Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II premiered this week with streaming on Crunchyroll, six years after the end of the first season in 2018. In 2012, I jumped on the Sword Art Online (SAO) hype train with millions of other anime fans. While the show remains heavily debated within the anime community, I have always defended the franchise. I enjoyed every episode of the original Sword Art Online back in 2012 and continued loving the second season as Kirito and the crew jumped into Gun Gale Online. In 2018, Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online season one aired, featuring a very different take on the SAO world – one completely without Kirito.
Kirito, as a character, was never my main draw to Sword Art Online. I simply enjoyed the show’s world-building, the plethora of characters, and the stories told in and outside of the game. Sword Art Online has flaws, of course, but I feel that compared to a large amount of the anime community, I give the series a break and just have fun watching it.
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online (SAOA: GGO) brought in new characters to the same universe as the original series, but the first season of Alternative: Gun Gale Online never reached the level of popularity that the original series did. Yet, SAOA: GGO is now airing its second season, and I remember how ecstatic I was upon hearing the original announcement. However, while watching episode one of Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II, I couldn’t remember nearly anything about the story and characters from season one. It has been over half a decade since I last saw them and even though there is a short recap OVA from 2018, I feel that episode one should have done a better job of slowly reintroducing the characters from the first season.
My original draw to SAOA: GGO in 2018 was the main character, Karen Kohiruimaki – whose in-game character is called LLENN. Karen’s major insecurity is her height, as she stands at about 183cm tall. I love how Karen deals with this insecurity by creating a game character around 140cm tall. This reminds me that who we are in games or online can be completely different from who we are in real life, and in 2018 I felt that Karen was the most relatable SAO character of the franchise thus far. I hope that season two will continue to explore the real-life side of these characters and how that affects what they do while in Gun Gale Online.
Episode one of the Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II premiere, animated by Studio A-1, focuses on the announcement of the third “Squad Jam,” a battle royal where teams get together and take each other out to rank as high as they can. LLENN doesn’t seem too excited to participate in Squad Jam but is dragged into the team when Pitohui, her opponent in the last event, reminds LLENN that she has a promise to keep. That promise is to defeat the so-called Amazons, a group of powerful female players.
Nothing too significant happens in the premiere episode of SAO: GGO II, but little LLENN (CV: Tomori Kusunoki), Pitohui (CV: Yoko Hikasa), and Fukaziroh (CV: Chinatsu Akasakiare) are a fun trio to watch and I get enough nostalgia from previous SAO installments to keep watching. I could see myself dropping the season if it’s just battle after battle with no substance or character drama, but I’m hoping for the best from an anime franchise I truly love.
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II is airing on Crunchyroll.
©2023 Sigsawa Keiichi/KADOKAWA/GGO2 Project