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

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Kirito is saved from being Vassago’s wrath by the sudden arrival of Eiji and Yuna, two characters from the Ordinal Scale movie. Yuna uses her bard-like abilities to temporarily get people out of Vassago’s influence while Eiji fights him, though he easily gets his ass handed to him. It’s here that we get to see Vassago’s past and why he hates all Japanese people: he apparently has a Japanese father who made him give a kidney to his legitimate son or else he would cut funding to Vassago and his mother, so he swore to be like Joseph Joestar and NEVER FORGIVE THE JAPANESE! He even stole Nerve Gear back when the SAO business was happening so he could kill as many of them as possible, becoming the head of Laughing Coffin and surviving all the way until the game shut down.

Meanwhile in the real world, Rinko arrives and makes Yanai fall off the ledge, killing him and saving Higa. With that, Higa gets to work using Asuna, Suguha, and Sinon to begin reviving Kirito from his coma. Asuna is still stuck observing the fight between Vassago and Eiji, though he and Yuna end up leaving before long. Suguha still puts up a fight elsewhere, but is stabbed multiple times, while Sinon manages to considerably injure Gabriel and force him to flee, but loses her legs in the fight (not that it should matter since she should be able to fly). Higa begins the program and the three girls, all coincidentally thinking about Kirito at the same time, begin the process.

OUR TAKE

That wraps up the penultimate novel of this arc, which makes it actually pretty good timing for the three week break we’ll be taking from the show. A real shame that so much of it feels like either padding or completely unable to take seriously. The addition of Eiji and Yuna is completely original to this and not in the source material since the SAO movie had probably not even been conceived at that point, though it does kinda answer a question I had awhile back. When this season was first starting, the first OP had Yuna and her father in it for a split second, which made me think she was going to be involved in the arc at that point. She never showed up in that part of the story, nor any part up until now, though that just raises questions, specifically HOW THE HELL IS YUNA ALIVE and HOW THE HELL DID EIJI GET HERE. But they never really bother to explain that, nor do I expect them to in the last handful of episodes. And honestly I don’t really care at this point, I just felt it was worth mentioning that it’s clear these writers don’t either.

And as the title implies, this week gives us some backstory for Vassago and why he is such a monster…or at least attempts to. Like yeah, that sucks that his dad was a bastard who made him give up an organ, but I don’t know how that made him hate ALL Japanese people, nor want to deliberately risk his own life by jumping into SAO by choice. Seems like there was already something wrong with him before any of that happened if this was the route he decided to go with. Plus it’s not like I feel all that much more informed about him as a character now that I know this, just that I feel a little bad that he had a shitty life, but then that’s negated by how much of this is his own doing. The only real meaningful contribution this episode is Higa beginning the process to getting Kirito back, which isn’t really something I’m particularly looking forward to anyway. So really this is just a big waste of time, though you could argue that for the season as a whole. See you in the new year, when we can finally put Alicization to bed!