As I said in my review of the first Sword Art Online, I'd track down and review SAO 2 as soon as possible, and this I did. Excessively soon, perhaps, watching the entire season in just over a day.
SAO2 is divided into 3 arcs, rather than the 2 arcs of SAO. The first arc, largely taking place in VRMMO Gun Gale Online, is known as the Phantom Bullet arc, though I'll likely refer to it as the GGO arc more than once. It follows the same hero from the first series, Kirito, who is contracted by the government to explore a series of murders taking place in the popular GGO. Several well-known players have been publicly shot in-game by a mysterious player known as Death Gun. At the same time, their players mysteriously die of heart failure, something that the game should have no way of causing.
The GGO arc takes the way the arcs progressed in the first series to its logical extreme. The SAO arc was based more around exploring the world of Aincrad and the consequences of living life with MMO rules, whilst the ALO arc was more about character development and the overall plot. The GGO arc almost completely gets rid of any sort of world-building, in favor of a fully story and plot-oriented approach.
Still, what we do see of the world of GGO is just as nicely designed as Aincrad, and certainly more interesting than what we previously saw of Alfheim. However, it's not nearly as pretty: As expected from a gun-game, the world isn't fantasy-based. Instead, GGO goes for a cyberpunk look. I'm a fan of cyberpunk, but it doesn't need to be this grey-and-brown. Still, a talented team of artists is a talented team of artists, and GGO looks about as pretty as a grey-and-brown world possibly could. I'm also a huge fan of the character designs for GGO. They're back on the level of the first arc, conveying the in-game archetype of each character at a glance. Whilst this gave Aincrad a modernized pulp-fantasy feel, it gives GGO a very slick look. I'm a particular fan of the design of the secondary character Dyne, who just yells "gunslinger" from the moment you see him.
Continuing the trend from the ALO arc, the GGO arc even further reduces the amount of important characters, instead focusing on developing who we have. This time, the new addition is Sinon, a top-rated sniper in-game and a sufferer of gun-related PTSD named Asada outside. That said, and even though Sinon's character development takes priority, Kirito himself actually also gets a surprising amount of depth, something he sorely lacked throughout the first series.
The themes of the GGO arc are guilt and strength. Both Sinon and Kirito struggle to overcome guilt over actions they've committed in the past, and the series actually manages to get surprisingly morbid. Both of the things they've done are events I can see marking a person's life. However, this starts an issue I have with this second series: The goddamn "strength" conversations. The amount of times that a character goes "I'm not strong, you are" or something to that effect is frankly astounding. I wouldn't mind it if it was limited to one arc, but it's a major theme in both the first and the last arcs, and it never actually goes anywhere. The concept of strength is used as shorthand for "overcoming my issues", and the issues each character faces are different enough that there's never a satisfying conclusion to the strength thing.
Still, credit where credit is due. Sinon and Kirito's character arcs are moving enough, and, as I briefly mentioned, they do actually touch on some very real-feeling stuff, Sinon in particular. Kirito's arc requires a bit of a retcon to some of his time spent in Aincrad, but it doesn't really bother me, since the events written into the story frankly seem like something that should have happened in the Aincrad arc in the first place.
The story of the GGO arc is by far the strongest out of the first three overall arcs of SAO. It's a lot more focused, and the threat of death is brought back again in the form of Death Gun, so the stakes during battle are high again, at least whilst Death Gun is around. It also follows somewhat of a murder mystery type plot, and, as I've repeatedly said, that's one surefire way of having me like anything. Admittedly, it's not a great mystery, with Kirito figuring it out at an arbitrary time for no apparent reason other than it's convenient for the plot, but the solution is clever enough for that to be forgiven.
Most of our time in GGO is spent in the Bullet of Bullets (which I'm convinced was meant to be Ballet of Bullets) tournament. It's a good enough setting, and allows the writers to ignore the overall world of GGO in favor of focusing more on character development. However, this also leads to a few annoying plotholes in the same way the death-game setting did in Aincrad, like the fact that it's obvious Kirito and Sinon have teamed up due to the cameras following them around, yet this is against the spirit of BoB. It's a lot less common than it was in SAO though, and thus less annoying.
