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Genuinely underrated.

Fluid, 2D, dance/idol scenes, TWO D . 5 ending songs, FIVE. An interesting cast and universe, that doesn't rely on ridiculous quirks or tropes.


Overall: 8/10
Heroine Tarumono is a fun SOL anime with some drama sprinkled in between. There isn't an extremely serious story. The drama isn't deep, in fact it's fairly cheap.

What works are the characters and the universe. All the chars feel genuine and have great chemistry! And most have their own story and lore as they've acted as main chars of their own anime or honeyworks MV's. It's almost like a giant collab work or a bunch of cameo's, which is ... what makes this anime as enjoyable as it is!

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Art/Animation: 6-8/10
The quality has it's ups and downs and there are scenes that are noticeable worse than others. The backgrounds are fairly average, but the style, colors, and char designs fit well. Most importantly, the idol live scenes are fully 2d and surprisingly really fluid and have varying angles, rather than a still front facing shot!

Sound: 9/10
Honeyworks make great music. Five endings. Multiple insert songs. All of which are fairly popular songs.
The voice acting is great, as expected of the cast. But the ost's on the otherhand are lackluster, or completely forgettable tbh. That being said, they do their jobs of setting the scene, and the honeyworks songs usually follow right after, which more than makes up for it.

Characters: 8/10
Interesting enough to browse their wiki pages. They all have great chemistry, interesting backstories, and don't rely on tropes or gimmicks to work.

Story: 7/10
The biggest issue with this anime is the pacing. There's barely enough foreshadowing for any of the drama that happens and the resolution to these events are short and lack any genuine consequences. Although the mc is Hiyori, the focus shifts to the idol duo often, which adds to their idol-manager relationship, which is a large part of why this anime works. Except, Hiyori and lipxlip act separately for the most part. All the drama focuses around Hiyori, while lipxlip usually has a straightforward practice/idol routine before appearing for a resolution and "climax" live.

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Final Thoughts:
Ultimately, the first episode feels unnecessarily long for an introduction and I only truly began enjoying the series through the second episode. Conversely, the final "arc" or event feels a bit rushed despite being the most important event of the series.

The anime definitely would have benefitted from skipping a few ops (despite being a honeyworks anime) and having another ep to make it a 13 ep cour. That being said, the series was a fun watch and I'd definitely want to see an anime of some of the other characters, especially Sena and Mona!

Actually great. Given how Asuna's character and the entire franchise was practically butchered in Alicization, I pretty much dreaded the idea of a Progressive movie with Asuna as mc and a bunch of anime original content. I had serious doubts about this movie and high expectations and I have to say, A1 did a pretty good job.

Story: 8.5/10
Out of all SAO anime media, I think Aria the Starless Night may have the best story. Unlike the TV anime or Ordinal Scale, the cast of this movie boils down to 3 people, 2 for the most part. Rather than a large messy, basically God+Harem ... cast, the characters in this movie are Asuna, Mito, and Kirito. For once, SAO is able to properly flesh out genuine and relateable characters. The world building is done right and the scenes do a great job adding real weight to the conflict and plot.

Art: 10/10
This was probably where most of my doubts were coming in. Ali's sakuga was beyond awful for most of it's runtime and Shingo Adachi, animation director for SAO 1-Ordinal Scale, was nowhere to be found in this movie. Which was a disaster for Alicization, wowever, the scenes were consistent and the sakuga was definitely beyond what anything A1 could have done with a TV anime. While there were some noticeably dopey looking faces here and there, the action was solid and the visuals were cinema worthy.

Sound: 9/10
Sound effects don't break the immersion anymore. Whatever janky surreal attempts at sfx they tried in Ali is no longer there. The themes aren't dialed to quadruple bass remix nightcore edition and Yuki Kajiura made some great tracks?/remixes of Swordland, Luminous Sword, etc, the OG themes. While I personally can't recall any new special theme for this movie except the ED from LiSA, the music and sounds were pleasant, not distracting, and greatly added to the movie.

Character: 8/10
Asuna is the main character of this movie, if you haven't heard yet, and Mito, a new anime original char, plays a supporting role in the story. Contrary to expectations, Mito's portrayal felt so natural, I would even say that Asuna never would have worked as the mc of this movie without her. Kirito, despite having most of the LN development cut, has his character fleshed out subtly. The chemistry between the characters feel significantly more natural to the audience and the comedy was finally able to work thanks to this. Overall, Kirito, Asuna, and Mito were all relatable and realistic characters to them, despite how SAO has portrayed them before.

