Review: Sword Art Online II “The World of Guns”

You know a new season of a show is going to start with a bang when a character dies from a virtual bullet. Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to Sword Art Online II. The story starts out fast, picking up approximately a year after the end of the first season. This character, is the guy behind the Gun Gale Online character XeXeed, Shigemura Tamotsu. I’ve noticed Aniplex may have found it’s niche outside of Gundam: murder and supernatural mysteries.

Now, this may seem like a little thing, but it needs to be stated anyway. During my last Durarara!!x2 review, I said that Aniplex kind of skimped on the subtitling on the texts on the phone, and the computer chat. However, in SAO, the subtitles on the phones are done right. This is just a pet peeve. Some people just read faster when it comes to text, instead of having characters convey it in conversation. I just find it overly confusing, and is a pet peeve. SAO did it right, and Aniplex should keep it like that for all of it’s shows.

“The World of Guns” is less of a “what’s happened in a year” episode and just picks up a year later. The further “The World of Guns” goes into what has happened in a year is that Kirito explains how Gun Gale Online has taken over as the top MMO, and is the only MMO that has pro players. The alluded romance between Kirito and Asuna is there, this time with a “date” in the park. But that’s overshadowed with a flashback that Kirito had with Kikuoka Seijirou, where they go over the preliminary findings from Shigemura Tamotsu’s murder. Well, I’m glad to see the romance take a back seat to the happenings of the world. Not many shows do that.

I have a very limited experience with the first series of Sword Art Online. But “The World of Guns” was a pretty good introduction to the series. I didn’t get the feeling that I had to need every bit of plot to get into the series and know what’s going on. Toonami grabbed a pretty good winner. Another thing Toonami did was become relevant again. Getting cut to three and a half hours, and have no new shows has left Toonami with a void. SAO II should bring it back, at least a little.