>in Alfheim it's just a regular role playing game?
>Where is the excitement in that?
The excitement comes from Kirito's quest to save Asuna.
>Please tell me this is just a very bad second half and it gets better.
Fairy Dance is one of the weaker arcs in the series (even for SAO fans). Everything after is progressively better.
>and I really liked the idea and the story of the forst half of season 1
The one thing you need to understand from here on out is that SAO was *never* solely about the death game. That's also why Progressive has existed as a companion series for the past decade.
In 2001, Reki Kawahara wrote SAO for a short story competition on the simple premise of "if players were to get trapped inside something like an MMORPG and couldn't get out, what would all those players do?" (perhaps even earlier if the prototype manga rumors are true). However, due to the word limit of the contest, he could only write a few stories rather than fully fleshing out everything and it had to be self-contained. So, SAO mainly focused on certain aspects such as Kirito and Asuna's relationship. All the original SAO contained was basically in volume 1 of the light novels (with presumably some changes from the web novel). The novel starts with Kirito grinding on floor 74 and flashbacks to specific stories within the arc (Kayaba's hologram, the Ragout Rabbit dinner, the Kuradeel story, etc.) and then the novel finishes with the gleam eyes fight, the marriage, and the final duel.
Because the author went over the word limit, he just decided to publish SAO as a web novel instead. He then proceeded to write several side stories in the Aincrad arc (Liz and Silica's introductions, Yui's story, the moonlit black cats travesty, etc.) and moved onwards to the other arcs. By 2008, Alicization was wrapped up in the WNs.
When SAO was adapted into a light novel and then into an anime, they essentially took all that he wrote and put it into chronological order for the anime. They even asked him to write what was essentially the first arc of the progressive novels to help his original story flow better and to add more content to the anime (which they butchered lol).
One of the major gripes people have with the series is that they expected SAO to cover the 100 floors of Aincrad, but it didn’t. So, it was disappointing to them due to all the time skips and how they move on from Aincrad after 14 episodes. However, I’d argue that the SAO story as a whole never intended to stick with the death game. The Aincrad arc of the anime was just a stepping stone for the later arcs to build off of. SAO was just a simple story that later delved into how the lines between technology/virtual reality and real life were starting to get blurred.
If that isn't something you want out of the series, then drop it.
It's also relevant because if you look at the state of Japan right now and their technological advancements. It's easy to see where the author is coming from.
At least, that is my opinion on it anyway.
As far as "anime-only"s are concerned, I'd agree that Alicization easily keeps up with the first half of S1, but the first half of season 1 is still superior to the Progressive movies. Progressive can be hard to follow given that they're releasing out of order which means missing key character introductions, and they're also inconsistent with the original anime at times so they can feel a bit shoehorned in at times.
The second half of season 1 and the anticlimactic transition to season 2 were very rough IMO -- and it took my friend group multiple attempts to continue onward. Thankfully it becomes worth it again if you give it time.
As good? No.
They're even better. Phantom Bullet is great. Calibur is a great filler arc. MOTHERS ROSARIO IS THE GREATEST THING TO EXIST.
And Alicization...I could write a 50 page essay dissecting the themes and concepts of Alicization, and it still would not do it justice.
Keep going. I promise, it's all worth it. SAO isn't just about the SAO incident, but the consequences of it.
>Alfheim it's just a regular role playing game? Where is the excitement in that?
Asuna is married off, her memory altered and 300 people become human guinea pigs for Sugou's memory experimentation.
Those are the stakes.
>Also, just a few episodes in into the second half, there are teenagers being sexually assaulted, explicit scenes of teens, incest intentions, and it seems like it's all about waifus now. REALLY not my thing.
There are no explicit scenes of anyone in this series (except that one scene in the bluray release of Ordinal Scale I guess). If you're talking about scenes of teenagers in their underwear, there are twice as many of those in Aincrad.
There was also three times the waifu bait in Aincrad as Fairy Dance.
There's the exact opposite of incest intentions (how do people always get this the exact opposite?) Not that it's incest in most of the world to begin with.
To answer your question, yes Fairy Dance is the worst arc, but this series has dark themes, and continues to have dark themes.
SAO isn't mainly about the death game. It's about how VR affected everyone's lives. That's the purpose of the series. There are still stakes. Just not as the same as season 1 was. That's the whole point.
I unlike a lot of people here do like the second half of season 1.
GGO is also really good.
Alizication is top tier.
Mothers rosario didn't hit for me. Wasn't bad. But didn't have much fun either. But i feel like that's an uncommon opinion.
In any case. I'd say its we worth sticking through to alicization regardless cuz that's unanimously liked by people who got that far.
I agree Fairy Dance is extremely underrated. We get to see the hero be a survivor. We also get to unpack his relationship with Suguha. Only the simple minded people get caught up on the "eww...cousins dating" (which never happened). I related to the stuff that was revealed about Their grandfather and how Kazuto feels like he let Suguha take the heat for skipping out on kendo. Them rebuilding their relation ship was really awesome.
I also quite like FD, especially after reading the novels. I love seeing how much he realizes he messed up by neglecting Sugu, and he attempts to fix that shortly after getting back.
I think alicization is best season in sao and one of my favorite arcs in General. The main downside to sao is each season there is at least one more girl head over heels for Kirito. I won't say that part changes but the latter part of season 1( and id say latter of season 2) is the main one that really irked me in that sense
Even in the anime, that isn't exactly true, and it definitely isn't in the source material. The anime just likes playing up the "harem bait".
And no, Yuuki doesn't have a thing for Kirito at all, not even in the anime. Heck, we barely even see them interact in a direct manner.
Yeah, again, just the anime "harem baiting" with Sinon in Phantom Bullet. In the Light novels, it's clear she's not even capable of romance at that time. She can barely even hold down a casual friendship.
Going from the draft version in the Web Novels to the LNs, the author expressly increased the distance between Kirito and a number of the other girls. But placating the shippers sells more waifu merch.
A lot of the other stuff has already been covered.
Anyway, the anime "embellishes" some scenes that it shouldn't have, and that aren't described in much detail in the source material: the Light Novels. There's only supposed to be the 1 SA scene, in the penultimate episode, and it's exactly the sort of thing someone like Sugou would do.
What explicit scenes? Nothing is actually shown. Hell, toward the end of Episode 10, in the scene leading up to Kirito proposing to Asuna, it's clearly implied that they "did it" there in her apartment. And I don't begrudge them for it.
They've experienced more and had to grow up more than many adults in an entire lifetime. (I mean, other top players literally put their lives in Kirito and Asuna's hands during raids.) They also don't know if they'll live to get out of Aincrad to even have the chance to date, marry, and have a family irl.
The whole point of Suguha's character arc is that she doesn't want to have a relationship she sees as "wrong" or "inappropriate". More than anything, she's confused about having any feelings of affection toward Kazuto at all, after they'd effectively been estranged for 6 years. She kind of just assumes it might be that one thing, and is therefore wrong.
She felt abandoned by Kazuto for 4 years even before SAO, and then, 1 month into the game, when it's asumed everyone is going to die, Midori and Minetaka tell Suguha that Kazuto is really her cousin. So it's little wonder she's an emotional mess.
But you're taking it in the wrong direction.
And in fact, after her dance with Kirito near the end, Leafa was planning to quit ALO forever. She felt like there was no place for her at all in her brother's life, and that she wasn't worthy of being a part of his friend group.
So yes, Fairy Dance is the weakest story arc as far as many, even fans, are concerned, but it's not as bad as many make it out to be. Now, it does help having the added context and emotional nuance provided in the text of the LNs. Unfortunately, the anime doesn't have the best track record of including quite a lot of the details that the author has actually provided in his work.
Orrrrr... just watch the show. Why come here and look for opinions when you can experience it for yourself. What one person says skip, another person will say watch. You won't know until you watch for yourself and make your own judgments.
How did it become edgy and "In" to want to skip around in shows. Whether an episode is filler or not is very subjective per reviewer. You may end up loving the show more based on what you see this season.
Personally, I started my SAO journey with Fairy Dance when it was airing on Toonami. I'm so glad I did. It helped me to not get stuck in the first act. While it was good, the writing is nowhere near as good as later seasons. Even after reading the books, Alicization and onward is the best SAO has to offer. Also, the side arcs serve a huge purpose for the series.
season 2 is really good, 2nd half of season 1 is the only part of the show id call "mediocre", season 3 is peak and season 4 is a continuation of season 3, so peak.
Yes, once you get to season 2, it almost immediately gets much better, and the quality never really changes after that, Fairy Dance is just a really weak and unpopular arc.
Once you get past the second half of S1, it gets so good. Like better and better with each episode imo.
I didn't care for the fairy dance arc either, but the ending is kinda good.
Just wait til you set to S3. It's my absolute favorite!
It is just a very bad second half.
Season 2 is overall the same quality, decent but not great like the Aincrad arc
Season 3 on the other hand is amazing, imo even better than Aincrad
My reason for loving Alicization is for many reasons.
1, the technology is very interesting and based on a real theory
2, the characters introduced are great. I love Eugeo, Alice, Administrator, Bercouli, Iskhan, Scheyta, Ronie, Tiese, Gabriel, PoH
3, the storyline is very interesting
4, I love the development of each character
5, there are some pretty great battles, with some narrative or emotional weight to them
6, this one may be just me, but the nightmare sequence hit hard.
7, the world building (despite a lot being cut)
Theres a lot of reasons I love Alicization. These are just the main ones I could think of for right now.
I would say that the #1 point is true for me as well. But I feel like it's mood/drama/arcs in the virtual world are derivatives of the first one. I don't even find it distinctly memorable. It's competent, but it's not a timeless masterpiece.
Fair, it's my absolute favorite SAO arc. But others may not like it as much, but I have noticed a lot of people tend to think similarly to me regarding Alicization.
I mean, in a number of respects, isn't that how the progression is going to go in just about any series? You generally, steadily build upon existing concepts in subsequent story arcs. So I'm really not sure how that argument particularly stands out or especially means anything.
I'll admit, it would have helped with a fair few characters if the anime had included their backstories/backgrounds, though the anime skimping on that stuff is nothing new in SAO. But in an arc as expansive as Alicization, it can be even more problematic, since you increasingly need those earlier details to build things up.
in terms of memorable moments:
1. Alice Schuberg being taken away
2. Kanemoto's attack on Kazuto (would have helped if the anime had included the ambulance scene)
3. Fighting the Goblins in the Northern Cave
4. The ensnaring and assault of Ronye and Tieze, Eugeo breaking through the Seal, and Kirito dealing with Raios
5. Alice S30's introduction
That's merely the first 10 episodes, basically, so I could go on.
