SuSunlitSonata
September 19, 2020
Not Recommended
(Note: This review covers both seasons of SAO War of Underworld, and also contains spoilers for Samurai Jack Season 5) The end of the nine volume “epic” Alicization, the end of SAO’s original web novel, and the last of the cringe phase origin. While SAO rants have been done to death on the problematic issues, including from me, I want to structure this review in a slightly different way. War of the Underworld positions itself as the end all be all of everything the series has culminated towards for nearly a decade, and it has the presentation to potentially make it an impressive achievement, but notwithout bizarrely problematic writing being a near constant, even by SAO standards. It has its moments, but it still has enthusiastic high schooler writing, equivalent to a runner having more than enough energy and support to run a full marathon, but choosing to bump into every person, car, sign and small animal on their way to the finish line.
With that in mind I want to qualitatively explain how the show’s faults affect its story from three perspectives: the heroes, the villains, and the presentation.
The Heroes
If there’s one thing I can give War of the Underworld credit for, it’s that on principle, the cast on the hero side is the largest it’s ever been in the series, and they were even willing to kill off several characters for dramatic stakes. This works well for the named characters.
The War of Underworld seasons consist of large-scale battles between the heroes and villains for virtual dominance. Nearly every character in the series is brought back for what feels like one last hurrah, in an almost Endgame-esque fashion. So, if there’s any alive character a fan may have liked from an earlier season, they’ll get to see them battle for a bit in this season, which is a nice, if basic way to pay off fans’ investment in the series. In particular, Klein has some small, but nonetheless genuine heartwarming moments. A brief almost self-contained story is one of the season’s highlights, mostly contained in the episode Sword and Fist. This story features Sheyta, a character taught to believe her power was a hindrance to ever form meaningful bonds, and her relationship with a more hotheaded, laid-back character on the other side of the war with the opposite personality. It’s nothing exceptional by the standards of most anime, but for being in an SAO story, it’s surprisingly alright and has some nice animation to back it up.
On the downside, the show really wants to cultivate emotion with all of these characters, and many of these moments wind up ringing hollow because of their lack of focus. This isn’t to say they all suck. Asuna finally seeing Kirito again within the system is gratifyingly heartfelt, and any sacrifices on the hero side actually feel well-earned and theoretically interesting ways to have Alice grow as a person. Bercouli in particular has a surprisingly good arc of protecting Alice to the very end. His fight against the main villain’s first form is gorgeously animated, scored and resolved in a way only he was capable of doing. These moments in Episode 2 provide a genuine standout in for cast. But unfortunately, the rest of the series mostly flubs its emotional payoffs.
For instance, at one point when defending her leader from an attack, one of Fanatio’s guards faces a brutal attack head on as their body gets torn to bloody pieces, and the audience is asked to care when they die from it. The previous season had the perfect opportunity to show Fanatio’s rapport with her guards during her introduction, but that was deemed unimportant in favor of needless exposition. It wastes half an episode trying to invest us in Renly, an Integrity Knight whom we only just know knew existed, and to be entirely irrelevant past this brief episode. The show tries to get weirdly sentimental about Alice killing random mooks with a spirit bomb, insisting they all have souls and that killing them is losing life, but with how little agency most of them have, it doesn’t land at all.
The most desperate plea of emotional hollowness comes in Episode 11 of the first season. The speech is well-acted by Takagaki Ayahi and Sarah Williams, scored and animated, but what’s actually being said feels like hogwash. The writing in that scene is so sloppy and full of exposition that's only now relevant. What? You mean it WASN’T mentioned, let alone shown, how the school for SAO survivors was treating them poorly prior to Lisbeth mentioning it like it was always a thing? Who knew? God forbid we create an actual reason for all these background characters to care about throwing their Avatars away for a conflict that they have nothing to gain from.
And then there’s Kirito.........