Unfortunately, the end is a bit weak, though this is a problem the series has had regularly. It's got a bit of a pointless twist after everything should by all rights be settled down. It feels like the series is trying to pull a Sugou again, but this time without any of the build up, and it just doesn't work out.
Just because I made a big deal about it last time, Asuna is barely present. We see her within ALO, watching Kirito take part in BoB, and a few times we see the two of them interacting at school or within ALO. She doesn't play a major role in any way, and I'm convinced she's only included because she becomes important in the later arcs. Unlike her role in the ALO, arc, however, this isn't annoying, because she isn't thrust into a damsel-in-distress or caring wife role that doesn't fit her character.
Overall, the GGO arc is up there with the SAO arc as my favourites. Sinon is a fantastic character, Kirito stops being boring, and we're treated to the most focused storyline yet. The only things that the SAO arc really has above it is the charm of being the first, and the fact that Aincrad is still unbeaten as the best setting in the series.
The second arc of the series, called the Calibur arc is more of a side story than anything else: There's no real stakes here, no real plot, and no real conflict. It's almost just an excuse to reminisce about the SAO days. It's not coy about it, either: The intro features a lot of shots of characters' SAO avatars, and locations in old Aincrad. This arc, a mere three episodes in length, chronicles Kirito and friends' journey to obtain the sword Excaliber (not Excalibur) within ALO. The main draw of the arc is the return of various side characters from the SAO arc, namely that murky period before the story kicked off where it followed Kirito doing a bunch of side-stuff with one-off characters. You've got Silica, Lizbeth, and Klein all returning, with their roles slightly expanded. To be fair, all three of them were also present during the GGO arc, but we barely got to see them: they only really showed up when we watched Asuna watch Kirito in the tournament. Sinon is also here, though she barely does anything. All of the returning characters have been ALO-ized in their design (Except Klein, who somehow dodged that bullet), which I'm not a huge fan of. At least the locales they travel through look considerably more interesting than anything in ALO up to this point, though they're still less cool than most areas in SAO.
There's some barely developed threat mentioned where ALO might delete itself if Excaliber isn't recovered in time, but even this is just potentially far-fetched theorizing by the characters, and it's obvious the arc doesn't really take itself seriously. It's a nice return to the action-packed fun that made SAO so entertaining in the first place, with minimal story. It's an excuse to laugh at Klein, cheer at Kirito, and marvel at Asuna in action. Yes, indeed, we get to see a bit of the Asuna of old, and she's as cool as ever. It's an arc that doesn't really serve a purpose apart from just being fun, and it is a whole bunch of fun.
The third arc of the series is the Mother's Rosario arc. Now, a quick look on the wiki reveals that both Mother's Rosario and Calibur are actually considered side-stories rather than full-blown arcs, but I feel this qualification is a bit too complex. I'd also disagree with Mother's Rosario being less than a full arc: it's got some of the best character development in it.
Mother's Rosario is also unique in that it follows Asuna as the main character rather than Kirito. I feel this is a nice change, as long as it isn't permanent. Having Asuna as the main character focuses the series more on the emotional side of things, rather than the more action-focused Kirito, and it works for this type of story. However, seeing something like the GGO arc through Asuna's eyes would've been a lot less effective, or at least a lot less fun. This might come across as strange seeing how cold the Asuna of early SAO was, but, through her less than stellar screentime since then, she's managed to somehow believably evolve to combine the two personalities. Asuna still comes across as a strong leader and fighter, but has lost her hard edge in favor of being more people-oriented than Kirito (who in SAO days was the more people-oriented of the two). I really like the way this is represented within the MMO: Asuna is now a healer/DPS hybrid, compared to her pure DPS build from SAO.
This arc sees Asuna befriending an ALO guild named the Sleeping Knights, after dueling their leader, an incredibly strong newcomer named Yuuki. Yuuki is shown to be the most powerful person in ALO, having challenged, duelled, and defeated most of the high-ranking players, Kirito included. She's managed to lure them in by offering to teach her unique sword skill, the new longest combo known within the game, the titular Mother's Rosario, to whoever beats her. Before Asuna fights Yuuki, Kirito hints he knows something about her he's unwilling to share, which comes back as extremely important later.
