⭐SAO Alicization War of Underworld Ep 34-35: Watch Along & Analysis

You are very lucky you get to watch these in succession while many MANY of us had to wait between season breaks. By your count, Episode 37 (Aka Season3 Vol 4 Ep 1) Prepare for one of the greatest Intro's ever. LET's GO!!!

While Lizbeth's speech alone is enough to get me teary eyed, there is another part of that scene that kills me every time. The fact that the remaining Members of the Sleeping Knights are present. They all agreed that they would disband if another one of their members passed away from their respective Terminal Illnesses. Seeing them all here together tells us two things. After Yuki passed away they chose to stay together and all of them are still alive to begin with. I don't recall how much time has passed between Mother's Rosario and here but all of them have either beaten it or are still battling their diseases. No joke every time I see The Sleeping Knights on screen I lose it because it tells us they are still fighting in more ways than one.

Gaming University

The bridge between the real and the virtual world is something that you should keep in mind. This is a very important concept for the universe that SAO takes place in, and as it moves forward, it should become much more important. Speaking of which, I finally caught up with the English release of the Accel World novels, and (With no spoilers) the revelations they make near the newer volumes just blew my mind. Especially taking into consideration SAO’s Unital Ring 1 (Which I was also able to read and is very good btw). After you finish SAO, and if you watch Accel World, you have to check out the novels for Accel World as well. (I personally still prefer SAO over AW) Before the release of Unital Ring, Reki mentioned that he wanted to make this arc more about the real world as he hadn’t explored that subject too much. IDK if he ended up doing that since I’ve only read vol 1, but another thing he mentioned is that he wanted to give more development to the other characters in the series apart from the three main girls (Asuna, Sinon, Suguha) and Kirito. With the first volume alone I can see how he’s starting to work on that, which is great in my opinion since AW (Accel World) really goes deep into almost all of its important characters. Also, you would be surprised how many people hate on Kirito and Asuna's relationship. They say that their relationship was very forced and that she became a damsel in distress after they started dating (some guy I talked with even said that she became a prop). I doubt I need to say how that’s completely untrue since even in the Fairy Dance arc, she didn’t just sit there and wait for him to arrive. She went through the effort of escaping, and even though she failed, if it wasn’t for that attempt, he wouldn’t have been able to get into the world tree to begin with. Anyway, like the rest of the Alicization arc, a lot of the character’s internal monologue and small details are cut from the novels. One that isn’t too important but is just adds a little more to the scene is what Asuna was thinking once she reunited with Kirito. At that time, she was remembering what Higa said about him having lost allies while fighting the church, and she thought about how “A massive source of loss, regret, and despair had torn a deep and terrible hole in Kirito’s heart.” At that moment, she thought to herself “But I’m going to fill that hole, even if it’s a bottomless void. If I can’t do it alone, Ill borrow the help of all those people whose hearts he touched. I refused to believe there’s a sense of loss that no amount of love can fill.” Another detail that I feel should’ve been added is that, during the scene where Asuna is explaining things to all the Knights and soldiers, it is explicitly said that while Renly stood up to declare they should fight as well since Asuna isn’t god and is instead a human like them, Alice noticed that he wasn’t looking at Asuna while he said it, but instead looking at Tiese specifically, like he was trying to encourage her (Tiese spoke a bit during the meeting as well, pointing out that Eugeo also broke the seal and some other stuff). A detail that is also there but not included too much in the novels and not at all in the anime, is that certain characters say that Renly reminds them about Eugeo in some ways. I think the places where they say this the most is in the two Alicization games. In similar note, in the game, SAO Alicization: Rising Steel they had an event where it showed what the girls talked about the night that Asuna arrived. It isn’t important, but it’s still fun to see regardless. Now, for the next two episodes you will watch, you have to keep in mind at the end of episode 12 (36?) that this episode released December 28, 2019 and was the last episode we got before the studio took a break that lasted almost 7 months, releasing episode 13 (37?) on July 11, 2020 (The break was extended due to COVID). And when this episode released, it was immediately met with controversy. It gave anime-only’s and haters of the show more fuel to hate on it with (And it definitely was used) and it completely disappointed LN fans on what they did to the scene. I know for a fact you will know what scene I’m talking about when you get to it, but I just wanted to give a head up that in the novels, that scene was nothing like the way they depicted it (There was a few things that I was worried people would get riled up for in that scene, but they took it to another level). Since it seems I’ve talked a bit on the hate the show has gotten, I guess that will be part of the fun fact. Fun (or maybe not so fun) fact, the main reason that SAO got as much hate as it did, despite it being completely unwarranted, can be traced back to a single video by an anime youtuber named Digirbro (I think he recently changed his name to just Digi). The video was named: Sword Art Online – An Analytical Diatribe. It was a supposed “analysis” of the first season of SAO. I put “analysis” in quotations since the entire video was filled with nothing but lies, misconceptions, or things that they made up then declared them as facts. Many people watched this video and instead of checking it out themselves, they took their word on it and began hating on it themselves. After that, many other Anime youtubers jumped on the hate train since that was what got them views, and because of other youtubers like Mother’s Basement, the hate continues on even though his videos are filled with the same lies as Digibro’s did in the past. Later on, Digibro did admit that he wasn’t paying much attention to the show since he was watching it with his brother (I think it was brother) and they were talking among themselves at the same time. Now everyone tried to find flaws with the show where there are none (The show obviously has flaws, but instead of pointing those out, the make things up just because). There have been many people debunking almost every single on of his claims, but people still chose to ignore them, so yeah.

Gen

I would like to think Liz was exaggerating a bit but i cant remember, its been a while since I read the light novel. I would assume when she refers to forcing some people to take meds, it is to help them cope with PTSD etc. It will probably be very traumatic for all the players on both sides, diving into what is basically a warzone, with blood, no pain absorbers and actually killing the souls of the Underworlder's. Anyway, here is a reminder that episode 36 has an after credit scene, although it isn't important. And 37 is when the second half of War of Underworld starts, so prepare for a new OP

I loved the scene of Liz's speech. Although the SAO thing does make a little sense, the players who converted from SAO converted with far more experience and "skills" than the players of ALO. So much like Kirito and Klein's conversation about Dual Weilding, "Yeah they would be pissed you had something they didnt." And remember the SAO players spent 2 years inside a death game. Who knows what happened to them in there. I mean we have already had three "Death Guns" murderers running around. So yeah, the governement is liklely going overboard with their observation and "help" to the SAO survivors, to prevent as many of those as possible. Also Kirito, probably gets some...special treatment, because he worked so closely with Kikuoka who was in charge of the whole SAO response. In the Underworld's creation legend. There are Four gods. Stacia, Goddess of Creation. Solus, Goddess of the Sun. Terraria, Goddess of the Land. and Vecta, God of Darkness. So there are our four superuser accounts.

MasterAries7