Overall: 9/10
A very interesting adaptation. A1 did a great job balancing the source material, anime original content, and linking it to the 2012 TV anime. Obviously, there aren't any mind blowing developments in this movie given when it takes place chronologically, but the world building and character development that was sorely missed in the original tv anime are on point for once. The animation and music are definitely a cut above Alicization and the TV anime and Aria of a Starless Night did not disappoint.

Despite having poor seating and the lights being left on for half the movie, I ended up enjoying this movie quite a bit and I'll probably watch it one more time before it's out of theaters.

Unfortunately, A-1 is continues to fail to live up to their Ordinal Scale success with WOU P2. Both the art quality and direction have been dropping since the beginning of Alicization and ironically, the reviews for this anime are equally as bad, with the top review claiming to have seen all 11 episodes before the 4th ep even aired or praising the art/animation as the only thing of merit when it's clear that there's been a significant drop in quality.

Story: 6/10
War of Underworld continues to get butchered by poor decisions leading to the audience lacking a clear understanding as to what's going on. Major issues ... stem from the lack of details in Alicization and WOU P1, however, that isn't to say P2 is without fault. Many deeper elements of the story are skimmed while 'key' points of the story are spoon fed to the audience with monologue. To put into perspective, an iconic scene from the lightnovels, depicting Kirito's trauma's and development as a character has been replaced with an anime-original recap sequence which not only confuses the audience, but also changes the premise of Kirito's character in the anime entirely. Another notable cut is the removal of Kayaba's stating a potential reason for trapping 10,000 players in SAO and the explanation of his character which ties into the core premise of SAO as a franchise.

Art & Animation: 6/10 [+1] (7/10)
The Art and Animation are aspects that are exclusive to an Anime Adaptation of a written work which ultimately play a huge role in determining whether the adaptation has any merits or not. However, the backgrounds were the only thing praiseworthy in this adaptation of Alicization until the 8th episode. If you've been paying attention to the many fights in the adaptation of Alicization, there's a clear trend of battles being prolonged with "sword locks" or two characters having a shoving match with their swords, instead of a real battle taking place (most likely to save time and effort rather than drawing out extended battle scenes). Some scenes look horrendously out of place with characters eyes replaced with literal cartoon dots and curves or just an absurd lack of detail and incorrect proportions. And the severe lack of any form of fight choreography in certain battles ruins the immersion.
[+1]
However, during the 8th Episode, a lot of these issues are redeemed with the climax of the arc taking place. It's not to say the quality of the entire episode is on a different level compared to the rest of the season, but the most important scenes are clearly of a higher quality than anything that took place before, comparable to the visually appealing Ordinal Scale movie.

The biggest fault in the art and animation has to be the inconsistency as the quality of the art bounces between good, decent, and terrible without a clear standard or bottomline, as if every animators works were improperly stitched together, making it difficult for the anime to be engaging or immersive if the quality of animation distracts you.

Sound: 9/10 [-1] (8/10)
The music and sounds in an anime are the 2nd and only other element completely unique in an adapted work and play a large part in engaging the audience and provoking specific emotions. The original soundtracks for SAO by Yuki Kajiura have and always will be incredibly impressive. However, due to poor directing or management, a certain episode starts off blaring with climax music (variation of the iconic Swordland) with no build up, focus, and straight in the middle of a large scale battle and another episode has the climax music inserted way too late with the most intense portion of the song playing when the battle has already concluded. The ost building up the climax elevates Alicization WOU P2 sounds to a 9/10, however, the poor placement of every other ost leads to the [-1].

Characters: 9/10 [-2] (7/10)
The Alicization arc praised to be the best Arc within SAO and undoubtedly the longest within the novels has the most character development as it should. Or at least it should have. While it's undeniable that the characters develop the most during this adaptation, a major issue is, that a lot of the development is cut short or cut entirely compared to the novels. Any side character that was introduced in this adaptation will only have an introduction with absolutely no development and any future appearances severely cut short, and our main heroine Asuna suffers the most with more than half of her battles, thoughts, and emotions cut from the anime. The anime-only reappearance of Eiji and Yuna was poorly executed and leave more questions than answers and the greatest flaw is the incredibly poor decision to add an inappropriate anime-only recap into a crucial portion of a main character Kirito's internal struggles leading to Kirito's portrayal not only feeling lacking compared to the novels, but completely straying away and undeniably more unrelateable.