It's important to mention here that, at the end of the ALO arc in the first SAO, Aincrad is added as an advanced dungeon to the world of ALO, unlocking 10 floors at a time as they're patched to account for flight mechanics, as well as adding difficulty now that there's a lack of real death and a host of new abilities. It's been visited occasionally up to this point, but very briefly and nothing as visually interesting as Old Aincrad has been shown yet. What I'm trying to say is, it's been practically irrelevant so far, aside from being a good moment in the ALO arc, and that's why I haven't mentioned it up to this point.
It turns out the Sleeping Knights is a group of six extremely powerful players. However, they plan to dissolve the guild soon, and want to beat a floor boss within New Aincrad as a party of six (something that's supposed to be unheard of, even though Kirito, Asuna and Klein beat a boss with no backup in the SAO arc, and Kirito soloed an event boss as early as episode 3). This'll leave a list of their names on a stone within the castle in the first town of the game, something they want to leave as a permanent mark of their times guilding together.
This is cleverly presented as the overarching objective, much like beating SAO or getting to the top of the World Tree, but is shockingly completed within a couple episodes. This part of the arc feels very much like the Calibur arc, except with the Sleeping Knights instead of the old crew. It's moving enough, and the fact that there's another player within the Sleeping Knights, Siune, who also gets a decent amount of character development, prevents overexposure to Yuuki's character.
There's also a sub-plot with Asuna in the real world, which is kind of just there. It doesn't work too badly, but it's immensely predictable, and something that I have seen a million times before: Rich girl is expected to do things she doesn't want by her parents to keep the family powerful. The conclusion to the sub-plot is pretty well written, but still nothing I haven't seen a million times before, repackaged just enough not to be boring.
The second half of the arc gets a lot darker for reasons I can't explain without massive spoilers. As soon as the boss is defeated, Yuuki becomes a lot sadder for an initially unexplained reason, and Asuna tries to understand why. Eventually, Yuuki leaves the game altogether, forcing Asuna to look for her in the real world. What ensues is a rather saddening story.
It's moving, even if the position Yuuki and the rest of the Sleeping Knights are in is a bit cliche. Asuna does a good job as a lead here, managing to feel more emotionally vulnerable than Kirito does, whilst still being very obviously the level-headed and stubborn-as-a-mule Asuna we grew to know and love in the Old Aincrad days.
Speaking of which, it's good to be back in Aincrad, even if it isn't quite the Aincrad we used to know.
It feels like the second the series enters Aincrad the visual design quality spikes up: Where Alfheim is relatively boring, Aincrad is as creative and gorgeous as ever. Fights also return to a more ground-based style, which I feel helps maintain them more understandable whilst not negatively affecting the visual flair. The visual designs of the Sleeping Knights also look considerably moreSAO-ish than ALO-ish (read: I like them a lot more than pretty much ever other ALO character design).
I've got two major issues with this arc. One is an overarching issue that I feel might affect many people's enjoyment of the arc, and the other is a nitpick that drives me insane.
My only real issue with this arc is perhaps not completely fair, but an issue nonetheless: It's too heavy. I watch SAO expecting fun adventures and the occasional moving moment. The Mother's Rosario arc is a series of moving moments with a fun adventure or two sprinkled in between, especially after the floor boss is defeated. For a series that's been so action-packed and enjoyable, it's a real downer arc, even if we're meant to walk away from it with a smile in the end. It does what it does well, but I'm not sure if what it does belongs in this series.
My nitpicky issue is one I mentioned previously: The "strength" conversations. They're not quite as omnipresent here as in the GGO arc, but are around enough to be a problem. They're somewhat more about actual strength this time, at least when Yuuki is concerned, but for Asuna it's, once again, shorthand for "overcoming my issues".
