You have been Alicized: Did Alicization save Sword Art Online or destroy it?
“How is this anime still running?” If one was to base on ratings alone, the popular anime series Sword Art Online (SAO) met its highest online ratings yet with Alicization (2018–2020). With the chronological order of the series over (the next offering Progressive taking place in an earlier time frame), an overall review may be merited. Did the two-part season, Alicization and War of Underworld, save the SAO franchise or did it ruin it? Warning: spoilers ahead!
Realized potential in exchange for veering from the original
It was 2026, some four years after the release of the controversial killer game Sword Art Online. 47 episodes to cover a 200-year virtual history. Sounds convincing enough. The beauty with Alicization was the stretching out worked just as well in an era where anime seasons last from 12 to 25 episodes. But in exchange, it had to veer away from the fast-paced format that initially worked for original SAO audiences. That was not where the differences end. Alicization also focused on the large part with an incapacitated Kirito (Kazuto Kirigaya), and it was quite an experiment to have the lead character doing nothing much for most of the time.
A blessing, however, was that it gave sufficient space for character development of the rest of the cast. Or at least, those within the world of Alice Zuberg (Alice Synthesis Thirty). As the name suggested, she was the main character of Project Alicization, a government-sponsored project to create artificial intelligence which hailed provenance from Cold War era geopolitics. It also provided a platform for male characters to have major roles and powerful backstories to come with them, a feature not seen in the largely female cast of the first two seasons — a feature of the series which some might have labeled, perhaps inappropriately, as building up Kirito’s harem.
Gun Gale Online made Alicization possible
Speaking of Project Alicization, Underworld was largely created from the World Seed which Kirito received from SAO creator Akihiko Kayaba (Heathcliff). What Kirito decided to do with the Seed saw the rise of the likes of Gun Gale Online (GGO). Then again, this was not where the connection ends. The trauma and depression which Kirito had to endure for most of Alicization was portrayed most visibly with the GGO arc of the second season.
While the second season in general may have not met a lot of expectations, the GGO arc in particular was probably the most loaded in the entire series. It helped set Kirito’s emotional state, much of which was largely unexplored in the life-or-death theme of the first season. No matter how overpowered Kirito was in the virtual world, GGO presented a situation wherein he might actually lose. This antagonist was fulfilled by the personality of Death Gun (Shinkawa brothers), whose threat posed killing both the virtual and the actual player. Not even Ordinal Scale’s augmented reality approached this scale of threatening the sense of self-preservation. In Alicization, it showed that despite the challenges, a wounded ego would still be restored. Kirito could probably do more in his wheelchair than an average player out there. However, in GGO, once the mortal life ends, there would be no other chance to overcome that deflated pride in this world.
GGO also placed into the scenario an interesting character, the only one who had her own ending sequence in the series, Sinon (Shino Asada). Unlike Kirito whose trauma was mostly from playing games, Sinon derived her struggle from first-hand experience of killing a person. While unintentional, this scarred her for a long time, and it would have been a good opportunity to mesh real-life experiences with virtual ones. Their coping strategies were quite opposite of each other, and an interaction between different worlds would be quite interesting. However, the opportunity was lost by relegating the skilled Sinon’s role as a cynical supporter, and later as a potential part of the harem. The rest of the season, while trying to elicit an emotional response, was too rushed and felt almost inconsequential to the later Alicization, which was built on the traumatized Kirito as seen in GGO right from the start. Even the partnership which allowed Kirito’s involvement with Alicization was rooted from the Death Gun incident.
Still overpowered, still underwhelming
Despite best efforts to Alicize the series, Kirito still maintained the features which made him quite a turn off for some audiences. It was a nice touch by the production not to make the anticlimactic final battle as the ending because not only was it predictable, considering Kirito’s godlike status in virtual reality, it also failed to drive at a satisfying finish which made SAO and GGO intriguing anyway. That is, the credible threat to the mortal frame. All the converted accounts from the other games were quite overpowered as well, thanks to the Seed being the basis of all virtual reality games in the world of SAO. It may even be a subject of debate if allowing such conversion feature in the real world would disincentivize new players from ever trying future games.
If any, the treasure of Alicization was laid not with the exported characters who decided to have a reunion in the Underworld. It was with the artificial intelligence (AI) which simulated all the original characters of Underworld. The anime appeared to lean with the concept of bottom-up AI, which posited a learning process instead of inputting all available information at the beginning. To resolve the elongated method which they chose, the sense of time was distorted to hasten the process. Alice even tried to pull a Rene Descartes with a paraphrase of the famous cogito ergo sum by reimagining herself to be as human as the rest. The prevailing issues with AI and robotics were not new with SAO. Isaac Asimov, as early as 1942, articulated three laws in an attempt to preserve humanity provided robots would rise with their own reasoning. Even Leonardo da Vinci experimented with mechanical knights five centuries before our own era. Would Integrity Knights be their name in the near future? However, when AI begins to assume their own identity, what would be made of them? Should they be granted citizenship and rights, or should they remain subservient to their human creators? Alicization seemed to have not explored this prospect as much, nor the science being utilized as the project’s foundation, but by animating Alice in the real world as person-like, the possibilities were endless. How about falling in love with an AI, anyone? This may well be a mental health solution, for instance, because the likes of Alice would not be know-it-alls (as exhibited by top-down AI), but they would grow with you as time passed by.
Saibancho, the verdict
While its emphasis on virtual worlds might not be a great appeal for some, it could be said that Sword Art Online managed to finish strong with Alicization. It was not so much about the plot than the applications of the technologies which the story featured. As earlier mentioned, it was perhaps the GGO arc which had the most potential squandered. Saying this, however, also meant arguing that Alicization took quite a conventional route to portray how living in simulations work. It displayed how AI could still be imperfect despite the available technology. Who could say humans were not living in a simulated universe? Are you living in the real world?
Before diving into philosophical conundrums, it must be noted how Sword Art Online posed a challenge to future anime attempting to integrate virtual reality and heavy gaming as their themes. Defining the targets would be one thing, but execution would be another. Whether or not you have been Alicized, SAO likely received new wind under its wings to fly way higher than the topmost floor of Aincrad.
(All photos from the series courtesy of A-1 Pictures)
