I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but SAO:Alicization actually sort of did that, with a driving theme of “the artificial human souls in this simulated world are still ultimately human and deserve their own liberation and safety, while the imperialist warmongers fucking with them to make automated weapons are ontologically evil”. It even made the point that the “evil” races of the world were also still literally just people who were being forced into a role they didn’t want and in fact actively rebelled against.
It’s just that it’s still SAO and has more of the other kind of SA than ever before too. But on the other hand it does have Kirito depowered and/or in a coma for like 95% of it.
It’s not good by any measure, but it’s the least bad that mainline SAO ever was. It’s an enjoyable hate-watch that somehow ends up with sort of ok major themes to it.
It has a bunch of returning characters and hinges on the same full dive VR tech as its core, and that’s pretty much it. It has the JSDF funding some research program into AI in a secret lab on I think it was an oil rig, where the scientists literally discovered the material form of the human soul and how to create artificial vessels for these, discover that they can copy their own literal souls into these machines except when powered on they immediately implode from the trauma of being locked in a void with no sensory feedback, and construct an elaborate virtual world to try to grow blank copies of literal human souls into sapient and complete artificial human consciousnesses, to use as disposable and infinitely replicable drone pilots.
That’s the premise, at least: in practice it’s a high fantasy adventure with a depowered amnesiac Kirito growing up and adventuring in a time-dilated artificial world while spy shit happens in the real world and an American PMC unit tries to steal the supposedly one complete artificial human soul (except the entire premise is flawed and tons of them pass the “Alicization” threshold without anyone noticing over the course of the story).
It’s not a well written story and its core concept is not well thought out, it’s just surprising in how decidedly it comes down on the “the residents of that artificial world are real people who should be treated with respect and accorded rights and self-determination instead of being tortured and exploited” theme.
You’re kinda selling it to me ngl, I been watching some other slop that my standards are getting low enough I’ll prob give it a look or at least read some synopsis to see how the pacing is
It’s fun if you’ve got a high tolerance for gross bullshit and can enjoy laughing at the show. SAO is weird because in its later arcs it’s like the author is earnestly trying to not be awful, but he still fundamentally doesn’t understand technology, video games, people, or cause and effect, so it ends up in this weird space where it can be wildly problematic but then have better themes than most anime and center its female characters as the ones with agency who are driving all of the plot, while still being an absolutely nonsensical story that hinges on plot points that fundamentally just do not make sense or work at all.
That’s the problem with SAO author that keeps turning me off to be honest. Besides from the dry and uninspiring proses, the execution of most concepts and premises is just half-assed and lack any deep understanding of the subjects. None of the technology, politics, or social structures make sense if you zoom in and scrutinized it. But it does sound cool when you just took a quick look.
Another awful thing about the series is it still fall back to the big man theory trope where the good guys can only win with MC woke up and became literally god. And of course, tons and tons of near miss SA
I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but SAO:Alicization actually sort of did that, with a driving theme of “the artificial human souls in this simulated world are still ultimately human and deserve their own liberation and safety, while the imperialist warmongers fucking with them to make automated weapons are ontologically evil”. It even made the point that the “evil” races of the world were also still literally just people who were being forced into a role they didn’t want and in fact actively rebelled against.
It’s just that it’s still SAO and has more of the other kind of SA than ever before too. But on the other hand it does have Kirito depowered and/or in a coma for like 95% of it.
It’s not good by any measure, but it’s the least bad that mainline SAO ever was. It’s an enjoyable hate-watch that somehow ends up with sort of ok major themes to it.
Too bad i have no fucking clue how it relates to the original sword art online or it might have been interesting
It has a bunch of returning characters and hinges on the same full dive VR tech as its core, and that’s pretty much it. It has the JSDF funding some research program into AI in a secret lab on I think it was an oil rig, where the scientists literally discovered the material form of the human soul and how to create artificial vessels for these, discover that they can copy their own literal souls into these machines except when powered on they immediately implode from the trauma of being locked in a void with no sensory feedback, and construct an elaborate virtual world to try to grow blank copies of literal human souls into sapient and complete artificial human consciousnesses, to use as disposable and infinitely replicable drone pilots.
That’s the premise, at least: in practice it’s a high fantasy adventure with a depowered amnesiac Kirito growing up and adventuring in a time-dilated artificial world while spy shit happens in the real world and an American PMC unit tries to steal the supposedly one complete artificial human soul (except the entire premise is flawed and tons of them pass the “Alicization” threshold without anyone noticing over the course of the story).
It’s not a well written story and its core concept is not well thought out, it’s just surprising in how decidedly it comes down on the “the residents of that artificial world are real people who should be treated with respect and accorded rights and self-determination instead of being tortured and exploited” theme.
You’re kinda selling it to me ngl, I been watching some other slop that my standards are getting low enough I’ll prob give it a look or at least read some synopsis to see how the pacing is
It’s fun if you’ve got a high tolerance for gross bullshit and can enjoy laughing at the show. SAO is weird because in its later arcs it’s like the author is earnestly trying to not be awful, but he still fundamentally doesn’t understand technology, video games, people, or cause and effect, so it ends up in this weird space where it can be wildly problematic but then have better themes than most anime and center its female characters as the ones with agency who are driving all of the plot, while still being an absolutely nonsensical story that hinges on plot points that fundamentally just do not make sense or work at all.
That’s the problem with SAO author that keeps turning me off to be honest. Besides from the dry and uninspiring proses, the execution of most concepts and premises is just half-assed and lack any deep understanding of the subjects. None of the technology, politics, or social structures make sense if you zoom in and scrutinized it. But it does sound cool when you just took a quick look.
Another awful thing about the series is it still fall back to the big man theory trope where the good guys can only win with MC woke up and became literally god. And of course, tons and tons of near miss SA