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

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)


Picking up immediately from the end of last episode, Sinon and Leafa soon arrive in Underworld to assist with the battle, each using a goddess account like Asuna. Sinon appears near the main battle and finds everyone but Leafa ends up near Lilpilin, the Orc Chieftain of the Council of Ten, who she asks to take her to Vecta. However, she’s then attacked anyway by Dee Eye Ell, the Mage Leader of the Council, who binds her in tentacles to drain her life energy, but Leafa hesitates to harm because she doesn’t want to hurt a living thing within Underworld…even when it is literally trying to kill her. She changes her tune when Dee turns on Lilpilin, though. Meanwhile, more Japanese players, including Klein, arrive to help Asuna, while Vassago also shows up in his personal account, and Bercouli catches up to Vecta to save Alice.

OUR TAKE

It’s now down to the final ten episodes of the Alicization arc of Sword Art Online after this. Weird how this season technically started in early February of last year after such a long wait between the movie and the last season, but here we are. Back when the dub of the previous quarter was finishing earlier this year, it seemed like a done deal that this last batch would air in April, only to then find out that it was being pushed to July due to the pandemic, which naturally impacted how long it would take for the dub to get here. And to the show’s credit, they do not waste any time in picking up right where the previous episode left off, with everyone still fighting desperately against the onslaught of duped American players (who do not seem to be really phased by anything going on, as one player even says “this game sucks, I’m logging out” before Asuna kills him). Kinda feels like that hampers the seriousness of things a bit when one side isn’t taking things seriously, but I guess they felt the need to include that.

As always, the technical aspects of the fights and battles are the high point of a Sword Art Online episode, so being in the middle of a war certainly works in the show’s favor at the moment. What ends up bringing this episode down, though, are other things that have unfortunately become staples of this franchise by now; namely having nearly all the female characters flock around Kirito (even when he’s in a coma) and having a character be sexually assaulted for no good reason. I was kinda interested in seeing how Dee would show up again after surviving Alice’s big attack that wiped out her forces, though I guess it was just so she could show up and tentacle rape Leafa in front of a pig man while he’s forced to strip. And while I do know what they were trying to get at with Leafa calling the Orc Chieftain a “human” because he can hold a conversation (as in she sees him as living, thinking, being who deserves respect), it actually ends up coming off as kinda disrespectful in that he is NOT actually human, she’s just calling him that because that’s what she considers something that can talk…so it’s kinda like if I said to a person of color that they seem “white” if they could speak English. Not to mention her hesitance to kill Dee WHILE SHE IS DRAINING HER LIFE AND ASSAULTING HER but then deciding it’s okay to kill her when she attacks the Orc is…pretty contrived, to say the least. But it’s looking like it’s upward from there next week, with a major fight finally taking place.