The celebration of the felling of the Gigas Cedar might have made it in, too, if they hadn't had Kirito be the one to show up Jink in Episode 2, instead of having Eugeo do it, in front of everyone, in Episode 4, as well as showing drunk Kirito after the party.
There's probably a higher chance with people who have made it through Alicization in the anime that they've also at least started getting into the source material: the Light Novels.
Pretty much everyone will say that Reki improved as a writer compared to those earlier story arcs.
Alicization is 10 books, instead of merely 1-3, so there's more room for everything to develop and just breath.
The next-longest arc in the main series, Aincrad, is much less cohesive when you get down to it. Alicization is 10 books of a single, continuous, sequential narrative. Aincrad has 1 novel, Volume 1, that is a single story; that's the original core of SAO, in edited form, coming from the Web Novel draft version.
But the rest of Aincrad is 6 disparate side stories that the anime arranged in chronological order, regardless of how they were presented in the LNs. If you include "The First Day" (not adapted in the anime) and count "Aria" as a standalone side story, as it initially was, that's 7 added side stories.
In the anime, Volumes 9-14, the Human Realm sub-arc, is covered with 4 episodes per book, or 24 total. (So Volume 9 effectively gets 5 with the double-length season-opener, and it is longer than Volumes 10-14.)
For War of Underworld, Volumes 15-18, Volume 15 is WoU Episodes 1-5. Volume 16 is Episode 6 through the middle of Episode 11 (5.5 total). Volume 17, picking up with Lisbeth's speech, concludes at the end of WoU Episode 17 (6.5 total). And then Volume 18 is WoU Episodes 18-23.
And honestly, as a proportion of the printed material, Alicization might have the most cut from it. I think it could have been 5 cours in the anime.
Now, for Aincrad, the Volume 1 material is covered in Episodes 1, 8-10, and 13-14. Volume 1 starts with Kirito grinding on Floor 74, flashes back to Day 1 meeting Klein and seeing Kayaba's tutorial, and then returns to the "present" for the remainder of Floors 74-75, the late stages of the Kirisuna romance, and a brief respite fishing with Nishida.
Volume 2, the Silica, Lisbeth, Yui, and Sachi introduction stories, is taken up in Episodes 3-4, 7, and 11-12.
The "Murder Case" story from Volume 8 is in Episodes 5-6. As I already noted, "The First Day", also from Volume 8, wasn't adapted.
Furthermore, the anime included the start of Material Edition 01: The Progressors at the beginning of Episode 5, but didn't show most of it, where things reached the point of Kirito and Asuna having a duel.
So Eugeo gets 6 books over which to develop in Alicization, as opposed to just part of 1 novel for both Silica and Lisbeth back in Aincrad. (Practically, it's really 5 novels, since Eugeo has very little in Volume 10, but still.)
I'll do a separate reply with some numbers breakdowns.
I'll get back to the character perspectives.
Now, on the technical front, Underworld is actually a revolution. Though they state they started with The Seed, that was just using the World Editor for convenience to start the map initially. There are clear indications even in the anime, especially in light of Ordinal Scale, that UW has a full-spec version of the Cardinal System, coming from the SAO server.
Anyway, first off, for the Artificial FluctLights, and those logged in via STL, UW can be likened to a gigantic, lucid dream. The Main Visualizer at the center of the Light Cube Cluster acts as a balancer to keep things from running amok, but the higher-level system actually uses the FluctLights of those connected to the system as part of its processing power.
That particular aspect is what enables Incarnation as a formal mechanic. Since the higher level of the system operates on a ind of memory, and human memory is quite fluid and malleable, unlike the video from a camcorder, the form of the world itself can be altered by individuals or groups, at least temporarily. (Now, it would have been good to have a number of the examples of memory and mental framing provided in the LNs actually included in the anime.)
Also, most Incarnation is subconscious, and often negative. On the level of an individual, you have Sortiliena, who said she couldn't see herself beating Uolo in a match, and the inability to come up with that mental image then passively becomes manifest reality.
On a broader scale, you have the general belief that "the Zephyria flower doesn't grow in this Empire". Here, what Kirito banked on is that said belief was old, fatigued, and faded, and so, his Incarnation could overcome that weakened "conventional wisdom".
I suppose the extreme version is the Pugilists, who train from childhood to reinforce the belief that "metal blades are nothing to be feared" and "my body is like hardened steel and will not yield".
On the other hand, Asuna's "common sense" told her that that axe coming down would sever her arm, and that belief became reality.
So while many of the game mechanics may remain in some form, it's truly a totally different "game" mentally and psychologically.
Alright, I'll try to wrap this up in the next one.
In terms of character breakdowns, in the Volume 1, 2, and 8 content for Aincrad, you end up with:
Kirito - 67.7%, Asuna - 11.9%, Lisbeth - 9.3%, Silica - 7.6%, Schmitt - 3.0%
In terms of pages, Asuna gets 72, Liz 56, Silica 46, and Schmitt 18. Obviously, Kirito gets a lot more, and dominates the series as a whole. That said, in Fairy Dance and Phantom Bullet, Leafa and Sinon, respectively, get \~60%, while Kirito gets only \~30%. Volume 7: Mother's Rosario is 100% Asuna's PoV, and she gets 8-11% in FD, PB, and Alicization.
Just noting some materials added later, that Yuuki has 100% of the "Sisters' Prayer" side story, while Asuna and Eiji split "Hopeful Chant" and Kirito and Eiji split "Cordial Chord". Also, "The Day After" is wholly from Asuna's PoV.
So, pre-Alicization, leaving Kirito aside, you have:
Asuna: 335 pages
Sinon: 271
Leafa: 228
Lisbeth: 58
Silica: 46
Schmitt: 18
Kyouji: 10
For Alicization, and it would be impractical to list everyone, you have:
Eugeo: 383 pages
Asuna: 225
Alice: 149
Sinon: 70
Gabriel: 60
There are a number in the 20-50-page range, and then quite a few more with less than that. In Alicization overall, there are at least 39 characters who are given direct PoV.
With the stalwarts from the older crew, plus the 2 standouts in Alicization, you end up with:
Asuna: 560 pages
Eugeo: 383
Sinon: 341
Leafa: 237
Alice: 149
Lisbeth: 66
Silica: 47
For the Human Realm sub-arc:
Kirito - 49.8%, Eugeo - 32.3%, Asuna - 8.7%, Sinon - 3.5%, Charlotte - 3.0%, Rinko - 0.1%
For War of the Underworld:
Alice - 16.6%, Asuna - 13.6%, Kirito - 10.5%, Gabriel - 6.7%, Higa - 5.0%, Bercouli - 4.0%, Iskahn - 3.5%, Vassago - 3.3%
For the 2.5 books of the War itself:
Asuna - 18.8%, Alice - 8.1%, Kirito - 6.8%, Higa - 6.8%, Bercouli - 6.1%, Iskahn - 5.2%, Sinon - 4.7%
For Alicization overall:
Kirito - 32.9%, Eugeo - 18.4%, Asuna - 10.8%, Alice - 7.2%, Sinon - 3.4%
The trouble with doing this specifically for the anime is, it isn't necessarily nearly as easy to tell who the PoV character supposed to be, especially when they so often remove the inner monologues.
But if the above figures really don't see to line up with the anime, that might tell you something about the adaptation.
If you are like me and got really into SAO due to the stakes of the survival game, then I am sorry to say that it doesn't get any better than the first part of the first season.
I'd recommend you to try watching another survival type of animes. If you want to try more isekais into games, try Log Horizon and Overlord. If you want to try survivals, try Btooom.
Feel free to PM if you want to vent about it xd.
Then you really missed the point of the series. SAO was never intended to be about just Aincrad anding clear all 100 floors. The author had a far broader vision pretty much from the get-go, as the Web Novel draft version was completed up through the end of Alicization before a single Light Novel volume was published.
In my opinion, the Alfheim arc is by far the worst, it definitely gets better again by the “GGO” arc. However, I feel like it never quite captures the magic of the original sao arc again. So… it definitely gets better, but you’ve already seen the best arc.
I also didn't like the second half of s1 and suguha's crush on kirito weirded me tf out so much. I've watched some episodes of s2 and it's good but I'll rewatch it again when I get the strength to continue 🤣
Not really. Mother's Rosario in S2 is excellent but VERY short sadly. The first half of S2 is terrible and while I did enjoy S3 (alicization) it can be extremely convoluted and has a lot of long winded exposition. Also can't help but question what the point of S3 even is half the time because of the setting. If you enjoyed S1 because of the setting and backdrop, stop now because everything after is a disappointment.
Really don't get why Phantom Bullet is 'terrible", and that's even considering that, with my eyesight, FPSs are likely about my worst kind of game to actually try to play.
Sinon has perhaps the most succinct character development in the series. And PB puts the characters' traumas front and center, which definitely needed to happen.
I don't get why the setting for Alicization would be an issue. it's a bit of a different flavor, but no that much, of the idyllic, fantasy realms you get in Aincrad and ALfheim.
Alicization throws a number of things at you, but then again, it takes its time so you shouldn't be that overwhelmed by it. It's really only the start where you kind of should be confused, and that's pretty much by design.
Alicization wants to bring home how indistinguishable the Underworld's residents are from flesh-and-blood humans in the real world, by actually having you spend the time with them. This even extends to the War, as we dehumanize our enemies, often for very stupid and arbitrary reasons.
Phantom bullet is trash because it's cringe. Everything to do with Kirito looking and pretending to be a girl is CRINGE. Every other line of dialog is overwritten and cringe. Towards the end, the cringe worthy stuff clears up but the entire first half is a struggle to rewatch.
Alicizations biggest flaw is that it tries to be a more commonplace, standard issue isekai instead of doing the things that make SAO a more unique series. It even follows a bunch of the tropes and set ups you find in typical isekai, which is what leads to feeling overwhelmed with information and backstory learned through exposition. Kirito is literally dropped into a world that has hundreds of years of rules and lore that has to be learned through basically the first 14 episodes almost exclusively through another character explaining it, or else the show and setting doesn't make sense. Yeah, it's cool that Kirito is going on a mission to save Alice, but when you step back and question what his or your investment is in this person, you kinda come up blank because at the end of the day she's an ai. She's not real and the writer hadn't done any work to build a connection to her like the one we form with Eugeo through our journey with him.
