvements on that front you will have to wait until the the Unital Ring arc or check out SAO: Progressive or Accel World.

Kisuke525 wrote:

Uh... Nobody has been saved by Kirito's "magical spirit?" Are you talking about Sinon saving herself by using Incarnation? That's completely her doing Kirito isn't doing anything. I really don't get how some people seem to forget Incarnation exists even though it keeps being used... As for Reki Kawahara's comment about his female characters what were you expecting? This arc ended around 10 years before he said that so it obviously wasn't going to be affected lol. So if you wanna see improvements on that front you will have to wait until the the Unital Ring arc or check out SAO: Progressive or Accel World.

Let's not get into the whole Incarnation thing because it's getting more ludicrous as it goes on.
I don't care about debugging this series by attacking the meaningless minutia, but I do care about how the girls are holding on solely because they keep mentioning his name every other second. Or how everyone in this war seems to count on him as if they were summoning a god. They literally expect him to wake up and whoop all the baddies as the only capable hero in the whole underworld.

And of course I know this was written a long time ago. I'm not mentioning Mother's Rosario out of a whim. At that point he had achieved some stuff as a writer and I didn't think he would go backwards, but here we are.

It's one thing to have magical abilities because you're on a God account programmed to have super powers; but this is just rule-of-cool BS. At this point I'm just waiting for Kirito to be reborn as Jesus, summon a holy Gundam and lay waste to all evil, both inside and out of the Underworld.