English Dub Review: Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of Underworld “The Night-Sky Blade”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Asuna and Alice sprint to the altar to get logged out while Kirito faces off with Gabriel for the first and last time. The battle intensifies quickly, with Gabriel removing his soldier form for one entirely of dark energy to the point that he no longer looks human. Kirito then uses Release Recollection for his sword, what Eugeo named in his dying breaths as “the Night Sky Blade” and gathers everyone’s energy to finally defeat Gabriel. However, he isn’t able to get out of the Underworld in time with everyone else. Thankfully, he won’t be alone, as Asuna has decided to stay with him.

OUR TAKE
Well, there you have it, the long awaited fight between the main hero and villain and…it really doesn’t amount to much more than to paper thin characters blasting each other with swords and energy until one of them is dead. This fight’s strength is pretty much just in the visual department, because it definitely doesn’t have any in terms of story or character development. From his introduction, Gabriel has only ever been this evil weirdo who likes to consume souls and play the bad guy. He’s probably even less developed than Vassago, who at least had SOME reason behind his dickishness, even if it didn’t end up being nearly as sympathetic as they were probably going for. Gabriel though, he basically falls in with Death Gun and Sugou as being unrepentant and cartoonishly evil antagonists who the show seems to rather push off a cliff than develop into actual human beings, display any sort of moral ambiguity with, or lessons worth learning for the heroes. Nothing says that clearer than Gabriel literally turning into an inhuman monster and having Eugeo’s ghost (memory?) tell Kirito that he’s just a bad guy while Kirito couldn’t possibly have any negative or selfish or complex reasons for wanting to stay. So just like that, the trash is taken out.

It’s so strange that these two shows with main characters dubbed by Bryce Papenbrook have such stark differences in their approach to portraying their heroes and villains. Attack on Titan, as it’s gone on, has been great with blurring the line between the two opposing forces even while clearly labeling one as morally right. Meanwhile Sword Art Online can’t risk you feeling anything but unambiguous support for Kirito and his goals, to the point that they will keep the bad guy from being in any way sympathetic or interesting and tell you that the hero is one hundred percent good with no room for debate. He’s so good, in fact, that we’ll have everyone in this whole world sing his praises even if they’ve never really met him, and even bring people back from the dead, also even if they’ve never really interacted, just to give him more of a pep talk AND break even more of the established rules to give him even more of a deserved win. It’s times like this I marvel at the fact that writing is so easily marketable when you just focus entirely on wish fulfillment. But anyway, the climax is winding down and we’ll start to see the Alicization arc wrap up next week as we inch closer to the end.