My favorite anime is back!

I heard this was supposed to be a lot better than the original. It was slightly better, I guess.

The rape scenes in this one were way worse than anything we’d seen in the previous seasons. And even more gratuitous.

The show wants us to take it seriously… and then the final boss of the first half is a giant fat balloon clown? Wtf????????

Things did improve a little while Kirito was in a coma, I have to say.

But the three main plot lines did not work together well in the second half. We had the people fighting on the Ocean Turtle. First of all, it is called the “Ocean Turtle”. Second, I could barely figure out who these people were. Also given how dumb everything they did was I didn’t feel much sympathy for them.

Then we had the people in the Underworld. This was by far the best of the storylines— but each of the characters showed up in a couple episodes and then was never heard from again. Because…

In storyline number three, involving Kirito and his friends, they don’t appear for most of the show, then drop in at the end of the first two storylines to save the day, making all these characters feel pointless and like the whole show was done just to make these kids look cool.

Alice is just kind of boring?

I am glad it’s canon that Kirito and Asuna are now hundreds of years old, and that Yui is too dumb to pass the Turing test.

• Storytelling – C – Poor pacing, also not much story to tell.
• Voice – C – Was an old idea when the first season came out.
• Characters – D – They suck. The new ones are better than Kirito and Asuna but that’s not saying much.
• Attention Grab – B – I finished it. SAO and I have a history.
• Production – B – Quite well crafted.
• Overall – C-

Recommendations – Log Horizon, Hai to Gensou no Grimgar