Opening Songs
OP 1 - Ignite (Eir Aoi)
OP 2 - Courage (Haruka Tomatsu)
Ending Songs
ED 1 - Star Tear (Luna Haruna)
ED 2 - No More Time Machine (Lisa)
Genre: Action, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction
Episodes: 24
I can just stop the review here and say "Guys, go f**king watch SAO II if you liked the original SAO". Seriously its just more of the same but done on a different setting with different characters. On some of the ends, it works, on others, it just doesn't. There's honestly not much for me to say going into this one. It IS SAO, since its obviously slapped on the title. But at the same time, its not. Its like "Star Wars" invaded the anime as well as a little bit of "Planetside", bringing it to a whole new level of unknown. Still, the change is good, while its no longer really a game about swords, it plays well enough on an emotional and intensive scale for it to be interesting, at least for the entirety of the GGO arc. There are moments where the anime does feel like it needs to step up, but at the same time, there are plenty of moments where it excels. There isn't the same feel of tragedy and crisis that existed in Aincrad, and overall, the show may not nearly be as good, but moments of brilliance still exist in "SAO II". That, in my opinion, is more than enough to make this a great show.
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| Is the new girl, Shinon, hot? I hope this answers your question. |
If you liked the songs in the original "SAO", you'll like the songs here, simple as that. They went for similar feels with all their songs, which I can understand, though I must say I'm not really a fan of either of the songs used in this one (or in the original for that matter, I was getting rather sick of "Crossing Field" and "Innocence"). Anyway, the artists kind of did role swaps here, with the first opening, "Ignite", sang by Eir Aoi. In my opinion, it felt weaker than "Innocence", which was the song that she sang in season 1, used for the 2nd opening, and that means quite a bit since I'm already fairly sick of "Innocence". The first ending theme is "Star Tear" by Haruna Luna, which is also a ballad, and since you know I hate ballads, we don't have to really go in here, don't we?
The 2nd opening theme is "Courage" by Haruka Tomatsu, and I'm fairly surprised by this one, since I'm usually not too big of a Haruka Tomatsu fan. Its a good song, probably my favorite out of all the new ones in "SAO II". Its powerful, its epic, and it has all the feels that made it look and SOUND like a opening song for an epic anime (too bad the 2nd half wasn't all that epic). The 2nd ending is where Lisa steps in, with her song named "No More Time Machine". Since its an ending theme, I kind of knew what to expect, and well, its a slow song. Its not exactly a ballad type, but rather the slow song with strong, emotional and impactful vocals. Not really into those as well.
Rating: 8.0/10
I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it a lot. But obviously, the impression wasn't nearly as strong here as when I watched the first season of this show. As mentioned earlier, the lack of tragedy, crisis or impending doom really set the tone down quite a bit, and most of it is just Kirito trying to learn a new MMORPG by...adding another girl into his harem. I know I know, not a great way to explain it, but that's the best way to describe it. As usual, this will probably have a stronger impact on those who have played MMOs (like myself), and will appeal to that audience more. Even so, the good fight scenes are here, the sexy girls are here (though its going to be Shinon for more than half of this shit), and the virtual world theme stays, so there's not really much that went wrong, it just didn't have nearly as much impact as before. Its still fun to watch, and there are a lot of great moments (Death Gun was amazing, and the final few episodes involving Yuuki were some of the most emotional moments I had in anime in 2014).
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| Why have a slumber party in real life when you can have a slumber party in... a game? |
Of course, the anime stars its poster boy Kirito as the protagonist. After the ALO incident and attending school like a real person should for quite a while, Kirito finally had a proper dream. No, its not to become a pro gamer, its to become a programmer that links the virtual world to the real one. Still a far fetched dream, but hey, at least the kid decides to do something for once. Unfortunately for him, a job popped up from an old acquaintance of his, one of those who was involved with the SAO incident. Apparently, some douche from another game called GGO (Gun Gale Online) was killing people in real life after shooting them INSIDE the game. Sounds preposterous, but the government has decided to take action. What better person could they send to investigate other than a SAO survivor? And the best one at that. Kirito dives into GGO to investigate about Death Gun, presumably with his life on the line. He runs into gamer girl Shinon, who decides to be his guide into GGO as he was mistaken as a girl. Shit starts, and of course, it isn't pretty.
"SAO II" does well as a sequel to the original. Props for trying something new, GGO was different, but refreshing at the same time. There was a lot more development for Shinon than the other girls, and that puts her as one of my favorite girls in the series thus far. There will be a season 3, because, well, fans want it. And also obviously because they ended the serious in a semi-cliffhanger esque style. Well, even if they do manage to release a season 3 in the future, I won't complain, more SAO isn't exactly a bad thing.
Peace.
