SAO II: Throughts so far?

yea, Kirio and Asuna really were the main characters, I myself was quite fond of them, they made quite the duo. The other characters I didn't care for so much.
Well now that you mention " time acceleration" that makes me more interested! well I think a movie wouldn't needed to be rushed at all, in fact they did make a movie actually but i think it was more or less filler and how the characters of SAO met Kirito and so on. I thrive on character development, absolutely thrive upon on it, and with that being said yes there has been some character development. And I do like the new additions, ofc the anime is somewhat in its early days. And I never actually read the light novels myself.

 

Lemme fix that.
Pros
*Dat animation
*Sinon's backside
*Futuristic badassery with guns, lightsabers and cool maps.
* Sick ass lightsaber moves
*Kirito using the old female character charm trick from the old mmo days when people believed you if you faked being a girl and they gave you free shit.
*The music....
*Hinting at Brain Burst and Kirito's possible development of it.
*Game themed anime
*Mostly every second the lightsaber is on screen.
*The Ed will probably change after ep 12(thank God)
THIS

Cons
*The harem is no more, It's Asuna for lyfe. (The other girls are just eye candy for viewers now, which isn't entirely a bad thing.)
*Not enough Leafa/Suguha boobs fanservice (*sigh* oh well, i have other shows for that)
*There will only be 24 eps and the Alicization chapter will probably be squashed in there too.
*We'll probably only get an Ova for the Accel World Crossover.
*The second op song won't be as good.


I'd give it a 7-8 so far. If this continues to follow the Light novel more, it'll deserve a 9. (not that i use Mal anymore though.)
It's no .hack but it'll do till we get more Log horizon. And a Accel world Sequel.

 

I am not articulate so bare with me. I absolutely loved Sao so my opinion is bias. I don't think Sao will ever be able to replicate that original exhilaration I felt for the show. I am a huge fan of it being an anime about being in a game. Never watched .hack and log horizon was also amazing.

On to the point and topic I have been excited like a little kid getting a new toy waiting for each new episode. I am liking the new world and the guns being involved in a vrmmo. I still haven't quite got used to kirito looking similar to a girl when he first used it to his advantage it was reminiscent of those days when people still pretended to be girls in mmos. I haven't read the Ln at all so Idk where it's all heading but to me it felt like it started slow taking the time to introduce the characters back, the story, and ggo. After those got out of the way it become a much faster pace moving straight into the confrontations.

It doesn't have the gravity of effect that the original pulled off even though there is that small margin of death possible it's just not the same knowing you can die without losing your life. It breeds lack of discipline and carelessness that surfaced during the second season.

Sinon so far is a great addition to the characters. She has a great back story. I don't feel like she is apart of the harem just yet as she has another love interest. It looks more like she is using Kirito as a rival and a catalyst for her trying to overcome her fear.

Ggo is a great concept but the only time I felt any real action come out that was worth mentioning was the first gun battle Sinon had. Also lacks a lot of player, monster, and npc interaction. Kirito's fights are the only ones worth watching so far.

Overall I still am loving it and the cliffhangers are killing me. I am reserving my ratings because they are based on re watch value.

 

BTW the other interesting thing about Sinon is how finally we have a main character suffering from PTSD like a normal person.

 

Thank you Shogun.
I'm actually glad that Kirito is using the new charms of his new avatar in GGO, and also caused a girl to slap him. So proud of him.
Yeah I was actully impressed at Sinon's backstory and that her PTSD is starting to show through the game as well.

anyways, now that thats all out of the way.....

Wha... what the hell?!?! Was that an actual episode, filler episode, filler half episode, or what was it exactly?
This is going to be dragged out, isn't it?

 

Yeah what I think they are trying to do is what they did last season and make one arc last half a season. Ironically while this means SAO had to be rushed in order to fit all of that into 13 episodes it means they had to drag things out in this case since the entire arc pretty much revolved around just one PK. But in this case it's better to drag things out than rush them because the characters and setting get the time they need to develop. I'm not sure what comes after GGO but I'm betting you can expect Kirito to start a new game somewhere around the halfway point.