There's a brief side-story near the beginning of the arc involving the old log cabin from SAO. It's a feel-good episode or two in a similar vein to the Calibur arc, but I felt it was important to mention. It's a fantastic callback, and one I enjoyed immensely. It isn't particularly important, and it's actually handled far worse than it could be, being way too brief, but I still found it brought back an odd amount of nostalgia. Especially considering I watched the first SAO arc less than three days ago as of writing the first draft of this.
I came in to SAO2 having been warned that a lot of people thought it was weaker than the first season. Instead, I got an arc that I think is almost as good as the SAO arc, and two short arcs that were both considerably better than the ALO arc. Whilst the SAO arc will always have an advantage over the rest simply by virtue of being the first story told with these characters and having a great set-up that can't really be repeated, SAO2 makes an extremely valiant attempt to keep up with it, and feels a lot more confident in itself. While the first SAO had spikes of greatness, SAO2 manages to be more consistently good.
So, which one do I prefer? I can't really say. Before writing down and calculating the rating, I'm predicting SAO2 will get a higher score. That doesn't really mean I prefer it. Whilst I really loved SAO2, SAO had a magic to it that couldn't be recaptured after the first arc. Both are absolutely fantastic, and I give my hearty recommendation to both. Give the first SAO a try. If you like it, you'll have blown through both series before you realize it.
Character and World Building: 8/10
The characters are consistently more interesting this time around. Kirito gets some depth, Sinon goes through a great arc, and both Asuna and Yuuki evolve a great deal through the Mother's Rosario arc. This might be due to their reduced number, but there's also more competence to the structure of their evolution this time around: There's no equivalent to Asuna being put in positions that the character doesn't belong in this time around. The limited time we get to spend with old friends (mainly during the Calibur arc and side-episodes in the Mother's Rosario arc) is also a huge amount of fun. However, world building suffers. The world of GGO barely gets explored, and ALO is as uninteresting as ever. Even though we spend time in Aincrad, the old dynamic of that world is gone, understandably enough. Also, special mention to Siune for managing to be such an endearing character despite her short screentime. Death Gun also deserves special mention for being genuinely intimidating at times, if not as hateable as Sugou from the ALO arc.
Story: 8.5/10
Big improvement! All three arcs are even more focused on the objective than the ALO arc, and avoid meandering around. There's enough side-episodes to keep you from getting tired, but not enough to kill any momentum. The fact that all three stories also follow a much more logical progression without the deus ex machina endings that plagued the first series is also very good to see. There's a few contrivances here and there to keep the story going (especially when Kirito figures out how Death Gun does his thing in GGO), but they're less frequent and often less conspicuous.
Visuals: 4/5
Unfortunately, the series slightly regresses in this category. Neither GGO or the real world look as impressive as Aincrad or even Alfheim. In this regard, it's not that the artstyle becomes worse, it's just the stuff being drawn itself is less pretty. One addition to the artstyle I wasn't a fan of was the brief CGI shots in GGO. They usually happen when focusing on a gun or a bullet, and just don't look very good. They're rare enough to not really affect my rating, but I'm still baffled at their inclusion considering how much uglier they are than the drawn stuff.
Sound: 2.5/5
In my review of SAO I mentioned how the music was forgettable aside from a few battle tracks (in particular the one I've since found is called Swordland) and the main themes. This is still the case, but instead of creating new battle tracks that sound as good as the old ones or just plain-old reusing them SAO2 opts to use remixes of Swordland. It initially works well, but it gets old after a while, and listening to the most of the remixes I found myself just wishing I was listening to the original version instead. The voice acting remains at a similar level of quality: It's there, there's no real standouts, it does what it does.
