Anime: Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II

SAOA:GGO II is a 2024 continuation of the 2018 spin-off anime to Sword Art Online's 2nd season, still following LLENN with her P90. Despite the issues that this anime and its precursor have, overall it is not as bad as one could expect. I would imagine that SAO fans will like this as it is a lot like that SAO arc from the 2nd season (or it may have been an OVA), where all the characters just played together to get an item.

The plot is all too simple and consists of generally two arcs; most of the series is taken up by all the characters from the first season coming in for a squad battle royale called Squad Jam 3, while the latter smaller part involves the same squads going after a single team of enemy AI in a castle. The first part was actually quite enjoyable, as it can be compared (in a good way) to something maybe like Die Hard in terms of semi-mindless action or some other action B-movie, except with this being a battle royale game. While the OST and BGM are worth only of marginal attention, even if well made, they worked well to create a sleek atmosphere, like at the start of the fight on the ship. The relationship between Pitohui and LLENN had a nice build up and played out well in the end, though the revelation that Pitohui was apparently afraid of LLENN had hardly any serious development behind it and seemed weird in the end, even if the final battle was well directed and was fun. Also, multiple characters seemed to have been killed off too early, such as during the storming of the ship. This part also has elements of fighting that are simply cringeworthy, like yet another lightsaber duel (because since the setting is sci-fi, Star Wars must be referenced in some way) and when the character M gets briefly strangled in a very weird fight, though the characters even joke about how that fight was written right after, so maybe it was some ridiculous post-metairony. Nevertheless, this first part was vindicates a lot of misgivings I had personally for the first season and SAO as a whole.

The second part is more brief and had a different aesthetic and feel to it, oddly enough, as opposed to the first part. There was hardly anything to it in terms of dialogue, just several teams, including LLENN'S team, trying to force their way into the castle, with LLENN getting captured at one point. That and the seemingly odd actions of the 'AI' made for a somewhat uneasy atmosphere, as if something unexpected was going to happen, but nothing did at least in GGO, which some would have considered a serious anticlimax. There seems to be a hint to some kind of subplot underneath it all, namely the AI soldiers and them waking up. It is barely touched upon and only in the end, meaning it is probably at most a teaser to something (like the political/mercenary arc in SAO 3) or, as has happened multiple times in SAO series, it leads to some meaningless dead end of a subplot.

Overall, the series has two things that differentiate it from SAO, and somewhat from most other series of this type. Firstly, there are no stakes, even compared to the first season. Whether this is a good thing or not, at least it spares us from some of the attempts to raise stakes in earlier SAO, with all the ethical ponderings of killing people in video games, and is just tells it straight; these are just people playing PUBG with a couple of twists. The only thing that can qualify as "stakes" in this series was the rivalry at the end of the first arc between LLENN and the cut pre-Disney Star Wars villain, but even that feels more like a buddy moment, despite the villainous stance adopted by LLENN, this being the flip side of the relaxed nature of the plot. The character development and motivations are dulled, but that is probably not a strong side to any SAO title anyway. Secondly, this just has a lot more gags and, unlike in SAO, they are not based on dated cliche sex jokes. These gags are either ridiculous enough to be somewhat funny or are just unfunny, but both the gags and absence of stakes as such bring an oddly calm series, albeit this probably makes it boring for most people.

The animation is alright. In the very least it is preferable to the dated and overused animation from the main series. Fights and backgrounds are well animated with enough frames. The "pencil shading" effect that can sometimes be seen in characters is welcome given the warmer and soft lighting in most of the scenes, since it adds to the more relaxed atmosphere and once again differentiates itself from the main series, or most anime for that matter. That said, some of the character designs are a bit simple and don't have that much detail to them.

There is a small, but somewhat sentimental reason to watch this anime. The light novel that SAO 2 was based on, along with its description of the free for all game mode in GGO, predates any iterations of battle royale games/mods as we know them now, even Survival Games in Minecraft and the original Battle Royale DayZ mod, although it is in itself predated by other works describing the same concept like the movie Battle Royale and Hunger Games, though they don't put it into the context of a game. So in this way, SAO is kind of like a stepping stone to the battle royale game genre, albeit it probably did not influence the genre in any noticeable way.

It is a bit interesting as to why this series was released now. It has been over 6 years since the first season, which wasn't anything too much to write home about, though neither is this season I suppose. It seems that, like with SAO Progressive, A-1 are exploring how to continue/revive SAO, as even if SAO Alicization was still popular with fans, it was clearly in a dead end in regards to the plot (given the ridiculous ending and the mess of different storylines) and was not nearly in the mainstream as the original SAO. SAO Progressive has switched to movie format, which in itself probably means that it will not have the same presence for the full season that an anime season would have for the viewers, but it also does not offer too much new stuff. The only other animated franchise from Kawahara Reki, Accel World, seems to have been abortive, so that is also probably related to the current attempts to work on SAO IP. Time will tell if it is successful, but it is no longer 2014, around when the series was at its peak of hype, or even just before Covid, seeing as there were plenty of fans ready for Alicization. The IP is old now and there has not been that much consistent and meaningful development to it. A lot of the former fans have also stopped keeping up with SAO. If Kawahara and A-1 want a shot at getting a slice of a season (in terms of viewers and hype), then they can't simply do a rehash of old stuff, like with Progressive, and this anime is more in the right direction, even if it still falls short.

In the end, SAOA:GGO is at least enjoyable, even if it isn't what would be considered a good anime. The series is much less serious and ambitious in its ideas as opposed to the mainstream SAO, which means that its plot is much more streamlined, although probably too simple for the average 150 iq anime viewer, while SAO at this point can be used to show how not to write scripts. In the very least the first arc is worth watching if one has seen the first season, has time on their hands (and alcohol) for the fun factor of old Stallone movies (there is a character meant to be a satire of him in the anime) and a slice of 2018 nostalgia, if one can overlook some of the more impossible or stupid elements to the plot or of the fights. You will watch it once and within a week it will disappear from memory like a dream.