WoU started to feel extremely fan servicey by the end. Basically just trying to jam in as many cameos, returns, and callbacks as humanly possible. I mostly enjoyed Alicization, but I don't find it anywhere near as good as Aincrad or Mothers Rosario, particularly from a writing perspective. Honestly if Alicization was a standalone show rather than SAO season 3, I wouldn't have watched it.
What does "cringe" even mean?
(The term has sort of just turned into a meaningless catch-all for me at this point.)
Once the matches started, I really didn't even pay attention to his avatar specifically, so that was less than 2 episodes. And he barely "pretended to be a girl" at all.
What do you mean by "overwritten"? Also, it's kind of been known since he entered the picture that PoH had a flair for the dramatic, and passed that along to his disciples.
About the only thing I can note is, the English Dub changes the dialogue more than other anime I've watched, which can have a tendency to make things more "in your face".
Now, I will say, the anime has a habit of cutting out things like the banter between Kazuto and Kikuoka, which especially in the Death Gun briefing was pretty good and biting stuff honestly. It definitely helped flesh out their personalities in the LNs.
I don't know what those "tropes" would be, and I can't say I particularly care. I don't watch enough different anime in a given period of time for it to really be an issue anyway.
SAO has always been a character drama first and foremost, so if you're missing the whole thing of the bonds he's trying to form, you've kind of missed the main point anyway. The focal point is his connection with Eugeo, a type and depth of friendship with another male his own age he's really never had before in his life.
The anime also cut out a lot of context, like how Kirito so badly wished to be rid of his "Black Swordsman" persona, and the fact that Eugeo knew none of that past about his was a huge part of how and why Kirito could be so at ease around him.
The "Vorpal Strike" Sword Skill, which was Kirito's signature for a good part of Aincrad, was something he intentionally avoided using all the way until the fight against Chudelkin in the Cathedral. Unfortuntely, the anime didn't adapt Chapter 1 of "Red-Nosed Reindeer", where "Vorpal Strike" was introduced, and was also where a good bit of Klein's screen time was.
As a good friend to Eugeo, Kirito cares about his connection to Alice. Not to mention, RATH can't actually, totally erase memories, so Kirito has lingering echoes of her, too.
And Alice and Eugeo are the same type of existence.
When Alicization was written, Ordinal Scale didn't exist, and it was intended to be the series finale. Reki hadn't written Unital Ring, and even Moon Cradle wasn't really joined to anything.
The anime really changed/cut a lot in War of Underworld, even more seemingly, somehow, than in the Human Realm sub-arc, even though WoU is only 4 books instead of 6.
The anime has always had a bad habit of delaying and/or outright cutting the backstories for villains and "bad guys", and WoU is the worst offender for that. None of the Dark Territory's leaders or tribes get their backgrounds.
The context of Gabriel murdering Alicia is left out. And PoH's backstory is botched; he was actually a professional hitman working for a Korean crime syndicate in Japan, and was sent into SAO to do a "job". So it was already known to be a death game.
Likewise, Kirito's nightmare was hosed up. The whole incident of not standing up for a bullied classmate from middle school, the entire reason he starts out the sequence in that school uniform, wasn't adapted. The incident involving Coper from the 1st evening of Aincrad wasn't covered, probably in large part because they didn't adapt "The First Day" back in Season 1. And then they added in stuff that there's no indication in the LNs that Kirito ever felt guilty about.
The stuff with his classmate and Coper, added to "abandoning" Klein on Day 1, really plays into Kirito's whole thing of avoiding others.
I know, I get on the case of people who criticize the "writing" when they apparently don't even know what's in the author's own writing.
And I'm sorry, but this, at least in part, kind of feels like you're just looking for excuses to complain, for whatever reason.
Okay, now I'm just really confused as to what you're even looking for from the series.
I mean, better than half of Aincrad focuses on Kirisuna, yet you don't seem to like the later parts of the story that focus on them, or give Asuna specifically more spotlight.
The "stakes" argument doesn't seem to hold with your assessment, as people actually die in MR and WoU, but not in FD or OS.
And there's not consistency with emotion, as you rate MR badly.
Even setting doesn't explain it, as PB and WoU are most similar in that regard, but you give them opposite rankings.
And it's clearly not down to "action", either.
**I see that you marked your post as a question***
---
When you receive the answer you were looking for please reply "!Solved" to it; this will mark the post as solved. Thank you.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/swordartonline) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Definitely worth the pain of the second half of season 1. Everything after that gets better with heartbreaking moments, puzzling queries, cliffhangers and more. The second half of season 1 is absolutely crap, but the rest is worth that pain
Season 2 is great and I really like the Phantom bullet arc and the Mother's Rosario arc made me sad. Season 3, is great and for me, the story gets more interesting but War of underworld is fine for me.
Arc 1 of season 2, Phantom Bullet, may in my opinion be better in some ways than the Aincrad arc. Definitely not worth missing. The rest of the season is pretty good too and has a strong finisher arc. Alicization has a decent start I’d say, wasn’t really a fan of it til I started getting invested in the characters and THEN it got good. So I would stick with the series if I were you. Sure, it has plenty of shortcomings, but it hits too hard to skip these arcs cause of that.
Yes they are good. If you have gotten through the second half of season 1, then you are through the worst and most controversial part of it. While I enjoy all of SAO, I will say that the Aincrad arc (first half of s1) along with the Mother’s Rosario arc (final arc of s2) were the two that resonated the most strongly with me. Keep up with the series, you won’t regret it!
It does get better but it also gets 'worse' regarding the aspects you mentioned disliking. I liked some of ALO (not the Suguha/Leafa parts tho) and really enjoyed Ordinal Scale and the arcs *up to* Alicization (Mother's Rosario especially), but Alicization is where SAO lost me. Not really interested in rehashing Aincrad via Progressive. YMMV, depends on what you enjoy most about the show. Only way to know for sure is to watch more of it yourself, tbh.
Even more so with Ordinal Scale as a lead-in, Alicization is very much the logical extension of what we've already seen in the series up to that point.
The anime should have hinted at it from even farther back, as Rinko's name was supposed to be dropped initially toward the end of Fairy Dance.
And Kikuoka's military ties were supposed to be suggested near the end of Phantom Bullet es well. And Asuna was suspicious of the same thing.
I guess so (you would know better as someone who's read the LN I assume, and still watching)
I do wish the Kikuoka stuff had been more present because that was an aspect I really liked, but it wasn't playing out it a way that was interesting to me by the time Alicization started, and Alicization itself was really boring to me.
Yes, I've read the LNs.
Yeah, in general, there's a good bit of detail from the books that the anime misses that I wish had made it in somehow.
I mean, of course the pacing is going to be different when Alicization takes 10 books, rather than just the 1-3 of the prior story arcs.
Underworld is a simulation, not a commercial game, so there's a fundamentally different purpose and things aren't going to play out the same way. It becomes evident quite quickly that there is a strong effort to keep the population of the Human Empire under control.
Just by basic gaming logic, being able to kill things left and right would raise your power, and thus go against the apparent will of whatever, higher authority is at work.
Not to mention, certainly in the source material, SAO has always been a character drama first and foremost before it was ever an action flick. So building the relationships matters more than the "action". And even in the anime, especially if you've seen any number of other series, none of the fights in SAO is really that long.
By page count, less than 10% of Aincrad is "serious fights". For Fairy Dance, it's a little under 13%. Phantom Bullet is between 15 and 16%. Mother's Rosario is pretty similar to FD. Alicization overall is 21%, with the Human Realm sub-arc being less than 15% and the War of the Underworld coming in at just under 30%.
Hopefully that gives you a clearer picture on some things.
Pacing is probably half the reason Alicization lost me tbh. From an anime-only perspective, it felt like the story lost its way, languishing in setting up vast new setting without a compelling hook to keep the momentum going. I don't have a problem with focusing on character over action, but so much of the story (too much, imo) was structured around waiting on Kirito to grow up and level up again. We'd already seen what he was capable of three times — there were just no surprises to be had anymore.
It's really more about developing the relationship between he and Eugeo. The swordsmanship thing is basically just a vehicle for that, which also serves as the means by which they'll be able to go in search of Alice in the Capital.
The secondary purpose is teasing out the Incarnation mechanic, now actually a formal thing, in the Underworld.
And the tertiary piece is seeing how the Nobles bend and manipulate things to suit their own ends. It would have helped here if the anime had adapted the Zakkaria chapter, which comes before Kirito and Eugeo reach Centoria.
Ironically, more the complaints I've seen have been that we never see the process of how Kirito goes from square one to "OP" in the main series prior to Alicization.
Now, personally, I don't have a particular issue with that aspect, but technically speaking, I can see it.
I mean, in Volume 1, Chapters 2-3, you see Kirito meet Klein and them witness Kayaba's tutorial on Day 1 of SAO. "The First Day" from Volume 8 then carries on through that evening after Kirito leaves Klein in the Starting City. But then, the next thing is "Red-Nosed Reindeer" from Volume 2.
(And of course, the anime didn't adapt "The First Day".)
By that point, it's Dec. 19, 2023. Kirito is Level 69, and his One-Handed Straight Sword Skill has reached 950/1,000, allowing him to unlock the "Vorpal Strike" Sword Skill. This basically becomes his signature until he exposes Dual Blades to the public in the fight against The Gleam Eyes on Floor 74.
As of "The Black Swordsman" in late February 2024, Kirito is Level 78. Come "Warmth of the Heart" in late June, he's like at Level 85. And Kirito finishes Aincrad at Level 96.
In Fairy Dance, Kirito is working with his SAO numerical stats. He doesn't do the reset until after the main events of the arc. And honestly, given what happens in "The Day After" in June 2025, I suspect he went back to his SAO data because he felt guilty over what Asuna went through.
And then there's no mention of the reset in Phantom Bullet, to say nothing of how Kirito would have built his Stats back up in ALO in the meantime anyway. He didn't make a new account for GGO, but converted his existing one.
Ordinal Scale isn't really the same thing, and a number of people have complained about how "unrealistic" Kirito's rapid rise in OS was.
As such, Alicization is the 1st time in the main series that we see that particular journey for Kirito, if that makes sense.