Enjoyment: 7/10 [+1] (8/10)
While enjoyment of an anime is very subjective, anyone who has followed the anime up until this point won't find this conclusion boring with battle after battle, every single one of which significantly better than what we've seen against the integrity knights in Alicization cour 2. Thanks to an engaging and visually impressive climax battle, it's safe to say a fair amount of viewers won't be left completely disappointed with this final cour.

Conclusions:
Although there's no doubt SAO Alicization War Of Underword Part 2 is not as good as it could have been, it definitely is not a terrible conclusion to the Alicization arc. Due to some unfortunate and poor decisions, the experience an anime-only viewer gets is incomplete and leaves them to come to their own conclusions in more than one points in the story. This final cour to a ridiculously ambitious 4 cour anime project, scheduled only a single year after the release of ordinal scale, was met with not only staff issues, according to rumors, but a global pandemic occurring at the original scheduled release of this season, which can only be summed up as unfortunate circumstances experienced by the viewer.

Retelling 24 episodes in a timeframe shorter than episode 1. If that sounds like an impossible feat, you're absolutely right. There's nothing new, enhanced, or special about this recap and it doesn't substitute for watching this first 2 cours. I can't help but wonder why reviewers are putting up scores of 8, 9, or even 10s on a recap episode.

[5] Story - they cut 2 cours into a 24 minute episode, it's not going to substitute for watching the anime, it's not that entertaining imo as to rewatching the entire first 2 cours, and it doesn't add anything new.

[6] Art - no major improvements here, ... which may be upsetting. I would have liked to see some revisions of blu ray quality or even redrawn scenes for a recap airing on SAO's 10th anniversary year, but alas nothing new.

[9] Sound - Alicization has good ost's. They're not going to make a new soundtrack just for a recap so same as Alicization.

[9] Character - Same old characters, nothing new, just scenes cut into a 24 min recap.

[6] Enjoyment - Not sure what you're expecting from a recap that's shorter than the first episode. You really can't get much excitement out of a recap that doesn't do something incredibly unique or creative.

This recap episode may be for you, if you enjoyed the first 2 cours of Alicization and don't rewatch anime. Perhaps if SAO isn't the only media you consume and you don't memorize the sequence of events and key story elements, this can be helpful in enhancing your War of Underworld Experience. But it is most definitely not a 9 or an 8. Again, this will not substitute for watching the first 2 cours of Alicization.

Artistically speaking, definitely among the top, but the story felt a bit rushed.

Story: 8
Great story but it definitely feels rushed even with 2 hours. Tet recalls the story of 6000 years ago before he becomes the one true god and it pretty much explains who everyone is and the survival of imanity, however, they just go over way too many things and loses the entire "no game no life" part of NGNL. To elaborate, they have to cover the great war, romance between two characters, and focus on several characters in just 2 hours, which isn't enough imo. What really pushed this movie from a ... 7 to an 8 was the fact that it was a recollection done by Tet, who makes an appearance at the beginning and at the very end, which may explain the amount of content covered. Still interesting and very enjoyable though.

Art: 10
To me NGNL will always be way up there in art, the colors and the unique designs and fantasy setting all work together to create a vivid and interesting experience and NGNL Zero does it even better. The setting is much darker than the original, but it was still an incredible experience to see in theaters to say the least.

Sound: 9
Sounds were great and built up was on screen nicely. The ost playing as Tet concludes his recollection really made an impact, however, none of the OST's in the core part of the movie stood out as some of the more iconic themes did in the anime.

Character: 7
This was another problem for me with the anime, as all the characters were great, except Shuvi, which is somewhat of a problem as she's our heroine / Shiro replacement. Her entire premise as an ex-machina, and robot yet human felt out of place and just continues to feel out of place while she develops. As for the others, a majority of the characters resemble the cast of the original NGNL anime (since they're technically their ancestors), and to top it off, the movie has a much nicer looking, less annoying Steph.

Enjoyment 8/10
I point out a lot of the issues I had with the movie and the truth is it was great. I`m probably going to go see it again before I`m out of Japan but it`s something you have to see if you even somewhat enjoyed ngnl.

Btw if you saw it in theaters(Japan) you can buy goods and you even get a free little manga-like mini-pamphlet for free. Pretty nice!