Because of the events of last season, he’s spent most of this season wheelchaired around in a vegetive coma state. How exactly is Kirito in a double coma? Barely explained. But his state leads to a lot of very eyebrow-raising moments, like having entire scenes where characters do nothing but praise him, rolling him onto the battlefield where he could potentially be in danger or having a.............................................slumber party where four female characters all sleep together in a tent around his barely functioning body. Characters like Sinon and Leafa don’t even see him this season, but that doesn’t mean they won’t shut up about him or randomly inherit his clutch survival tools. Leafa in particular gets it incredibly tastelessly, constantly calling Kirito big brother over and over again (despite her initial arc being to shine on her own and get over her feelings for him) and doing nothing for the plot besides being killing a villain who had every reason to die earlier. But that’s not before Leafa gets raped by said villain in a scene shot like tentacle hentai for tasteless shock value! Because Kawahara just had put that in somehow and then it had to be animated with such gratuity.
Near the end of the story, this is an actual dialogue.
Lisbeth: I love Kirito, after all!
Silica: So do I!
SAO’s harem antics and wish fulfillment have been inherent to the series, but they’ve never dropped all pretenses to this degree before in something that was actively trying to be grandiose and gory.
In previous arcs, Kirito had moments where he does stuff through ridiculous means because main character, but there’s enough driving motivation and the occasional arc, like his character arc in the first season of learning to be accepting to others, which was an idea, or the brief intentions to draw on his PTSD in Phantom Bullet. However, in this arc specifically, nothing progresses because Kirito isn’t active. Sure, characters appear and disappear, form armies in different places, or gain new forms, but the plot is still at a stalemate for 15+ episodes. And since everyone, even the Integrity Knights, talk about the off chance of Kirito coming into the fray to be all awesome, the self-importance is inflated to the nth degree, because it's all about Kirito's return. When elements start to move, it’s because they want Kirito back. War of the Underworld actively made him the black hole that sucks all the important stuff into and leaves little left for anyone. I mentioned earlier how Bercouli got a decent arc, but even then, his development is sidelined by events like the aforementioned slumber party, or Vassago trying to tip Kirito into waking up because he’s “the only one who can defeat him” and all that.
The predictable result is that by the end, Kirito is going to godmode back to life and defeat Gabriel Miller, the main arc villain. This, by itself, is not bad, but the show majorly missed out on an opportunity to make this feel earned by exploring Kirito’s doubts, mentally. Samurai Jack Season 5 for instance, I think did this really well. We actually get to see Jack’s shattered, worry-worn state in action, while we also are shown in his mind, a twisted version of his previous self tormenting him, until Jack eventually overcame his past character (with the help of Ashi) to become the character fans knew and loved from the original four seasons, complete with his original sword. This occurs over multiple episodes and it felt like a genuine triumph.
With Kirito, it takes 17 episodes into the arc to finally see his thoughts, and less than half of one to resolve them.
As cliche as it would’ve been, imagine visages of Sachi, Asuna and Eugeo mocking him for his perpetual inability to protect those surrounding him from dying, and his propensity for constantly throwing himself into danger again and again with every new arc. Like he has this need to be some sort of paragon. Kirito overcoming those visages, and learning he’s more than what he gives, could actually be seen as a powerful character moment, worthy of people being excited for his return, and something to speak out against Gabe having learned this. But, no. In his headspace, Kirito, despite seemingly hating everything he went through, is validated for everything without it being by his own decision, and despite being in a double coma in a virtual system, the power of friendship prevails.
Nothing important can happen or be resolved until Kirito returns, yet there isn’t anywhere close to enough time spent with him to make these moments feel earned in any way. You could lose at least half of the episodes in the first cour and most episodes of the second half and lose nothing. Did Eiji really need to stand up to Vassago just to lose and reset the status quo, when that time could’ve been spent better elaborating on Kirito’s mental trauma? No, I don’t think it did. Did we need to waste half an episode building up Renly? Not really. Did trying to bring politics into the mix with Chinese, Korean and US players pitted against Japanese heroes really mean something in the longrun? Not enough. Even the Sword and Fist story, which works decently well as a stand-alone tale, contributes nothing in the long run and wastes time that could’ve been spent either elaborating on Kirito’s mental state or building greater connection between him and the villains.