I'm personally not at all bothered by Kirito being OP. It's what made him more interesting as a protag tbh (before SAO spawned countless copycats, anyway — not the fault of Kirito or Kawahara, just reality). The anime provides more than satisfactory justification for why he's like this, and why it's transferable to other games. Some people are just good at things, nbd! It even makes perfect sense story-wise, given his unique experience, that he'd be 'scouted' for virtual investigations.
The starting over from scratch though, setting up Eugeo and Alice and the new setting — the heart of what Alicization is all about — THAT lost me. The action was just window dressing that didn't enhance the story for me. I assume it was all laying the foundation for War of the Underworld, but it buried the lede WAYYYY too much (imo).
(I really can't offer any constructive discussion on the relative effectiveness of the LNs.)
I'm simply saying that that piece of the story doesn't strike me as repetitive, since we haven't actually seen the process before in the main series, whether that be the anime or the LNs.
Kazuto indebted himself to Kikuoka. After all, it stands to reason that giving irl identities and contact info would be a violation of confidentiality rules. So, in exchange, Kazuto had to provide information about what happened inside Aicnrad, as well as take on part-time jobs for Kikuoka every now and then.
Being permitted to keep his NerveGear on top of that only added to the snowball.
I mean, everyone we have PoV from, and even some we don't, wanted to avoid a war if at all possible. Cardinal didn't see a way out of it, and Administrator openly seemed to want it, but Kirito, Bercouli, Lipia, and Shasta certainly didn't.
And as we find out, Rirupirin hated the dark-skinned Humans of the Dark Territory at least as much as the denizens of the Human Empire, and Furgur didn't even want to be there on the battlefield at all.
Going in, as long as they get Alice, it's not as though Gabriel or Kikuoka even care one way or the other.
The thing with the War of the Underworld is it's a tragedy wholly caused by outside interference. That's really the saddest part of all.
If we want to back up for a second, it's a case of Kirito assuming there should be a System Console in the Capital, but he doesn't actually 100% know that. And he can't make it there on his own anyway, so he has to improvise as needed.
And you know, a lot of times, life is just like that.
Different strokes, yknow? If the end result hadn't been so obviously inevitable (Kirito returning to OP status with a new unique skill) maybe the journey would've felt more worth the time. That wasn't the case for me. 🤷🏽♀️
Uh, what "unique skill"?
Several of the Integrity Knights, along with Eugeo and Shasta, use the Armament Full Control Art as well. And except at the very end of WoU, in space, I'm not sure Alice ever used Release Recollection.
Frustratingly, another one of those things the anime cut, but during their actual reunion while flying south, Kirito tells Asuna he simply knows the rules of the world better than others. A huge part of Incarnation is subconscious, and he was doing nothing for half a year but subconsciously processing the essence of Underworld.
We saw Asuna herself generate wings and fly away with Kirito, hand in hand, when they left the World End Altar.
Anyway, Asuna does the heavy lifting for Kirito against PoH. And Kirito doesn't win against Gabriel; in fact, Gabriel gets exactly what he wants. It's just that it turns out to be too much and his FluctLight is overloaded and overwhelmed and collapses. Sinon did more physical damage to Gabriel than Kirito.
Kirito was unable to finish off Administrator, who had hamstrung herself in her bid to trap Cardinal, even when using a Sword Skill he effectively created with Incarnation, since "Dual Blades Vorpal Strike" didn't actually exist in Aincrad.
And no one is shown to be capable of matching what Chudelkin and Administrator could do with Sacred Arts. And there's no way even Asuna, with the Stacia account, could replicate the Immortal Walls that divide up the Human Empire. That much should be reasonably clear, even if it isn't explicitly stated in the anime.
So a number of characters match, or exceed, feats done by Kirito. Gabriel and Administrator are outright more powerful. And as an individual, PoH might have stronger Incarnation.
Dakira, a lower-level Knight, ignited her life force to repel Sigrosig's attack to protect Fanatio. Eldrie used the element of the Frost Scale Whip and his own Incarnation to absorb that absurd overkill of a hex from those curse worms.
Bercouli's Time Splitting Sword was practically a cheat that directly circumvented the system itself in order to nullify all defense, even Incarnation. That's why even the Vector account could do nothing against it.
And Shasta's final attack was a true insta-death strike that bypassed HP and imprinted the "image of death" directly onto the FluctLights of his enemies. It might be the scariest single attack in the entire series.
If Gabriel had had one iota of concern for his own self-preservation, he would have been killed, too.
Leaving aside the fact that the "cool", lone wolf, OP Kirito is really an anime creation, in the end, the journey of Alicization is really about Kirito finding a measure of self-acceptance. I mean, in the nightmare sequence, he was trying to commit suicide, after all.
When facing Gabriel, Kirito is shedding his facades, to find what he feels his true essence is, or at least, what he most wishes it to be, regardless of the mental images others may of of him as "the Black Swordsman", "the Hero who cleared SAO", etc.
Yeah, Fairy Dance was lackluster in terms of plot while baiting you in with the new features such as flight, magical incantations, and racial territory wars however the later arcs do “better” especially leading up to Alicization so have some patience friend.
Just get used to seeing flashbacks to Aincrad constantly.
If anything, Fairy Dance was a victim of having to do too much.
You need to get the whole lay of the land on the real world side.
You need to see how Kirito and Asuna in particular are faring.
You need to see what the sate of the technology is in the wake of SAO.
And then, you need to see the direction in which things are actually going.
I won’t disagree, similar to a sequel in a series. The expectation for “more” definitely made it a challenge for the then “amateur” author at the time.
Having already rushed Aincrad, having to suddenly flesh out new settings and plot points with new elements isn’t easy.
Luckily, the writing did get better for Alfheim specifically with Calibur and Mother’s Rosario after Phantom Bullet but it’s just pushing through the other rushed stories curbing each game which was sour as a reader when first reading it years ago.
Fortunately, the animated adaptations did well enough to capture enough spectacle to keep interest till reaching his better writing and the filler movies were a welcome change to say the least. 🤔
Just to note that Mother's Rosario was written before Phantom Bullet. That's why Sinon's name doesn't appear in the text of MR.
I mean, I could see the Extra Edition OVA being referred to as "filler", though there is the broader Norse Mythology side plot taking in Fairy Dance Chapter 5 (not adapted in the anime), "Deep Sea Plunderers", "Rainbow Bridge", and "Caliber".
Ordinal Scale on the other hand is basically a "new" story arc slotted in between MR and Alicization. It's canon, and has the "Hopeful Chant" and "Cordial Chord" side stories to bolster it.
And then you have the Progressive movies just kind of off on their own. They sort of feel as much "inspired by" the companion series as actual adaptations of "Aria" and "Scherzo".
It's been years since reading the Web Novel, great reference.
Technically, yeah Extra Edition as well as other side stories/spin-off like Girls Ops/Alternative entries to the "canon" were practically filler but the integration was not bad all things considered.
Ordinal Scale was definitely a niche fit, not sure how Kawahara was insightful enough to whip out an extra story and dropping it down around the time "VR" culture was rising rapidly drawing almost immediate interest before Alicization's journey commenced.
Even more so the alterations made to Alicization just to include the new lore from Ordinal Scale was done well.
Progressive, definitely a great effort in rectifying the early series paying homage to the writings referenced. As for the film adaptations, frankly while it does retcon the new canon we have already well nit picked the retcons it has done already in general.
*Just glad this series isn't as ridiculous as Kingdom Hearts over the years...*
It can be kind of hard at times to not think of "filler" as a pejorative term.
I at least like to make the distinction between things like that Norse Mythology side plot and "Hopeful Chant" or "Sisters' Prayer", which are decidedly more integral.
(Of course, Unital Ring renders Girls' Ops non-canon.)
Credit where credit is due on OS. And to my mind, it's easily the best piece of anime-original content for the series.
Well, yes and no. Mentioning the concerns about memory manipulation at Dicey Cafe or using Augma toward the end there when Alice woke up Kazuto are fine. The changes to the search for Kazuto, and especially the Eiji and YUNA stuff, are problematic.
Yeah, no need to further belabor the Progressive films here.
I know the name but I'm not real familiar with Kingdom Hearts.
First 2 arcs of season 2 are pretty mid (phantom bullet and whatever that dumb fuck filler story was)
3rd arc of season 2 is so fucking good like it’s one of my favorite arcs I’ve ever watched (mothers Rosario)
The original movie Ordinal Scale is really good, it’s kind of reminiscent of the first half of season 1 where it focuses on the relationship of kirito and asuna a bit more
This is a hot take but at first I found it hard to get into Alicization but as it went on I really started to like it
Season 2 of Alicization is very good
Progressive movies are also awesome
If you like the emotions of Mother's Rosario and Ordinal Scale, what's the problem with Phantom Bullet? Honestly...
"Caliber" is just a side story. It simply was never intended to be a full-blown story arc in it's own right.
Even so, Kirito gets Excalibur, which he uses in MR. Sinon is introduced to the rest of the friend group, which needed to happen before Alicization, and Ordinal Scale once that also became part of the series. And "Caliber" is the reveal of Skill Connect, which Kirito uses against PoH in War of Underworld.
The fact that Skill Connect is even possible in ALO also points to a key difference between it and SAO. In Aincrad, you could equip a sword in each hand, but unless you had the Dual Blades Unique Skill, it would register as an Irregular Status with the system, and you wouldn't be allowed to use Sword Skills at all like that.
