English Dub Season Review: Sword Art Online: Alicization

Another Season of Sword Art Online is in the books, this time spread out over a few years, but with a lot more of what people both love and despise about the series to make up for it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since covering Alicization since it began airing on Toonami two years ago, it’s that many people have basically made up their minds about how they feel about this show by now. Either you are a passionate fan who has a whole inventory list of side steps to criticisms and complaints about the series OR you’re someone who has long sense noticed how flawed the series is as a whole and are more than willing to dig into it and rip it to shreds. Like all things, there is a spectrum between those two points, but with how divisive SAO has proven to be since the back half of its first season, it becomes clear that these two sections will be eternally present and at each other’s throats.

As for the season itself, Alicization covers the 9th-18th Light Novels, adapting ten whole books in the series compared to the average of four per season it had done before. And it seems that length was warranted, as this arc is basically an epic told over the course of these episodes that forces big ethical questions that prior seasons had only hinted at while taking inventive concepts previously established and takes them to their logical extreme. Instead of simply jumping into another new VRMMO and solving a case there while also adding a new girl to his not-harem, Kirito is instead suddenly attacked by one of the remaining killers from SAO and placed inside, The Underworld, a fully formed society for Artificial Intelligence…and then adds several new girls to his not-harem. And also a new best friend!…who sadly has to die so that Kirito can snag another girl. But beyond that, Kirito and his pal Eugeo’s journey throughout the Underworld to find Eugeo’s friend Alice is definitely a step away from the established formula of other arcs in SAO. The biggest benefit of this is that, unlike previous arcs, Kirito is used to bounce development off him and onto Eugeo, who has a much more compelling narrative arc that is sadly cut short.

However, just as this comes with much of the good that SAO is known for, primarily the animation and music, it also brings more of the bad, specifically its questionable use of its female cast, including more flagrant uses of pushing them into sexual assault for drama. While these scenes are few and far between, they are unfortunately still a staple of this series that continues to rear its ugly head at inopportune times. The end of the first half of the season, which concludes the initial goal of finding Alice, is also rather abysmal in how it wastes characters, stops and starts with awful pacing, and has a gloriously terrible climax that has to be seen to be believed. This leads into the second half, which actually sees Kirito effectively out of the story most of it, accidentally showing how much the story could benefit from removing him entirely, which is made all the more clear when his return at the end only takes away from time that could be spent further developing more interesting characters. The ending here, while not nearly as bad as the first half’s, leaves a lot to be desired and kinda ends up not with a few too many loose ends.

The light novel series is still ongoing as of the time of this writing and is currently on its final arc, meaning there is likely at least one more season left to adapt. When that will come about, given the four year gap between this and the last season. However, aside from picking at and ripping apart the new arc specific flaws that will come with each new installment, there doesn’t seem to be any major new takes that can really be made about this show. Either you like it or you don’t and either way is fine. I don’t think I can say that I do like it on its face, but I do think it can be used as a learning experience for what writers take for granted and overlook. And really, a four year break is probably what anyone would need after this in order to not get fully sick of this if the haven’t already. But however you feel about Sword Art Online, I think we can all enjoy good visuals when we see them.