Enjoyment: 9/10
You might notice this is 0.5 lower than for SAO, despite rating the really important stuff (Read: First 2 categories) higher. This might be considered a cheap shot at SAO2, but I feel it's genuinely what it deserves. For all the advantages it has over its predecessor, for all the improvements it's made, SAO2 is a sequel, and as such it looses that first-time charm that SAO had, particularly in the Aincrad arc. I've said this in the review before, but there's a magic to the Aincrad arc that the series hasn't been able to recreate since. This might not have been enough to make it drop in this rating below SAO by itself, but the Mother's Rosario arc wasn't enjoyable in the same way the rest of the series was, and the two combined were enough to loose a 0.5. Don't get me wrong: Mother's Rosario is a good arc, and if the rest of the series had had the same tone, it would've worked towards making this rating higher instead of lower. Still, I try to be as harsh as I can afford to be in my reviews, and a 9 is an exceptionally high score. Even if it doesn't quite hold up to its predecessor, SAO2 is an absolute blast to watch. It still manages to make me more invested in this stuff than I should by any rights be, and I don't regret a second of my time with it. The SAO series is something I already miss, and SAO2 is only a tiny bit less enjoyable than its big brother.
Overall: (8+8.5+4+2.5+9)/40 =
32/40
(Can be simplified to 8/10)
Off-topic:
Huh, look at that. The overall score ended up being the same as for the first SAO. I didn't mean for that to happen, and the thought that it might honestly never crossed my mind. A consideration is that perhaps the way I've set up this review process doesn't give enjoyment quite the weight it deserves: an overall 8/10 for both of these is less than I feel they deserve. I might rework it for the next review.
Back on-topic:
SAO is a fantastic series, or two series, or whatever you want to call them. They more than deserve your time, and are definitely worthy of all the praise they get. A sentiment that I've found myself using over and over in these reviews is "despite all my complaining about X, Y is good enough that X doesn't really matter". That's really what I feel about both series of SAO. They're both very flawed in a few respects, but the stuff they pull off well is pulled off so well you end up forgetting about the stuff it does badly. Even as I write this, less than an hour after finishing watch SAO2, what I remember isn't how underused Asuna was in ALO, but rather how fucked up that creep Sugou was, and how glad I am he was defeated. I'm not really thinking about how pointless the Calibur arc ultimately was, but I do remember what a great time I had watching Klein goof around.
I'm not usually one to ignore glaring flaws, in fact, quite the opposite. I find that I'll catch on to even minor flaws, and keep noticing them, and get too annoyed at them to give the good bits the attention they deserve. This makes enjoying things with huge flaws an issue for me.
But SAO managed to distract me from its glaring flaws with its moments of near-perfection, whether it be in its world, story or characters. It's almost like the characters within the series itself: One of them is always strong in the others' moment of weakness. Take that as my recommendation: I think it's what most accurately describes SAO. And, if saying that it's as effective as a ragtag group of misfits isn't a huge compliment to an anime, I don't know what is.
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| We added a II to the logo. XTREME. |
The GGO arc takes the way the arcs progressed in the first series to its logical extreme. The SAO arc was based more around exploring the world of Aincrad and the consequences of living life with MMO rules, whilst the ALO arc was more about character development and the overall plot. The GGO arc almost completely gets rid of any sort of world-building, in favor of a fully story and plot-oriented approach.
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| You see me, you know who I am. I'm Dyne. |
Continuing the trend from the ALO arc, the GGO arc even further reduces the amount of important characters, instead focusing on developing who we have. This time, the new addition is Sinon, a top-rated sniper in-game and a sufferer of gun-related PTSD named Asada outside. That said, and even though Sinon's character development takes priority, Kirito himself actually also gets a surprising amount of depth, something he sorely lacked throughout the first series.
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| Hello! One of the best characters here! |
Still, credit where credit is due. Sinon and Kirito's character arcs are moving enough, and, as I briefly mentioned, they do actually touch on some very real-feeling stuff, Sinon in particular. Kirito's arc requires a bit of a retcon to some of his time spent in Aincrad, but it doesn't really bother me, since the events written into the story frankly seem like something that should have happened in the Aincrad arc in the first place.
The story of the GGO arc is by far the strongest out of the first three overall arcs of SAO. It's a lot more focused, and the threat of death is brought back again in the form of Death Gun, so the stakes during battle are high again, at least whilst Death Gun is around. It also follows somewhat of a murder mystery type plot, and, as I've repeatedly said, that's one surefire way of having me like anything. Admittedly, it's not a great mystery, with Kirito figuring it out at an arbitrary time for no apparent reason other than it's convenient for the plot, but the solution is clever enough for that to be forgiven.