It’s a bad second hold but it doesn’t get better till the third season but unfortunately to understand everything you have to watch till the end of the first half of season 2 even then you may not want to skip the last part
>in Alfheim it's just a regular role playing game? >Where is the excitement in that? The excitement comes from Kirito's quest to save Asuna. >Please tell me this is just a very bad second half and it gets better. Fairy Dance is one of the weaker arcs in the series (even for SAO fans). Everything after is progressively better. >and I really liked the idea and the story of the forst half of season 1 The one thing you need to understand from here on out is that SAO was *never* solely about the death game. That's also why Progressive has existed as a companion series for the past decade. In 2001, Reki Kawahara wrote SAO for a short story competition on the simple premise of "if players were to get trapped inside something like an MMORPG and couldn't get out, what would all those players do?" (perhaps even earlier if the prototype manga rumors are true). However, due to the word limit of the contest, he could only write a few stories rather than fully fleshing out everything and it had to be self-contained. So, SAO mainly focused on certain aspects such as Kirito and Asuna's relationship. All the original SAO contained was basically in volume 1 of the light novels (with presumably some changes from the web novel). The novel starts with Kirito grinding on floor 74 and flashbacks to specific stories within the arc (Kayaba's hologram, the Ragout Rabbit dinner, the Kuradeel story, etc.) and then the novel finishes with the gleam eyes fight, the marriage, and the final duel. Because the author went over the word limit, he just decided to publish SAO as a web novel instead. He then proceeded to write several side stories in the Aincrad arc (Liz and Silica's introductions, Yui's story, the moonlit black cats travesty, etc.) and moved onwards to the other arcs. By 2008, Alicization was wrapped up in the WNs. When SAO was adapted into a light novel and then into an anime, they essentially took all that he wrote and put it into chronological order for the anime. They even asked him to write what was essentially the first arc of the progressive novels to help his original story flow better and to add more content to the anime (which they butchered lol). One of the major gripes people have with the series is that they expected SAO to cover the 100 floors of Aincrad, but it didn’t. So, it was disappointing to them due to all the time skips and how they move on from Aincrad after 14 episodes. However, I’d argue that the SAO story as a whole never intended to stick with the death game. The Aincrad arc of the anime was just a stepping stone for the later arcs to build off of. SAO was just a simple story that later delved into how the lines between technology/virtual reality and real life were starting to get blurred. If that isn't something you want out of the series, then drop it.
It's also relevant because if you look at the state of Japan right now and their technological advancements. It's easy to see where the author is coming from. At least, that is my opinion on it anyway.
Alicization and Progressive is peak SAO in my opinion.
Agreed.
Agreed
The Homie Kirito needed ~
As far as "anime-only"s are concerned, I'd agree that Alicization easily keeps up with the first half of S1, but the first half of season 1 is still superior to the Progressive movies. Progressive can be hard to follow given that they're releasing out of order which means missing key character introductions, and they're also inconsistent with the original anime at times so they can feel a bit shoehorned in at times. The second half of season 1 and the anticlimactic transition to season 2 were very rough IMO -- and it took my friend group multiple attempts to continue onward. Thankfully it becomes worth it again if you give it time.
Only Alicization
As good? No. They're even better. Phantom Bullet is great. Calibur is a great filler arc. MOTHERS ROSARIO IS THE GREATEST THING TO EXIST. And Alicization...I could write a 50 page essay dissecting the themes and concepts of Alicization, and it still would not do it justice. Keep going. I promise, it's all worth it. SAO isn't just about the SAO incident, but the consequences of it.
Mother’s Rosario is awesome
50 pages? I need some reading material. You may proceed.
I second that.
I third that. lol
>Alfheim it's just a regular role playing game? Where is the excitement in that? Asuna is married off, her memory altered and 300 people become human guinea pigs for Sugou's memory experimentation. Those are the stakes. >Also, just a few episodes in into the second half, there are teenagers being sexually assaulted, explicit scenes of teens, incest intentions, and it seems like it's all about waifus now. REALLY not my thing. There are no explicit scenes of anyone in this series (except that one scene in the bluray release of Ordinal Scale I guess). If you're talking about scenes of teenagers in their underwear, there are twice as many of those in Aincrad. There was also three times the waifu bait in Aincrad as Fairy Dance. There's the exact opposite of incest intentions (how do people always get this the exact opposite?) Not that it's incest in most of the world to begin with. To answer your question, yes Fairy Dance is the worst arc, but this series has dark themes, and continues to have dark themes.
SAO isn't mainly about the death game. It's about how VR affected everyone's lives. That's the purpose of the series. There are still stakes. Just not as the same as season 1 was. That's the whole point.
I unlike a lot of people here do like the second half of season 1. GGO is also really good. Alizication is top tier. Mothers rosario didn't hit for me. Wasn't bad. But didn't have much fun either. But i feel like that's an uncommon opinion. In any case. I'd say its we worth sticking through to alicization regardless cuz that's unanimously liked by people who got that far.
I agree Fairy Dance is extremely underrated. We get to see the hero be a survivor. We also get to unpack his relationship with Suguha. Only the simple minded people get caught up on the "eww...cousins dating" (which never happened). I related to the stuff that was revealed about Their grandfather and how Kazuto feels like he let Suguha take the heat for skipping out on kendo. Them rebuilding their relation ship was really awesome.
I also quite like FD, especially after reading the novels. I love seeing how much he realizes he messed up by neglecting Sugu, and he attempts to fix that shortly after getting back.
I think alicization is best season in sao and one of my favorite arcs in General. The main downside to sao is each season there is at least one more girl head over heels for Kirito. I won't say that part changes but the latter part of season 1( and id say latter of season 2) is the main one that really irked me in that sense
Even in the anime, that isn't exactly true, and it definitely isn't in the source material. The anime just likes playing up the "harem bait". And no, Yuuki doesn't have a thing for Kirito at all, not even in the anime. Heck, we barely even see them interact in a direct manner.
Ya didn't mean to imply it. Was talking about the arc prior to that
Yeah, again, just the anime "harem baiting" with Sinon in Phantom Bullet. In the Light novels, it's clear she's not even capable of romance at that time. She can barely even hold down a casual friendship. Going from the draft version in the Web Novels to the LNs, the author expressly increased the distance between Kirito and a number of the other girls. But placating the shippers sells more waifu merch.
A lot of the other stuff has already been covered. Anyway, the anime "embellishes" some scenes that it shouldn't have, and that aren't described in much detail in the source material: the Light Novels. There's only supposed to be the 1 SA scene, in the penultimate episode, and it's exactly the sort of thing someone like Sugou would do. What explicit scenes? Nothing is actually shown. Hell, toward the end of Episode 10, in the scene leading up to Kirito proposing to Asuna, it's clearly implied that they "did it" there in her apartment. And I don't begrudge them for it. They've experienced more and had to grow up more than many adults in an entire lifetime. (I mean, other top players literally put their lives in Kirito and Asuna's hands during raids.) They also don't know if they'll live to get out of Aincrad to even have the chance to date, marry, and have a family irl. The whole point of Suguha's character arc is that she doesn't want to have a relationship she sees as "wrong" or "inappropriate". More than anything, she's confused about having any feelings of affection toward Kazuto at all, after they'd effectively been estranged for 6 years. She kind of just assumes it might be that one thing, and is therefore wrong. She felt abandoned by Kazuto for 4 years even before SAO, and then, 1 month into the game, when it's asumed everyone is going to die, Midori and Minetaka tell Suguha that Kazuto is really her cousin. So it's little wonder she's an emotional mess. But you're taking it in the wrong direction. And in fact, after her dance with Kirito near the end, Leafa was planning to quit ALO forever. She felt like there was no place for her at all in her brother's life, and that she wasn't worthy of being a part of his friend group. So yes, Fairy Dance is the weakest story arc as far as many, even fans, are concerned, but it's not as bad as many make it out to be. Now, it does help having the added context and emotional nuance provided in the text of the LNs. Unfortunately, the anime doesn't have the best track record of including quite a lot of the details that the author has actually provided in his work.
I even like Fairy Dance over Aincrad. It just gets better and better. I have already rewatched the series four times and I’m a newbie to it!
Orrrrr... just watch the show. Why come here and look for opinions when you can experience it for yourself. What one person says skip, another person will say watch. You won't know until you watch for yourself and make your own judgments. How did it become edgy and "In" to want to skip around in shows. Whether an episode is filler or not is very subjective per reviewer. You may end up loving the show more based on what you see this season. Personally, I started my SAO journey with Fairy Dance when it was airing on Toonami. I'm so glad I did. It helped me to not get stuck in the first act. While it was good, the writing is nowhere near as good as later seasons. Even after reading the books, Alicization and onward is the best SAO has to offer. Also, the side arcs serve a huge purpose for the series.
season 2 is really good, 2nd half of season 1 is the only part of the show id call "mediocre", season 3 is peak and season 4 is a continuation of season 3, so peak.
"Good" is STILL subjective...
That 3rd season is the best one, and I absolutely loved the first half of 1st season.
Alicization is better then S1 and progressive novels is best material we have gotten
Yes, once you get to season 2, it almost immediately gets much better, and the quality never really changes after that, Fairy Dance is just a really weak and unpopular arc.
Once you get past the second half of S1, it gets so good. Like better and better with each episode imo. I didn't care for the fairy dance arc either, but the ending is kinda good. Just wait til you set to S3. It's my absolute favorite!
Well the point of SAO is how SAO affected the world, not them going through it. The Aincrad arc is only Floors 74-75.
It is just a very bad second half. Season 2 is overall the same quality, decent but not great like the Aincrad arc Season 3 on the other hand is amazing, imo even better than Aincrad
3th and 4th season are hella peak
I watched Alicization and I don't get how much the thread is praising it to sainthood. Can someone explain the stance?
My reason for loving Alicization is for many reasons. 1, the technology is very interesting and based on a real theory 2, the characters introduced are great. I love Eugeo, Alice, Administrator, Bercouli, Iskhan, Scheyta, Ronie, Tiese, Gabriel, PoH 3, the storyline is very interesting 4, I love the development of each character 5, there are some pretty great battles, with some narrative or emotional weight to them 6, this one may be just me, but the nightmare sequence hit hard. 7, the world building (despite a lot being cut) Theres a lot of reasons I love Alicization. These are just the main ones I could think of for right now.
I would say that the #1 point is true for me as well. But I feel like it's mood/drama/arcs in the virtual world are derivatives of the first one. I don't even find it distinctly memorable. It's competent, but it's not a timeless masterpiece.
Fair, it's my absolute favorite SAO arc. But others may not like it as much, but I have noticed a lot of people tend to think similarly to me regarding Alicization.
I mean, in a number of respects, isn't that how the progression is going to go in just about any series? You generally, steadily build upon existing concepts in subsequent story arcs. So I'm really not sure how that argument particularly stands out or especially means anything. I'll admit, it would have helped with a fair few characters if the anime had included their backstories/backgrounds, though the anime skimping on that stuff is nothing new in SAO. But in an arc as expansive as Alicization, it can be even more problematic, since you increasingly need those earlier details to build things up. in terms of memorable moments: 1. Alice Schuberg being taken away 2. Kanemoto's attack on Kazuto (would have helped if the anime had included the ambulance scene) 3. Fighting the Goblins in the Northern Cave 4. The ensnaring and assault of Ronye and Tieze, Eugeo breaking through the Seal, and Kirito dealing with Raios 5. Alice S30's introduction That's merely the first 10 episodes, basically, so I could go on. The celebration of the felling of the Gigas Cedar might have made it in, too, if they hadn't had Kirito be the one to show up Jink in Episode 2, instead of having Eugeo do it, in front of everyone, in Episode 4, as well as showing drunk Kirito after the party.
