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


OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Rath (now under Rinko since Kikouka faked his death to avoid becoming a scapegoat for the events on the Ocean Turtle) gives Alice a public debut as the first true AI to mixed results, though with the clear plan to further integrate AI like her into society more in the future. Soon after, Kirito and Asuna finally get logged out of the Underworld, having survived their 200 years with Kirito requesting it all be deleted. However, Higa copies Kirito’s memories and begins a dialogue, with King Kirito requesting to meet with Kayaba’s AI copy to plan for future threats to the Underworld. Meanwhile, Meat Kirito mourns the loss of his memories and Eugeo in particular. Meanwhile meanwhile, Alice feels more yearning for Kirito, leading to Rinko calling him the next day. I assume about Alice tearing across the country to find him.

OUR TAKE

The penultimate episode of the season finally gives us a chance to calm down and get a look at how the world is now changed by the events of the story, particularly through Alice being introduced to the world as a fully autonomous Artificial Intelligence and regular people being understandably a bit freaked by that. The interactions with reporters are a bit too over the top and feel more about the story swatting down what it might perceive as criticisms about the idea of Alice in the first place, but I could definitely see there being push back from many fronts regarding an existence like hers suddenly being unveiled to the public. The topic of Artificial Intelligence on its own raises many ethical and moral questions on the face of it, hence why it is a popular topic to explore in science fiction. I don’t see Sword Art Online really tackling any of them, at least not with a degree of subtlety or tact, but hey, good on them for trying at least.

We also see the introduction of a sort of new character in the form of 200-something year old Kirito AI, who I guess went through all that time between the end of last episode and now. I am both intrigued and greatly confused by his existence, mainly because I really can’t go to long with regular Kirito, let alone a new one who has 200 years worth of extra memories and was literal king of the video games. And this also raises a lot of interesting questions about this technology just like Alice does, though most of the ones I’m thinking of are why this new version has to still exist and what exactly is going to happen to him. Will he get a new body like Alice? Will he become a new villain somehow, forcing Kirito to face a more powerful and potentially jaded version of himself in battle a la Shirou Emiya (another role by Bryce Papenbrook) and Archer from Fate Stay Night? At least having a Kirito vs Kirito fight means there may be some actual tension since the obvious answer of Kirito winning is ruled out since one Kirito has to lose. But honestly, I am quite curious as to where this might all be headed now past this arc. However, we’ve only got one episode left to really explore this for the time being, which we’ll get to next time as the Alicization Arc finally comes to a close.