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| Hey. I'm also cool-looking. |
Unfortunately, the end is a bit weak, though this is a problem the series has had regularly. It's got a bit of a pointless twist after everything should by all rights be settled down. It feels like the series is trying to pull a Sugou again, but this time without any of the build up, and it just doesn't work out.
Just because I made a big deal about it last time, Asuna is barely present. We see her within ALO, watching Kirito take part in BoB, and a few times we see the two of them interacting at school or within ALO. She doesn't play a major role in any way, and I'm convinced she's only included because she becomes important in the later arcs. Unlike her role in the ALO, arc, however, this isn't annoying, because she isn't thrust into a damsel-in-distress or caring wife role that doesn't fit her character.
Overall, the GGO arc is up there with the SAO arc as my favourites. Sinon is a fantastic character, Kirito stops being boring, and we're treated to the most focused storyline yet. The only things that the SAO arc really has above it is the charm of being the first, and the fact that Aincrad is still unbeaten as the best setting in the series.
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| It's really nice to have everyone back. Though, Kirito, you still look ridiculous. Sinon, so do you. |
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| Yay, I got Excaliber! I'll never be shown using it after this point. |
The third arc of the series is the Mother's Rosario arc. Now, a quick look on the wiki reveals that both Mother's Rosario and Calibur are actually considered side-stories rather than full-blown arcs, but I feel this qualification is a bit too complex. I'd also disagree with Mother's Rosario being less than a full arc: it's got some of the best character development in it.
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| You've had quite enough of Kirito. I'll take over. Also, I'm blue now for some reason. |
This arc sees Asuna befriending an ALO guild named the Sleeping Knights, after dueling their leader, an incredibly strong newcomer named Yuuki. Yuuki is shown to be the most powerful person in ALO, having challenged, duelled, and defeated most of the high-ranking players, Kirito included. She's managed to lure them in by offering to teach her unique sword skill, the new longest combo known within the game, the titular Mother's Rosario, to whoever beats her. Before Asuna fights Yuuki, Kirito hints he knows something about her he's unwilling to share, which comes back as extremely important later.
It's important to mention here that, at the end of the ALO arc in the first SAO, Aincrad is added as an advanced dungeon to the world of ALO, unlocking 10 floors at a time as they're patched to account for flight mechanics, as well as adding difficulty now that there's a lack of real death and a host of new abilities. It's been visited occasionally up to this point, but very briefly and nothing as visually interesting as Old Aincrad has been shown yet. What I'm trying to say is, it's been practically irrelevant so far, aside from being a good moment in the ALO arc, and that's why I haven't mentioned it up to this point.
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| Hey, Sleeping Knights here. Only two of us get much characterization, but that's quite enough. |
It turns out the Sleeping Knights is a group of six extremely powerful players. However, they plan to dissolve the guild soon, and want to beat a floor boss within New Aincrad as a party of six (something that's supposed to be unheard of, even though Kirito, Asuna and Klein beat a boss with no backup in the SAO arc, and Kirito soloed an event boss as early as episode 3). This'll leave a list of their names on a stone within the castle in the first town of the game, something they want to leave as a permanent mark of their times guilding together.
This is cleverly presented as the overarching objective, much like beating SAO or getting to the top of the World Tree, but is shockingly completed within a couple episodes. This part of the arc feels very much like the Calibur arc, except with the Sleeping Knights instead of the old crew. It's moving enough, and the fact that there's another player within the Sleeping Knights, Siune, who also gets a decent amount of character development, prevents overexposure to Yuuki's character.
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| "Hey, Asuna. I'm going to expect stuff you don't want to create conflict" |
The second half of the arc gets a lot darker for reasons I can't explain without massive spoilers. As soon as the boss is defeated, Yuuki becomes a lot sadder for an initially unexplained reason, and Asuna tries to understand why. Eventually, Yuuki leaves the game altogether, forcing Asuna to look for her in the real world. What ensues is a rather saddening story.