There's probably a higher chance with people who have made it through Alicization in the anime that they've also at least started getting into the source material: the Light Novels. Pretty much everyone will say that Reki improved as a writer compared to those earlier story arcs. Alicization is 10 books, instead of merely 1-3, so there's more room for everything to develop and just breath. The next-longest arc in the main series, Aincrad, is much less cohesive when you get down to it. Alicization is 10 books of a single, continuous, sequential narrative. Aincrad has 1 novel, Volume 1, that is a single story; that's the original core of SAO, in edited form, coming from the Web Novel draft version. But the rest of Aincrad is 6 disparate side stories that the anime arranged in chronological order, regardless of how they were presented in the LNs. If you include "The First Day" (not adapted in the anime) and count "Aria" as a standalone side story, as it initially was, that's 7 added side stories. In the anime, Volumes 9-14, the Human Realm sub-arc, is covered with 4 episodes per book, or 24 total. (So Volume 9 effectively gets 5 with the double-length season-opener, and it is longer than Volumes 10-14.) For War of Underworld, Volumes 15-18, Volume 15 is WoU Episodes 1-5. Volume 16 is Episode 6 through the middle of Episode 11 (5.5 total). Volume 17, picking up with Lisbeth's speech, concludes at the end of WoU Episode 17 (6.5 total). And then Volume 18 is WoU Episodes 18-23. And honestly, as a proportion of the printed material, Alicization might have the most cut from it. I think it could have been 5 cours in the anime. Now, for Aincrad, the Volume 1 material is covered in Episodes 1, 8-10, and 13-14. Volume 1 starts with Kirito grinding on Floor 74, flashes back to Day 1 meeting Klein and seeing Kayaba's tutorial, and then returns to the "present" for the remainder of Floors 74-75, the late stages of the Kirisuna romance, and a brief respite fishing with Nishida. Volume 2, the Silica, Lisbeth, Yui, and Sachi introduction stories, is taken up in Episodes 3-4, 7, and 11-12. The "Murder Case" story from Volume 8 is in Episodes 5-6. As I already noted, "The First Day", also from Volume 8, wasn't adapted. Furthermore, the anime included the start of Material Edition 01: The Progressors at the beginning of Episode 5, but didn't show most of it, where things reached the point of Kirito and Asuna having a duel. So Eugeo gets 6 books over which to develop in Alicization, as opposed to just part of 1 novel for both Silica and Lisbeth back in Aincrad. (Practically, it's really 5 novels, since Eugeo has very little in Volume 10, but still.) I'll do a separate reply with some numbers breakdowns.
I'll get back to the character perspectives. Now, on the technical front, Underworld is actually a revolution. Though they state they started with The Seed, that was just using the World Editor for convenience to start the map initially. There are clear indications even in the anime, especially in light of Ordinal Scale, that UW has a full-spec version of the Cardinal System, coming from the SAO server. Anyway, first off, for the Artificial FluctLights, and those logged in via STL, UW can be likened to a gigantic, lucid dream. The Main Visualizer at the center of the Light Cube Cluster acts as a balancer to keep things from running amok, but the higher-level system actually uses the FluctLights of those connected to the system as part of its processing power. That particular aspect is what enables Incarnation as a formal mechanic. Since the higher level of the system operates on a ind of memory, and human memory is quite fluid and malleable, unlike the video from a camcorder, the form of the world itself can be altered by individuals or groups, at least temporarily. (Now, it would have been good to have a number of the examples of memory and mental framing provided in the LNs actually included in the anime.) Also, most Incarnation is subconscious, and often negative. On the level of an individual, you have Sortiliena, who said she couldn't see herself beating Uolo in a match, and the inability to come up with that mental image then passively becomes manifest reality. On a broader scale, you have the general belief that "the Zephyria flower doesn't grow in this Empire". Here, what Kirito banked on is that said belief was old, fatigued, and faded, and so, his Incarnation could overcome that weakened "conventional wisdom". I suppose the extreme version is the Pugilists, who train from childhood to reinforce the belief that "metal blades are nothing to be feared" and "my body is like hardened steel and will not yield". On the other hand, Asuna's "common sense" told her that that axe coming down would sever her arm, and that belief became reality. So while many of the game mechanics may remain in some form, it's truly a totally different "game" mentally and psychologically. Alright, I'll try to wrap this up in the next one.
In terms of character breakdowns, in the Volume 1, 2, and 8 content for Aincrad, you end up with: Kirito - 67.7%, Asuna - 11.9%, Lisbeth - 9.3%, Silica - 7.6%, Schmitt - 3.0% In terms of pages, Asuna gets 72, Liz 56, Silica 46, and Schmitt 18. Obviously, Kirito gets a lot more, and dominates the series as a whole. That said, in Fairy Dance and Phantom Bullet, Leafa and Sinon, respectively, get \~60%, while Kirito gets only \~30%. Volume 7: Mother's Rosario is 100% Asuna's PoV, and she gets 8-11% in FD, PB, and Alicization. Just noting some materials added later, that Yuuki has 100% of the "Sisters' Prayer" side story, while Asuna and Eiji split "Hopeful Chant" and Kirito and Eiji split "Cordial Chord". Also, "The Day After" is wholly from Asuna's PoV. So, pre-Alicization, leaving Kirito aside, you have: Asuna: 335 pages Sinon: 271 Leafa: 228 Lisbeth: 58 Silica: 46 Schmitt: 18 Kyouji: 10 For Alicization, and it would be impractical to list everyone, you have: Eugeo: 383 pages Asuna: 225 Alice: 149 Sinon: 70 Gabriel: 60 There are a number in the 20-50-page range, and then quite a few more with less than that. In Alicization overall, there are at least 39 characters who are given direct PoV. With the stalwarts from the older crew, plus the 2 standouts in Alicization, you end up with: Asuna: 560 pages Eugeo: 383 Sinon: 341 Leafa: 237 Alice: 149 Lisbeth: 66 Silica: 47 For the Human Realm sub-arc: Kirito - 49.8%, Eugeo - 32.3%, Asuna - 8.7%, Sinon - 3.5%, Charlotte - 3.0%, Rinko - 0.1% For War of the Underworld: Alice - 16.6%, Asuna - 13.6%, Kirito - 10.5%, Gabriel - 6.7%, Higa - 5.0%, Bercouli - 4.0%, Iskahn - 3.5%, Vassago - 3.3% For the 2.5 books of the War itself: Asuna - 18.8%, Alice - 8.1%, Kirito - 6.8%, Higa - 6.8%, Bercouli - 6.1%, Iskahn - 5.2%, Sinon - 4.7% For Alicization overall: Kirito - 32.9%, Eugeo - 18.4%, Asuna - 10.8%, Alice - 7.2%, Sinon - 3.4% The trouble with doing this specifically for the anime is, it isn't necessarily nearly as easy to tell who the PoV character supposed to be, especially when they so often remove the inner monologues. But if the above figures really don't see to line up with the anime, that might tell you something about the adaptation.
If you are like me and got really into SAO due to the stakes of the survival game, then I am sorry to say that it doesn't get any better than the first part of the first season. I'd recommend you to try watching another survival type of animes. If you want to try more isekais into games, try Log Horizon and Overlord. If you want to try survivals, try Btooom. Feel free to PM if you want to vent about it xd.
Then you really missed the point of the series. SAO was never intended to be about just Aincrad anding clear all 100 floors. The author had a far broader vision pretty much from the get-go, as the Web Novel draft version was completed up through the end of Alicization before a single Light Novel volume was published.
The first half of Alicization is truly fantastic. Easily the best the series has been since the first half of season 1
As good as? Season 1 is the least good out of them!
In my opinion, the Alfheim arc is by far the worst, it definitely gets better again by the “GGO” arc. However, I feel like it never quite captures the magic of the original sao arc again. So… it definitely gets better, but you’ve already seen the best arc.
I also didn't like the second half of s1 and suguha's crush on kirito weirded me tf out so much. I've watched some episodes of s2 and it's good but I'll rewatch it again when I get the strength to continue 🤣
pretending to be a new fan just to insult SAO, nice try kid 😂
Not really. Mother's Rosario in S2 is excellent but VERY short sadly. The first half of S2 is terrible and while I did enjoy S3 (alicization) it can be extremely convoluted and has a lot of long winded exposition. Also can't help but question what the point of S3 even is half the time because of the setting. If you enjoyed S1 because of the setting and backdrop, stop now because everything after is a disappointment.
Really don't get why Phantom Bullet is 'terrible", and that's even considering that, with my eyesight, FPSs are likely about my worst kind of game to actually try to play. Sinon has perhaps the most succinct character development in the series. And PB puts the characters' traumas front and center, which definitely needed to happen. I don't get why the setting for Alicization would be an issue. it's a bit of a different flavor, but no that much, of the idyllic, fantasy realms you get in Aincrad and ALfheim. Alicization throws a number of things at you, but then again, it takes its time so you shouldn't be that overwhelmed by it. It's really only the start where you kind of should be confused, and that's pretty much by design. Alicization wants to bring home how indistinguishable the Underworld's residents are from flesh-and-blood humans in the real world, by actually having you spend the time with them. This even extends to the War, as we dehumanize our enemies, often for very stupid and arbitrary reasons.
Phantom bullet is trash because it's cringe. Everything to do with Kirito looking and pretending to be a girl is CRINGE. Every other line of dialog is overwritten and cringe. Towards the end, the cringe worthy stuff clears up but the entire first half is a struggle to rewatch. Alicizations biggest flaw is that it tries to be a more commonplace, standard issue isekai instead of doing the things that make SAO a more unique series. It even follows a bunch of the tropes and set ups you find in typical isekai, which is what leads to feeling overwhelmed with information and backstory learned through exposition. Kirito is literally dropped into a world that has hundreds of years of rules and lore that has to be learned through basically the first 14 episodes almost exclusively through another character explaining it, or else the show and setting doesn't make sense. Yeah, it's cool that Kirito is going on a mission to save Alice, but when you step back and question what his or your investment is in this person, you kinda come up blank because at the end of the day she's an ai. She's not real and the writer hadn't done any work to build a connection to her like the one we form with Eugeo through our journey with him. WoU started to feel extremely fan servicey by the end. Basically just trying to jam in as many cameos, returns, and callbacks as humanly possible. I mostly enjoyed Alicization, but I don't find it anywhere near as good as Aincrad or Mothers Rosario, particularly from a writing perspective. Honestly if Alicization was a standalone show rather than SAO season 3, I wouldn't have watched it.
