Geekatana Review - Sword Art Online 2 - Gamer Have Guns Will Shoot

Sword Art Online II, is an anime series adapted from the light novel series of the same title written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by Abec. It was produced by A-1 Pictures, and directed by Tomohiko Itō. It is divided into two parts with one part adopting volume 4 and 5 while the other is about volume 6 and 7 of the light novel. It ran for 22 episodes.

 

Personally speaking the first Sword Art Online has its issues but it was still a fun and entertaining series so I decided to pick this series up as well after a few months after its release. I guess I'm still partly upset about how they handled the first season. Anyways the minor spoiler warning flag up so let us dive into it.

The first half of the series follows kazuto "Kirito" Kirigaya as he dives into the new virtual reality game Gun gale Online (GGO) in order to find a player known as "Death Gun" who for one reason or another has the ability to kill players in real life just by killing their virtual game avatar. helping him accomplish this in the game is Shino "Sinon" Asada. The second half is about Asuna who is asked to join the guild Sleeping Knights by the guild leader Yuuki for one final quest together.

The story is decent if you care to ignore some obvious plot holes. Yes I'm talking about the big elephant in the room here.  I mean why is Kirito still doing online games despite nearly dying from his last adventure. And why for all that is holy are virtual games of this kind still a thing despite a great number of folks said to have died during the last season of Sword Art Online. Why are the authorities still allowing this. Kirito can barely walk when he managed to escape these games last time.

Still if you ignore the events of the previous season the series is a surprisingly decent. Some scene do feel overdone and some scene are done too short for my taste. I do like the back story they gave Sinon and Yuuki and I'd be lying if it didn't give me the feels when it did but this and a few other are probably the only saving grace of this series. At least when the show focuses on the emotional aspect of the show it does it really well.

 

The character feels cliche and that harem and fan service they had here and there is clearly inappropriate and obviously forced I was cringing for it to end and let the series get into the actual plot of things. Some of the returning characters barely did anything outside of Asuna, Kirito, Sinon and Yuuki. They even bothered to bring the rest of the side characters from the previous season of SAO into this just to show off their new virtual avatar...most likely just to sell anime toys of said game avatar.

I don't hate the series really. It is a good series. The action and the cgi are great when they get into it. And the character designs and the world building of Gun Gale Online and the other virtual game world this series has is fantastic and breathtaking. The music is also perfect done for the gun based game and seeing kirito slicing bullets is jaw dropping eye candy. But I cannot deny the fact that it falls drastically short in terms of character and plot that could easily been ironed out.

 

Take villain of GGO Death Gun itself for example. He started as this ominous antagonist who often outwit and outwit the MC during the first few episodes. A deadly mixture of cunning and a predator hunter like mentality akin to great villains like the DC own Deathstroke. Few episodes near the end of the arc he turns out to be just the typical stalker when his identity is blown. Such disappointment. The gun part feels minimum at best and never got around to the gun shooting level of fun series like Black Lagoon was.

 

Overall Sword Art Online II is a decent enough series with enough action, world building and character design to keep most folks interested. If you are a fan of Sword Art Online then you should probably give this one a once over. It has its ups and downs but it is up way enough to help you ignore the down sides. I'd recommend this to anyone who has the time to watch although there are clearly better ones out there.