It's moving, even if the position Yuuki and the rest of the Sleeping Knights are in is a bit cliche. Asuna does a good job as a lead here, managing to feel more emotionally vulnerable than Kirito does, whilst still being very obviously the level-headed and stubborn-as-a-mule Asuna we grew to know and love in the Old Aincrad days.
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| Even shots that last only a couple seconds are prettier in Aincrad. |
It feels like the second the series enters Aincrad the visual design quality spikes up: Where Alfheim is relatively boring, Aincrad is as creative and gorgeous as ever. Fights also return to a more ground-based style, which I feel helps maintain them more understandable whilst not negatively affecting the visual flair. The visual designs of the Sleeping Knights also look considerably moreSAO-ish than ALO-ish (read: I like them a lot more than pretty much ever other ALO character design).
I've got two major issues with this arc. One is an overarching issue that I feel might affect many people's enjoyment of the arc, and the other is a nitpick that drives me insane.
My only real issue with this arc is perhaps not completely fair, but an issue nonetheless: It's too heavy. I watch SAO expecting fun adventures and the occasional moving moment. The Mother's Rosario arc is a series of moving moments with a fun adventure or two sprinkled in between, especially after the floor boss is defeated. For a series that's been so action-packed and enjoyable, it's a real downer arc, even if we're meant to walk away from it with a smile in the end. It does what it does well, but I'm not sure if what it does belongs in this series.
My nitpicky issue is one I mentioned previously: The "strength" conversations. They're not quite as omnipresent here as in the GGO arc, but are around enough to be a problem. They're somewhat more about actual strength this time, at least when Yuuki is concerned, but for Asuna it's, once again, shorthand for "overcoming my issues".
There's a brief side-story near the beginning of the arc involving the old log cabin from SAO. It's a feel-good episode or two in a similar vein to the Calibur arc, but I felt it was important to mention. It's a fantastic callback, and one I enjoyed immensely. It isn't particularly important, and it's actually handled far worse than it could be, being way too brief, but I still found it brought back an odd amount of nostalgia. Especially considering I watched the first SAO arc less than three days ago as of writing the first draft of this.
I came in to SAO2 having been warned that a lot of people thought it was weaker than the first season. Instead, I got an arc that I think is almost as good as the SAO arc, and two short arcs that were both considerably better than the ALO arc. Whilst the SAO arc will always have an advantage over the rest simply by virtue of being the first story told with these characters and having a great set-up that can't really be repeated, SAO2 makes an extremely valiant attempt to keep up with it, and feels a lot more confident in itself. While the first SAO had spikes of greatness, SAO2 manages to be more consistently good.
So, which one do I prefer? I can't really say. Before writing down and calculating the rating, I'm predicting SAO2 will get a higher score. That doesn't really mean I prefer it. Whilst I really loved SAO2, SAO had a magic to it that couldn't be recaptured after the first arc. Both are absolutely fantastic, and I give my hearty recommendation to both. Give the first SAO a try. If you like it, you'll have blown through both series before you realize it.
Character and World Building: 8/10
The characters are consistently more interesting this time around. Kirito gets some depth, Sinon goes through a great arc, and both Asuna and Yuuki evolve a great deal through the Mother's Rosario arc. This might be due to their reduced number, but there's also more competence to the structure of their evolution this time around: There's no equivalent to Asuna being put in positions that the character doesn't belong in this time around. The limited time we get to spend with old friends (mainly during the Calibur arc and side-episodes in the Mother's Rosario arc) is also a huge amount of fun. However, world building suffers. The world of GGO barely gets explored, and ALO is as uninteresting as ever. Even though we spend time in Aincrad, the old dynamic of that world is gone, understandably enough. Also, special mention to Siune for managing to be such an endearing character despite her short screentime. Death Gun also deserves special mention for being genuinely intimidating at times, if not as hateable as Sugou from the ALO arc.
Story: 8.5/10
Big improvement! All three arcs are even more focused on the objective than the ALO arc, and avoid meandering around. There's enough side-episodes to keep you from getting tired, but not enough to kill any momentum. The fact that all three stories also follow a much more logical progression without the deus ex machina endings that plagued the first series is also very good to see. There's a few contrivances here and there to keep the story going (especially when Kirito figures out how Death Gun does his thing in GGO), but they're less frequent and often less conspicuous.