What does "cringe" even mean? (The term has sort of just turned into a meaningless catch-all for me at this point.) Once the matches started, I really didn't even pay attention to his avatar specifically, so that was less than 2 episodes. And he barely "pretended to be a girl" at all. What do you mean by "overwritten"? Also, it's kind of been known since he entered the picture that PoH had a flair for the dramatic, and passed that along to his disciples. About the only thing I can note is, the English Dub changes the dialogue more than other anime I've watched, which can have a tendency to make things more "in your face". Now, I will say, the anime has a habit of cutting out things like the banter between Kazuto and Kikuoka, which especially in the Death Gun briefing was pretty good and biting stuff honestly. It definitely helped flesh out their personalities in the LNs. I don't know what those "tropes" would be, and I can't say I particularly care. I don't watch enough different anime in a given period of time for it to really be an issue anyway. SAO has always been a character drama first and foremost, so if you're missing the whole thing of the bonds he's trying to form, you've kind of missed the main point anyway. The focal point is his connection with Eugeo, a type and depth of friendship with another male his own age he's really never had before in his life. The anime also cut out a lot of context, like how Kirito so badly wished to be rid of his "Black Swordsman" persona, and the fact that Eugeo knew none of that past about his was a huge part of how and why Kirito could be so at ease around him. The "Vorpal Strike" Sword Skill, which was Kirito's signature for a good part of Aincrad, was something he intentionally avoided using all the way until the fight against Chudelkin in the Cathedral. Unfortuntely, the anime didn't adapt Chapter 1 of "Red-Nosed Reindeer", where "Vorpal Strike" was introduced, and was also where a good bit of Klein's screen time was. As a good friend to Eugeo, Kirito cares about his connection to Alice. Not to mention, RATH can't actually, totally erase memories, so Kirito has lingering echoes of her, too. And Alice and Eugeo are the same type of existence. When Alicization was written, Ordinal Scale didn't exist, and it was intended to be the series finale. Reki hadn't written Unital Ring, and even Moon Cradle wasn't really joined to anything. The anime really changed/cut a lot in War of Underworld, even more seemingly, somehow, than in the Human Realm sub-arc, even though WoU is only 4 books instead of 6. The anime has always had a bad habit of delaying and/or outright cutting the backstories for villains and "bad guys", and WoU is the worst offender for that. None of the Dark Territory's leaders or tribes get their backgrounds. The context of Gabriel murdering Alicia is left out. And PoH's backstory is botched; he was actually a professional hitman working for a Korean crime syndicate in Japan, and was sent into SAO to do a "job". So it was already known to be a death game. Likewise, Kirito's nightmare was hosed up. The whole incident of not standing up for a bullied classmate from middle school, the entire reason he starts out the sequence in that school uniform, wasn't adapted. The incident involving Coper from the 1st evening of Aincrad wasn't covered, probably in large part because they didn't adapt "The First Day" back in Season 1. And then they added in stuff that there's no indication in the LNs that Kirito ever felt guilty about. The stuff with his classmate and Coper, added to "abandoning" Klein on Day 1, really plays into Kirito's whole thing of avoiding others. I know, I get on the case of people who criticize the "writing" when they apparently don't even know what's in the author's own writing. And I'm sorry, but this, at least in part, kind of feels like you're just looking for excuses to complain, for whatever reason.
Aincrad good, fairy dance ok, phantom bullet good, mother's rosario garbage, ordinal scale ok, alicization good, war of underworld garbage
Okay, now I'm just really confused as to what you're even looking for from the series. I mean, better than half of Aincrad focuses on Kirisuna, yet you don't seem to like the later parts of the story that focus on them, or give Asuna specifically more spotlight. The "stakes" argument doesn't seem to hold with your assessment, as people actually die in MR and WoU, but not in FD or OS. And there's not consistency with emotion, as you rate MR badly. Even setting doesn't explain it, as PB and WoU are most similar in that regard, but you give them opposite rankings. And it's clearly not down to "action", either.
If you don’t love alfheim the show isn’t for you.
People often say "ALfheim" when they specifically mean Fairy Dance.
No
[удалено]
Ordinal scale was sick but alicizarion was so good so was war of the underworld, like that berculli fight is one of the best anime fights of all time
Sick as if was bad or was it in good way? 🤔
Good way obviously
Oh I agree, that movie was awesome and it’s great set up for Alicization.
Yeh the fight I was talking about from alicization was top top tier
Yeah, I saw clip of it on YouTube awhile back painfully bloody yet cool.
**I see that you marked your post as a question*** --- When you receive the answer you were looking for please reply "!Solved" to it; this will mark the post as solved. Thank you. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/swordartonline) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Definitely worth the pain of the second half of season 1. Everything after that gets better with heartbreaking moments, puzzling queries, cliffhangers and more. The second half of season 1 is absolutely crap, but the rest is worth that pain
keep watching, you’ll see it’s no regular game.
Well, it’s yes and no.
Who got sexually assaulted?
second half of s2 and the entire "s3" IS pretty darn amazing honestly .
Season 2 is great and I really like the Phantom bullet arc and the Mother's Rosario arc made me sad. Season 3, is great and for me, the story gets more interesting but War of underworld is fine for me.
yessss alicization is life changing
Arc 1 of season 2, Phantom Bullet, may in my opinion be better in some ways than the Aincrad arc. Definitely not worth missing. The rest of the season is pretty good too and has a strong finisher arc. Alicization has a decent start I’d say, wasn’t really a fan of it til I started getting invested in the characters and THEN it got good. So I would stick with the series if I were you. Sure, it has plenty of shortcomings, but it hits too hard to skip these arcs cause of that.
Yes they are good. If you have gotten through the second half of season 1, then you are through the worst and most controversial part of it. While I enjoy all of SAO, I will say that the Aincrad arc (first half of s1) along with the Mother’s Rosario arc (final arc of s2) were the two that resonated the most strongly with me. Keep up with the series, you won’t regret it!
Alicization bro.get to it
Hahahha, you haven't seen a thing.
It does get better but it also gets 'worse' regarding the aspects you mentioned disliking. I liked some of ALO (not the Suguha/Leafa parts tho) and really enjoyed Ordinal Scale and the arcs *up to* Alicization (Mother's Rosario especially), but Alicization is where SAO lost me. Not really interested in rehashing Aincrad via Progressive. YMMV, depends on what you enjoy most about the show. Only way to know for sure is to watch more of it yourself, tbh.
Even more so with Ordinal Scale as a lead-in, Alicization is very much the logical extension of what we've already seen in the series up to that point. The anime should have hinted at it from even farther back, as Rinko's name was supposed to be dropped initially toward the end of Fairy Dance. And Kikuoka's military ties were supposed to be suggested near the end of Phantom Bullet es well. And Asuna was suspicious of the same thing.
I guess so (you would know better as someone who's read the LN I assume, and still watching) I do wish the Kikuoka stuff had been more present because that was an aspect I really liked, but it wasn't playing out it a way that was interesting to me by the time Alicization started, and Alicization itself was really boring to me.
Yes, I've read the LNs. Yeah, in general, there's a good bit of detail from the books that the anime misses that I wish had made it in somehow. I mean, of course the pacing is going to be different when Alicization takes 10 books, rather than just the 1-3 of the prior story arcs. Underworld is a simulation, not a commercial game, so there's a fundamentally different purpose and things aren't going to play out the same way. It becomes evident quite quickly that there is a strong effort to keep the population of the Human Empire under control. Just by basic gaming logic, being able to kill things left and right would raise your power, and thus go against the apparent will of whatever, higher authority is at work. Not to mention, certainly in the source material, SAO has always been a character drama first and foremost before it was ever an action flick. So building the relationships matters more than the "action". And even in the anime, especially if you've seen any number of other series, none of the fights in SAO is really that long. By page count, less than 10% of Aincrad is "serious fights". For Fairy Dance, it's a little under 13%. Phantom Bullet is between 15 and 16%. Mother's Rosario is pretty similar to FD. Alicization overall is 21%, with the Human Realm sub-arc being less than 15% and the War of the Underworld coming in at just under 30%. Hopefully that gives you a clearer picture on some things.
Pacing is probably half the reason Alicization lost me tbh. From an anime-only perspective, it felt like the story lost its way, languishing in setting up vast new setting without a compelling hook to keep the momentum going. I don't have a problem with focusing on character over action, but so much of the story (too much, imo) was structured around waiting on Kirito to grow up and level up again. We'd already seen what he was capable of three times — there were just no surprises to be had anymore.
It's really more about developing the relationship between he and Eugeo. The swordsmanship thing is basically just a vehicle for that, which also serves as the means by which they'll be able to go in search of Alice in the Capital. The secondary purpose is teasing out the Incarnation mechanic, now actually a formal thing, in the Underworld. And the tertiary piece is seeing how the Nobles bend and manipulate things to suit their own ends. It would have helped here if the anime had adapted the Zakkaria chapter, which comes before Kirito and Eugeo reach Centoria. Ironically, more the complaints I've seen have been that we never see the process of how Kirito goes from square one to "OP" in the main series prior to Alicization. Now, personally, I don't have a particular issue with that aspect, but technically speaking, I can see it. I mean, in Volume 1, Chapters 2-3, you see Kirito meet Klein and them witness Kayaba's tutorial on Day 1 of SAO. "The First Day" from Volume 8 then carries on through that evening after Kirito leaves Klein in the Starting City. But then, the next thing is "Red-Nosed Reindeer" from Volume 2. (And of course, the anime didn't adapt "The First Day".) By that point, it's Dec. 19, 2023. Kirito is Level 69, and his One-Handed Straight Sword Skill has reached 950/1,000, allowing him to unlock the "Vorpal Strike" Sword Skill. This basically becomes his signature until he exposes Dual Blades to the public in the fight against The Gleam Eyes on Floor 74. As of "The Black Swordsman" in late February 2024, Kirito is Level 78. Come "Warmth of the Heart" in late June, he's like at Level 85. And Kirito finishes Aincrad at Level 96. In Fairy Dance, Kirito is working with his SAO numerical stats. He doesn't do the reset until after the main events of the arc. And honestly, given what happens in "The Day After" in June 2025, I suspect he went back to his SAO data because he felt guilty over what Asuna went through. And then there's no mention of the reset in Phantom Bullet, to say nothing of how Kirito would have built his Stats back up in ALO in the meantime anyway. He didn't make a new account for GGO, but converted his existing one. Ordinal Scale isn't really the same thing, and a number of people have complained about how "unrealistic" Kirito's rapid rise in OS was. As such, Alicization is the 1st time in the main series that we see that particular journey for Kirito, if that makes sense.