This even causes moments that could’ve been other characters’ time to shine to fall entirely in Kirito’s lap. War of Underworld actually does a decent job giving Alice animosity with the main villain, Gabriel Miller. After all, it was because of his invasion that her apprentice Eldrie had to sacrifice himself, and he drove Bercouli to what was effectively a suicide just so Gabe could have another form on standby. There's an actual dramatic investment there.
I mentioned in my previous SAO review that Alice was heading in the right direction for a female lead in SAO and that it was nice to see her stand up after learning her trust in supposed nobility was a lie. In this season, all she does is wheel Kirito around a bit, kill a bunch of mooks, sleep next to Kirito, get captured by Gabe for a bit, and then make her way to the tower like the plot device she is with no resistance because of an arbitrary time limit. So, Kirito defeats Gabe without her help, and she has no final words on the matter. Really spitting on all that potential there.
Similarly, poor Asuna. She arrives into the world with a Goddess level power set, tries to help her side best she can, gets depowered through an offscreen time-jump, and just when through force of will and compassion she eviscerates Vassago in another ASTOUNDING cut of animation.......he gets to live just as strong while Asuna is near death. Like seriously? How much better would it be if she finally got a W against a major villain to prove herself as Kirito’s strong and capable battle partner, rather than being someone who needs her boyfriend to clean up for her? Or if Vassago, who constantly talked about wanting to finish things with Kirito, never got that chance because Kirito surrounded himself with people who care for him, rather than just people he could hold power over? They didn’t do that for, what? A fight that was passable at best? Where the fight animation is comparatively mediocre, and Kirito just wins by pulling numerous powers out of his ass to do whatever he wants because plot? This once again proves any stand against major antagonists by someone other than Kirito is pointless because plot. After all, who else besides Kirito can dual-wield, do the Gainax pose while flying through the air between two dragon wings, or straight up steal Goku’s Spirit Bomb?
The heroes in this conflict have a couple standout moments, and it’s nice to see so many characters return, but nearly all of their previous effort evaporates once Kirito, the longest living person in human history, enters. No, killing random mooks/noob players and nothing else does not feel like it makes a difference in the grand scheme. But don’t worry, the villains will be waaaaaaaay better, right?
The Villains
If a story is only as good as its villains, then the score for the Story number here on MAL would enter the negatives. It’s no secret Sword Art Online hasn’t written very good villains; the series has become a standard-bearer for bad anime villains. With two exceptions that had vague characterization, they’re basically all the same character; some asshole who makes creepy faces at the camera, has obsessively rapey thoughts, and spends all their screentime making sure viewers know they’re as unambiguously evil as possible. Unfortunately, War of Underworld only worsens this aspect. There are four villains that hold plot prominence in War of Underworld, and none of them are written well for a variety of reasons.
To get the two minor ones out of the way, Dee E El is just there to be the requisite femme fatale/baroness character for the villains and little else. She has an eye-catching design, but like most of the other female characters in SAO, gets sexualized incredibly hard with ahoge faces, groping herself and at least one shot of her ass. For how little she actually does, it seemed fair enough to kill her when her tactics backfire on her but nope, she needed to inexplicably come back, sport tentacles and graphically rape Leafa for tasteless shock value. It’s as if the anime screenwriters weren’t sure viewers thought she was evil enough yet, so she got brought back solely for hollow shock value.
Yanai’s villainy is both hilarious and sad. He’s set up like a twist villain with incredibly poor foreshadowing, introduced and named out of nowhere in an episode to accompany an important character doing a plot-important task, before revealing himself at the next episode’s end. If the anime writers wanted to build up the shock value, they could’ve just had him be there with other scientists from the start and create conflict behind the scenes, but nope. The concept of his character, a programmer who took the form of the tentacle monster back in Season 1 to get Asuna all entangled, before becoming a virtual simp for Quinella, is so utterly dumb on principle I can’t imagine what Kawahara was thinking when writing him into this plot. But hey, how the narrative deals with him makes for great comedy. Still though, why?