Visuals: 4/5
Unfortunately, the series slightly regresses in this category. Neither GGO or the real world look as impressive as Aincrad or even Alfheim. In this regard, it's not that the artstyle becomes worse, it's just the stuff being drawn itself is less pretty. One addition to the artstyle I wasn't a fan of was the brief CGI shots in GGO. They usually happen when focusing on a gun or a bullet, and just don't look very good. They're rare enough to not really affect my rating, but I'm still baffled at their inclusion considering how much uglier they are than the drawn stuff.
Sound: 2.5/5
In my review of SAO I mentioned how the music was forgettable aside from a few battle tracks (in particular the one I've since found is called Swordland) and the main themes. This is still the case, but instead of creating new battle tracks that sound as good as the old ones or just plain-old reusing them SAO2 opts to use remixes of Swordland. It initially works well, but it gets old after a while, and listening to the most of the remixes I found myself just wishing I was listening to the original version instead. The voice acting remains at a similar level of quality: It's there, there's no real standouts, it does what it does.
Enjoyment: 9/10
You might notice this is 0.5 lower than for SAO, despite rating the really important stuff (Read: First 2 categories) higher. This might be considered a cheap shot at SAO2, but I feel it's genuinely what it deserves. For all the advantages it has over its predecessor, for all the improvements it's made, SAO2 is a sequel, and as such it looses that first-time charm that SAO had, particularly in the Aincrad arc. I've said this in the review before, but there's a magic to the Aincrad arc that the series hasn't been able to recreate since. This might not have been enough to make it drop in this rating below SAO by itself, but the Mother's Rosario arc wasn't enjoyable in the same way the rest of the series was, and the two combined were enough to loose a 0.5. Don't get me wrong: Mother's Rosario is a good arc, and if the rest of the series had had the same tone, it would've worked towards making this rating higher instead of lower. Still, I try to be as harsh as I can afford to be in my reviews, and a 9 is an exceptionally high score. Even if it doesn't quite hold up to its predecessor, SAO2 is an absolute blast to watch. It still manages to make me more invested in this stuff than I should by any rights be, and I don't regret a second of my time with it. The SAO series is something I already miss, and SAO2 is only a tiny bit less enjoyable than its big brother.
Overall: (8+8.5+4+2.5+9)/40 =
32/40
(Can be simplified to 8/10)
Off-topic:
Huh, look at that. The overall score ended up being the same as for the first SAO. I didn't mean for that to happen, and the thought that it might honestly never crossed my mind. A consideration is that perhaps the way I've set up this review process doesn't give enjoyment quite the weight it deserves: an overall 8/10 for both of these is less than I feel they deserve. I might rework it for the next review.
Back on-topic:
SAO is a fantastic series, or two series, or whatever you want to call them. They more than deserve your time, and are definitely worthy of all the praise they get. A sentiment that I've found myself using over and over in these reviews is "despite all my complaining about X, Y is good enough that X doesn't really matter". That's really what I feel about both series of SAO. They're both very flawed in a few respects, but the stuff they pull off well is pulled off so well you end up forgetting about the stuff it does badly. Even as I write this, less than an hour after finishing watch SAO2, what I remember isn't how underused Asuna was in ALO, but rather how fucked up that creep Sugou was, and how glad I am he was defeated. I'm not really thinking about how pointless the Calibur arc ultimately was, but I do remember what a great time I had watching Klein goof around.
I'm not usually one to ignore glaring flaws, in fact, quite the opposite. I find that I'll catch on to even minor flaws, and keep noticing them, and get too annoyed at them to give the good bits the attention they deserve. This makes enjoying things with huge flaws an issue for me.
But SAO managed to distract me from its glaring flaws with its moments of near-perfection, whether it be in its world, story or characters. It's almost like the characters within the series itself: One of them is always strong in the others' moment of weakness. Take that as my recommendation: I think it's what most accurately describes SAO. And, if saying that it's as effective as a ragtag group of misfits isn't a huge compliment to an anime, I don't know what is.
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