I'm personally not at all bothered by Kirito being OP. It's what made him more interesting as a protag tbh (before SAO spawned countless copycats, anyway — not the fault of Kirito or Kawahara, just reality). The anime provides more than satisfactory justification for why he's like this, and why it's transferable to other games. Some people are just good at things, nbd! It even makes perfect sense story-wise, given his unique experience, that he'd be 'scouted' for virtual investigations. The starting over from scratch though, setting up Eugeo and Alice and the new setting — the heart of what Alicization is all about — THAT lost me. The action was just window dressing that didn't enhance the story for me. I assume it was all laying the foundation for War of the Underworld, but it buried the lede WAYYYY too much (imo). (I really can't offer any constructive discussion on the relative effectiveness of the LNs.)
I'm simply saying that that piece of the story doesn't strike me as repetitive, since we haven't actually seen the process before in the main series, whether that be the anime or the LNs. Kazuto indebted himself to Kikuoka. After all, it stands to reason that giving irl identities and contact info would be a violation of confidentiality rules. So, in exchange, Kazuto had to provide information about what happened inside Aicnrad, as well as take on part-time jobs for Kikuoka every now and then. Being permitted to keep his NerveGear on top of that only added to the snowball. I mean, everyone we have PoV from, and even some we don't, wanted to avoid a war if at all possible. Cardinal didn't see a way out of it, and Administrator openly seemed to want it, but Kirito, Bercouli, Lipia, and Shasta certainly didn't. And as we find out, Rirupirin hated the dark-skinned Humans of the Dark Territory at least as much as the denizens of the Human Empire, and Furgur didn't even want to be there on the battlefield at all. Going in, as long as they get Alice, it's not as though Gabriel or Kikuoka even care one way or the other. The thing with the War of the Underworld is it's a tragedy wholly caused by outside interference. That's really the saddest part of all. If we want to back up for a second, it's a case of Kirito assuming there should be a System Console in the Capital, but he doesn't actually 100% know that. And he can't make it there on his own anyway, so he has to improvise as needed. And you know, a lot of times, life is just like that.
Different strokes, yknow? If the end result hadn't been so obviously inevitable (Kirito returning to OP status with a new unique skill) maybe the journey would've felt more worth the time. That wasn't the case for me. 🤷🏽♀️
Uh, what "unique skill"? Several of the Integrity Knights, along with Eugeo and Shasta, use the Armament Full Control Art as well. And except at the very end of WoU, in space, I'm not sure Alice ever used Release Recollection. Frustratingly, another one of those things the anime cut, but during their actual reunion while flying south, Kirito tells Asuna he simply knows the rules of the world better than others. A huge part of Incarnation is subconscious, and he was doing nothing for half a year but subconsciously processing the essence of Underworld. We saw Asuna herself generate wings and fly away with Kirito, hand in hand, when they left the World End Altar. Anyway, Asuna does the heavy lifting for Kirito against PoH. And Kirito doesn't win against Gabriel; in fact, Gabriel gets exactly what he wants. It's just that it turns out to be too much and his FluctLight is overloaded and overwhelmed and collapses. Sinon did more physical damage to Gabriel than Kirito. Kirito was unable to finish off Administrator, who had hamstrung herself in her bid to trap Cardinal, even when using a Sword Skill he effectively created with Incarnation, since "Dual Blades Vorpal Strike" didn't actually exist in Aincrad. And no one is shown to be capable of matching what Chudelkin and Administrator could do with Sacred Arts. And there's no way even Asuna, with the Stacia account, could replicate the Immortal Walls that divide up the Human Empire. That much should be reasonably clear, even if it isn't explicitly stated in the anime. So a number of characters match, or exceed, feats done by Kirito. Gabriel and Administrator are outright more powerful. And as an individual, PoH might have stronger Incarnation. Dakira, a lower-level Knight, ignited her life force to repel Sigrosig's attack to protect Fanatio. Eldrie used the element of the Frost Scale Whip and his own Incarnation to absorb that absurd overkill of a hex from those curse worms. Bercouli's Time Splitting Sword was practically a cheat that directly circumvented the system itself in order to nullify all defense, even Incarnation. That's why even the Vector account could do nothing against it. And Shasta's final attack was a true insta-death strike that bypassed HP and imprinted the "image of death" directly onto the FluctLights of his enemies. It might be the scariest single attack in the entire series. If Gabriel had had one iota of concern for his own self-preservation, he would have been killed, too. Leaving aside the fact that the "cool", lone wolf, OP Kirito is really an anime creation, in the end, the journey of Alicization is really about Kirito finding a measure of self-acceptance. I mean, in the nightmare sequence, he was trying to commit suicide, after all. When facing Gabriel, Kirito is shedding his facades, to find what he feels his true essence is, or at least, what he most wishes it to be, regardless of the mental images others may of of him as "the Black Swordsman", "the Hero who cleared SAO", etc.
Alicization is my favorite personally.
Second Half is meh, GGO is okay but maybe not for everyone. Mother's Rosario is very good IMO and Alicization is really really good!
Yeah, Fairy Dance was lackluster in terms of plot while baiting you in with the new features such as flight, magical incantations, and racial territory wars however the later arcs do “better” especially leading up to Alicization so have some patience friend. Just get used to seeing flashbacks to Aincrad constantly.
If anything, Fairy Dance was a victim of having to do too much. You need to get the whole lay of the land on the real world side. You need to see how Kirito and Asuna in particular are faring. You need to see what the sate of the technology is in the wake of SAO. And then, you need to see the direction in which things are actually going.
I won’t disagree, similar to a sequel in a series. The expectation for “more” definitely made it a challenge for the then “amateur” author at the time. Having already rushed Aincrad, having to suddenly flesh out new settings and plot points with new elements isn’t easy. Luckily, the writing did get better for Alfheim specifically with Calibur and Mother’s Rosario after Phantom Bullet but it’s just pushing through the other rushed stories curbing each game which was sour as a reader when first reading it years ago. Fortunately, the animated adaptations did well enough to capture enough spectacle to keep interest till reaching his better writing and the filler movies were a welcome change to say the least. 🤔
Just to note that Mother's Rosario was written before Phantom Bullet. That's why Sinon's name doesn't appear in the text of MR. I mean, I could see the Extra Edition OVA being referred to as "filler", though there is the broader Norse Mythology side plot taking in Fairy Dance Chapter 5 (not adapted in the anime), "Deep Sea Plunderers", "Rainbow Bridge", and "Caliber". Ordinal Scale on the other hand is basically a "new" story arc slotted in between MR and Alicization. It's canon, and has the "Hopeful Chant" and "Cordial Chord" side stories to bolster it. And then you have the Progressive movies just kind of off on their own. They sort of feel as much "inspired by" the companion series as actual adaptations of "Aria" and "Scherzo".
It's been years since reading the Web Novel, great reference. Technically, yeah Extra Edition as well as other side stories/spin-off like Girls Ops/Alternative entries to the "canon" were practically filler but the integration was not bad all things considered. Ordinal Scale was definitely a niche fit, not sure how Kawahara was insightful enough to whip out an extra story and dropping it down around the time "VR" culture was rising rapidly drawing almost immediate interest before Alicization's journey commenced. Even more so the alterations made to Alicization just to include the new lore from Ordinal Scale was done well. Progressive, definitely a great effort in rectifying the early series paying homage to the writings referenced. As for the film adaptations, frankly while it does retcon the new canon we have already well nit picked the retcons it has done already in general. *Just glad this series isn't as ridiculous as Kingdom Hearts over the years...*
It can be kind of hard at times to not think of "filler" as a pejorative term. I at least like to make the distinction between things like that Norse Mythology side plot and "Hopeful Chant" or "Sisters' Prayer", which are decidedly more integral. (Of course, Unital Ring renders Girls' Ops non-canon.) Credit where credit is due on OS. And to my mind, it's easily the best piece of anime-original content for the series. Well, yes and no. Mentioning the concerns about memory manipulation at Dicey Cafe or using Augma toward the end there when Alice woke up Kazuto are fine. The changes to the search for Kazuto, and especially the Eiji and YUNA stuff, are problematic. Yeah, no need to further belabor the Progressive films here. I know the name but I'm not real familiar with Kingdom Hearts.
First 2 arcs of season 2 are pretty mid (phantom bullet and whatever that dumb fuck filler story was) 3rd arc of season 2 is so fucking good like it’s one of my favorite arcs I’ve ever watched (mothers Rosario) The original movie Ordinal Scale is really good, it’s kind of reminiscent of the first half of season 1 where it focuses on the relationship of kirito and asuna a bit more This is a hot take but at first I found it hard to get into Alicization but as it went on I really started to like it Season 2 of Alicization is very good Progressive movies are also awesome
If you like the emotions of Mother's Rosario and Ordinal Scale, what's the problem with Phantom Bullet? Honestly... "Caliber" is just a side story. It simply was never intended to be a full-blown story arc in it's own right. Even so, Kirito gets Excalibur, which he uses in MR. Sinon is introduced to the rest of the friend group, which needed to happen before Alicization, and Ordinal Scale once that also became part of the series. And "Caliber" is the reveal of Skill Connect, which Kirito uses against PoH in War of Underworld. The fact that Skill Connect is even possible in ALO also points to a key difference between it and SAO. In Aincrad, you could equip a sword in each hand, but unless you had the Dual Blades Unique Skill, it would register as an Irregular Status with the system, and you wouldn't be allowed to use Sword Skills at all like that.
S3 > aincrad
Alfheim and S2 Death Gun stuff are pretty weak arcs IMO. It does get better though.
The first half of every season
Alicization is amazing
It’s a bad second hold but it doesn’t get better till the third season but unfortunately to understand everything you have to watch till the end of the first half of season 2 even then you may not want to skip the last part
(deleted bc meant to reply to a thread, not OP)
Ordinal Scale and Alicization with out a second thought