Then there’s the dastardly duo: Vassago and Gabriel Miller. To start with, the story barely implies how these two even know each other. How did they even meet in the first place? And no, I don’t care if the light novel answers. I’m judging the anime on its own merits. These two seem like they took some sort of bet for who could be more evil by the end of the run.
Vassago has technically been built up since Episode 6 of Season 1, the former leader of Laughing Coffin and the one who as we find out, knowingly caused the PTSD incident that caused Kirito pain in Season 2. But what’s his deal? Oh, he has a hate boner with Kirito and is super obsessed with him, and entirely gets to realize that even despite losing. Yup, that’s it, more Kirito obsession. Plus, his backstory, which the anime presents as a choppily edited mess. Oftentimes, villain backstories tend to feel like either needlessly contrived excuses or too simple to buy into. However, somehow this is the worst of both worlds. There’s numerous leaps in logic and missing information to make how he became who he is needlessly irrational and confusing. Was he a soldier? Assassin for hire? School shooter? Anime viewers have no idea. The anime also widely overestimates his charisma. When convincing gamers from multiple countries that the Japanese heroes are villainous hackers, everyone instantly believes him, except for two people. This way Vassago can both piss of the heroes and make people from other countries look dumb in the process. He eats up the lion’s share of villain screentime in the second half, occasionally having fun chewing the scenery, but really just rubbing in viewers’ faces how flat he is, with random abilities to be a wall that only Kirito can break.
Finally, there’s Gabriel Miller, somehow both the most and least important character in the story. He’s introduced with some bravado as the next big bad guy, having murdered an adorable girl as a child, taking control over the massive army, and repeatedly worfing Sinon. Perhaps there was some intention to make him a cold calculating sociopath as opposed to the wilder antagonists of previous seasons, but it backfires when the anime plays his expressions just as over-the-top as any other villain. Making him be hired by AMERICA also baffles. This heartless, irredeemable bastard was deemed the one America wanted to use for understanding mysterious technology? Really though, the most rookie mistake made was just how little attention he got proportional to his role in the story.
He feels so poorly developed that by the final battle, there’s no connection between Gabe and Kirito other than taking opposite sides of the plot. Creating some sort of connection between a hero and their ultimate villain is basic writing 101, and even something previous arcs did. Kirito and Kayaba were foils to each other. Kirito and Sugou fought over Asuna. Kirito and Death Gun fought for Sinon and the (supposed) end to the legacy of Laughing Coffin. Kirito and Quinella had at least an attempt at some personal stakes such as Eugeo dying and avenging the Integrity Knights. Hell, even Vassago at least was built up since Aincrad and had history with Kirito despite it all being next to worthless in the end. But Kirito and Gabe? Nothing. His importance to the narrative ultimately just marks the guy as a footnote. The animators and sound designers do a great job giving the battle spectacle, but any substance is either straight up not there, or pulled with no buildup.
To try and make these two seem threatening, the show opts to give them random arbitrary powers to pull out of their asses whenever they need to be a threat. Things like mass mind control, shadow cloning, force choking, or weapons that gain power from surrounding death frequently get pulled out of nowhere for the sake of false tension. This stuff isn’t even from the god-level accounts the system left open for them to obtain because plot contrivances; this is from GunGale Online accounts, where the abilities they use could not have existed. It’s annoying because these abilities tend to be used as an excuse for why no character has any chance against them without similar asspull powers. This is a problem Kirito and Asuna have as well, but it’s far worse when referring to Gabe and Vassago. It makes the establishment of a magic system, called Incarnation, seem pretentious, since all it really amounts to is the major characters pulling abilities out of nowhere to assert dominance and win fights. A major part of what makes action scenes, or tournament arcs enjoyable to people is thinking about what the combatants are capable of. War of Underworld actively denies that pleasure, particularly in the second half.
