English Dub Review: Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of Underworld “Memories”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Asuna gets a boost in fighting off Vassago through her memories of Yuuki. Vassago reveals that his reasons for fighting are because Kirito was so pure and respectable that he had to be the one to corrupt him (apparently not knowing Kirito had killed at least one person already in SAO). But even with Asuna’s temporary new strength, she is unable to completely defeat Vassago, so after some soul searching and one last push from his memory of Eugeo, Kirito finally awakens and takes him on.

OUR TAKE

Well, 2021 is kicking off and the time long awaited has finally come: Kirito is back in action and ready to completely drain the rest of the season of whatever tension it had left. Yeah, as you can probably gather from me saying that (or my last dozen or so reviews of this season so far talking about him), I’m not exactly a big fan of Kirito as a character, so having him be gone from the story so long has mostly been to its benefit, even if the majority of this last quarter has been mainly hero worship of him by other characters. But hooray, he’s finally back! The generic audience surrogate character has finally returned in order to easily take out the bad guys, not through any tactic that the dozens of other characters might have tried to prove their worth to the story, but by just simply being better than everyone else. After all, if someone other than Kirito won in the end, how would the audience get their wish fulfillment out of their system?

Okay, salt aside, let’s look what can actually be analyzed about Kirito’s character in the way he came back from the brink. The weight of the horrors he witnessed in Sword Art Online are certainly things that have been shown to stay with him in previous arcs, though the impact of them is pretty inconsistent. As a fan of that arc, much like even those who can’t stand this series anymore, I am glad they brought Sachi back up finally for these purposes to highlight the guilt he feels about the people who have died in his place…but then we have scenes of him fighting Sugou and Death Gun, who he didn’t kill, almost as if it’s meant to be a highlight reel of how cool he is instead of a record of his guilt. Which then makes the scene of him literally (or metaphorically?) almost tearing out his heart a bit on the hammy side instead of the emotion it probably intends to invoke.

Though I guess what’s the most confusing is probably whether or not he’s being pushed by Eugeo or just a memory, or similarly if Asuna is being helped by Yuuki or just a memory, or even what the hell was going on with the movie characters in the last episode. It’s a bit of a consistent issue with the whole incarnation deal, namely that something just happens if a character wants it hard enough, but then is limited by what they can do for the story at the time, so it ends up making everything feel random and cheap. And having seen the remaining five episodes of this season, I can tell you right now that is only going to get worse. But just for the heck of it, let’s see what Alicization has to offer us right until the end.