Mini Anime Review - Sword Art Online (Arc Two)

Now for the fun. The massive stain on the SAO series that is arc 2.This arc takes place in the sequel to SAO Named ALfheim Online, where Kirito has discovered that Asuna's character had been taken after the end of arc 1, as opposed to reawakening in her body like the others. Exactly how she was kept in I don't know, I understand the new owner of the system wants her to stay inside but how did he actually trap her in the first place? Oh well the plot is too important for details we must move on!
Now you may ask why would anyone ever go into another video game after being trapped in one for an entire year? Keep asking yourself as it still isn't addressed in this show, maybe kids just love reopening massive mental scars and throwing themselves in harms way. 

Of course you could say he is driven by love and that allowed him to overcome his fear ... but even at the end of the season they keep playing. In fact even more Ex-SAO survivors join in the "fun" of immersing themselves in an MMO they know a madman had influence over .... because remember how fun it was last time? 

Anyway this world is less grounded, and contains magic and fairy folk in, to mix things up a bit, as well as bringing a very nasty garish colour scheme which seems to give each race a colour and beat you round the head with it till you remember which race is which.

And this massive division between each race is more annoying than interesting, the division of land makes Kirito's journey feel like a pain as the land is all owned by enemies, rather than the world of Sword Art where it felt truly open to explore. 

This arc also has no feelings of fear or concern for the characters, as it is a basic video game, with re-spawn points and player killing being fine, this leads to the fights in AFO being very forgettable, as the only cost was a few more hours of flying. However watching a few more hours of this arc is a fate worse than death so maybe it is even more tense for the viewer than arc one.

Now remember the tonne of 1 episode love interests in arc one? Did you hate the new girls distracting you from the plot? Then Fear No More! This arc we take away all the one episode romances ...... and make one big long even more pointless love interest, if you hate 5 girls distracting him for a second then you will love our single busty distraction much more! 

AND TO MAKE THIS FORCED LOVE TRIANGLE BETTER .... IT'S HIS SISTER! Wait isn't that bad? Oh no don't worry, she only thinks she is his sister ..... does that make her worse or him? Oh well.

So if the incest put you off the arc, don't worry Asuna gets a lot more of an active role this time! Oh wait ... she is locked away in the castle waiting for Mario to save her, sorry I mean Kirito. And that isn't a metaphor, she literally gets locked in a fucking bird cage. Does she escape I hear you ask? does she show any of her bad ass  fighting skills from the first arc?

Well ... she does escape. And then gets assaulted sexually  by tentacle slugs. Yeah. That happened.

BACK TO KIRITO

Mary Stu comes back with double the BS power, this time he is just a basic character and still over powers every guy he meets, for no raisin! This arc he decided to be Cloud Strife and borrowed the buster sword. I will admit, I did enjoy the way he wrecks a guy with a knife in real life towards the end, and shockingly he isn't the worst part of this arc. However the bullshit love triangle takes away a lot of the genuinely fun parts of the show.

I do enjoy the reunion, and it is pleasing to see Kirito show some actual positive emotions, to someone other than the arc one loli or anyone in the harem.

The soundtrack of this show is not as good as Arc one, and looks a lot worse than Arc one, all in all avoid it entirely. Yui comes back though, so i can still give 0.5 for characters.


Rating - 
Looks - 3/5
Sound -3/5
Plot - 0.5/5
Characters - 0.5/5
Overall - 7/20