 

there either gonna start the Mother's Rosario arc or Underworld. I hope they go with Underworld and use MR as a filler /special.

 

Underworld is the one where time in the game accelerates right? I remember seeing a mention of it on the Wiki but that's all I know.

 

Yea thats the one it best arc by far imo. Its six books long so hopefully its longer than 25 eps. Only thing between it is MR and some early and late side storys from SAO and ALO(the fairy game). MR has a good story too so maybe it could be a small set of ova eps between PB(Phantom Bullet) and UW(Underworld), cant wait to see what they decide to do.

 

If it's that long they may wait for season 3 and just make all 25 episodes on it.

 

yeeeeeeah......While I don't hate it as much as you I honestly would be hard pressed to find anything great to say about it. I mean the pacing is okay, the main characters are okay, the plot is okay, and what little action we see is okay. But in a way it's better for a show to be truly bad because then maybe you can at least laugh at the badness. But with this the only things that caught my interest so far is the girl with PTSD just because she at least has some depth to her character....some.

The problem it seems they want to do a one game per arc and two arcs per season kinda thing. So they are pacing things with that in mind and while the pacing was better than in season 1 it was (Ironicaly) too slow! SAO suffered from being soo rushed and skipping over character development in order to fit in character introductions and plot points. GGO takes time for all of that and more and while this helps the pacing it's not helping the suspense and entertainment value. Rushing your audience through the show is bad but putting them to sleep might be even worse.

Again I don't really hate it but I can't give it a very high rating either. The show just needs more substance to it if it really wants to grab people.

 

This is like watching an experiment being done.
Subjects appear to be reacting badly to SAO II, with even the strongest of subjects appearing to lose morale. Will continue watching to see how they react to the half season point and whether SAO II can be saved.

 

I'm not sure if I'd say I'm reacting "badly" just I honestly can't say much for it. It's not really that bad either but it's just nothing all that special. Even with episode 13 we FINALLY got a decent action sequence but it was far too short and considering it was against THE DEATH GUN this was basically a boss right but it felt more like a mid boss at best if that.

 

So I heard there was rape.

 

eh sorta.

Spoiler

In the last few minutes and it's more just the friend who we saw it the opening in a scene with death gun.... turn out to be Death Gun (Thanks a fucking lot for making that painfully obvious opening. Even most shonen don't normally make it that obvious) and then he just kinda jumps on her. Nothing happens though he just acts like a total psycho.

 

QUALITY WRITING SAO

 

Spoiler

The funny thing is I was only shocked to learn the friend was death gun because I didn't think the animators would ACTUALLY BE SO STUPID AS TO PUT THAT IN THE OPENING!

Even with say Fairy Tail or One Piece you see scenes taht are technically spoilers but they are so vague or out of context you don't know anything too important. For example

Spoiler

In The Fairy Tail opening you see the dragons, future rouge fighting Natsu, and Ultear sacrificing herself. However Just knowing the arc has dragons in it doesn't tell you much and you don't know the one he is fighting is future Rouge until he shows up and it's pretty obvious he's a villain the moment you see him. lastly the scene with Ultear isn't very clear and I couldn't even tell it was her. Even if you could tell there was no way to know what she was doing besides from really flashy magic

So while Shonen tend to have some spoilerly stuff in their openings they normally don't shove the villains secret identity in your face. Not saying it's never happened before but that isn't an excuse.

 

I already called it way before the reveal though.
And I knew his motives were gonna be generic as ****

 

I know but I was just foolishly hopeful they weren't that stupid. I was kinda hoping that the scene was at least implying he was going to die or something rather than be it was him. But seriously could his motive have been any lamer? Even "I want to take over the world" would have been better. Plus his crazy obsessed face quickly got annoying after he said the girls name for the hundredth time.