What possibly makes this worse is that, as flat as these villains are, there was some potential present to make the focus on them more interesting. When they first enter the Underworld, they have a conflict of control with two characters that served as more civil leaders for the various armies. Seeing Gabe and Vassago navigate their way through the system to eventually overthrow them might’ve felt cruelly cathartic. But, nah, they die instantly just to show how evil the main villains are, and the evil army is mostly just drama fodder for one-dimensional bad guys.
Presentation
This refers to both the production value behind the show, and how the show itself choses to provide the audience a lens into its world.
Visually, the show for the most part looks great, and while Swordland is still overused, the soundtrack can still hit at the right moments, like in Episode 2's battle, or A Tender Feeling at the end of Episode 9. Nearly every episode has some sakuga in it, and after mentioning how a lot of the battles in Alicization Part 1 didn’t seem to have as much passion as earlier parts, it was generally added back in Alicization Part 2, regardless of whether or not the writing supported it. The first half of War of Underworld does have some pretty dodgy CGI for ground battles, but that’s mostly done away with in Part 2. Bercouli’s battle against Gabe and Asuna’s battle against Vassago in particular have some astounding animation cuts. However, the sense of place conveyed with the animation when it comes to the war aspect is pretty poor. There’s no sense about what distance either side of the battle is from each other at any given point during almost the entire series. The Dark Territory is a whole lot of nothing scenery-wise: flat red canyon as far as the eye can see. Sure, they’ll be a crevice or a forest here or there, but they only exist as places for characters to walk through, not actual landmarks. Something as simple as giving either side forts would’ve done so much for stakes and establishment. In many war stories, or stories in general, the heroes managing to overtake a villain stronghold (or defend their own stronghold) after a desperate fight can be incredibly cathartic, and likewise, the villains managing to destroy or take over a hero base can be an effective moment of drama or tragedy. War of Underworld doesn’t concern itself with either possibility, instead thinking the best solution is to cut back and forth between numerous characters in numerous battle spots and camps that don’t have any relation to each other. Even something like showing a map of character locations during commercial breaks could’ve added. So much more gravitas could’ve been there if the anime illustrated where everyone is compared to everyone else.
The series also could’ve benefitted from better editing. Jumps to the real world events can sometimes feel arbitrary, and editing in the battles themselves can be confusing at times (in one scene, the protagonist side will have a massive advantage against the clueless enemy, but in the next, they’re burned out and near death with no proper transition). When certain elements that are more pertinent to the story are sidelined, you’re left with Vassago’s confusing mess of a backstory and Kirito’s nightmare not having the time and space in the narrative it warranted for being so ultimately important.
One improvement over the previous series is that the Star Wars prequel level exposition that tried to convey the show’s idea of “hey, digital souls are people too and they matter” has been reduced, but the utilization of the theme in the narrative too often undermines drama. Kirito thinking about Eugeo’s spirit once is fine, but it’s so comically overdone that it feels like a video game quick time event. Yuuki, who didn’t die within Underworld, pops out to provide Asuna with worlds of encouragement or bits of exposition because Asuna merely keeping her in mind wouldn’t be enough. And the most side-splitting scene in the season occurs when a virtual spirit manages to power a real-world robot to complete a task through strength of will alone. Really undermines the realness of digital souls when they have powers well above the plot.
Conclusion
Sword Art Online’s position is tragically precarious, or at least, the original SAO on its journey from web novel to light novel to anime. In light of everything it inspired within the industry, it cloaks itself in higher ambitions and always has strong production value on its belt, but it keeps stepping on rake after rake when it comes to the writing.
Sometimes this season was enjoyable for the wrong reasons based on just how consistently the stupid decisions keep piling up in contrast to the production value, and how much of a teaching tool the series can be for up-and-coming writers. If you’re a fan of the series that can accept every dumb decision for the sake of seeing your favorite characters, you may be satisfied in some places and let down in others. For everyone else, it’s a well-produced but stupendously frustrating bellyflop that gets incredibly close to realizing something, only to fall short over and over again. At the very least, with Progressive as the next project, when SAO returns it’ll be closer to what everyone wanted out of it to begin with, and create ponderings for a timeline where it was the first big break for the anime.
