First Episode Mayhem - Gun Gale Online (SAO II)

After an insane amount of time spent writing fanfiction and generally lazing around, I finally got around to watching the sequel to one of my guilty pleasure animes: Swort Art Online II.

The episode starts off with a scene from some 'seedy' bar in Gun Gale Online. After some brief exposition in the form of a guy getting shot on screen and THEN dying offscreen, I liking it so far. What I was worried most about was the lack of stakes in GGO. What I mean is that Sword art online made things interesting because of its permadeath and it makes viewers more interested in what will happen through out the show.

This was clearly SAO's selling point, in that it makes fans scared of the fact that their favourite characters can be killed off. Alfenhiem online didn't have that, and as such fans of SAO were more inclined to be bored because seriously, what happened to all that exciting 'I'm gonna die' stuff we were promised? In my opinion the second arc was pretty okay. It's the fact that they try to fatten up a series clearly fit for 12 episodes into 26 (or was it 24?) episodes that makes me kinda mad, Have some self control people!

Ahem. I got off track there.

So yes, at this point i was rather liking the whole premise of the anime. It had the potential to be very very interesting and I just sat back and relaxed as the episode continued on its merry way.

And then I saw this .

Let me go bleach my brain. 

Wow. What a fucking train wreck.

That picture over there marked the end of the scene I am dubbing 'The Duitful Waifu' because that is what it literally felt like. What happened?! Where was the Asuna of SAO? What happened to that brave, determined, smart girl which we all fell in love with in sword art online? The character in this scene is NOT Asuna. It felt like a two dimensional picture copy and pasted into the scene, while a voice recorder just played "Omg Kirito-kun I wove you so much!! Look at us so fab!"

Haha, oh hey, remember when Asuna had a PERSONALITY??

Just....wow. The first episode and it's already making me angry with how they portrayed Asuna. There is no longer any depth to her. She feels and acts like a literal piece of cardboard who had merely took the form of Asuna. Yeesh...what a rude awakening. Kirito is still his normal standoffish self and even I felt that he had much more character! Are you kidding me? And this is only the first episode! Sufficed to say, I am not looking forward to see how much they destroyed Asuna's character and what kind of nonsense inducing headache they'll be giving me in the episodes to come.

The fact that they make references to SAO gave me a whole bucket full of sarcastic musings too. No really. It was just that upsetting.

And of course, I leave you all with this joke :

Er...is it just me?

Is this one of those hints that eventually come true? Because you know, canon and cannon. Great jumping jellybeans. The KiritoAsuna couple is fucked.