Marwile watches SAO II Part 1: True Horror

God didn't have mercy with me. SAO continued with its second season here in germany. Get ready for, I think, 25 more weeks/blogs. And I think then season 3 starts... At least I enjoy making these blogs and shouting my blind reactions at Qrow's discord server. Now Phantom Bullet, one of the three arcs competing for the worst SAO has to offer. But I've already seen SAO Alternative GGO, that should make it easier, right?
Yeah, didn't think so either. It'll probably be worse now. I can already see why...

So let's make the jarring transition from fantasy swordfighting to scifi gun battles. It starts with a pro player in an interview claiming stats are everything in an MMO and skill doesn't matter (in the SAO world, sure). He also adds the agility is unimportant... in a shooter (wow, SAOA must be a huge middlefinger to this guy). We cut to a bar where a strange masked man makes a sudden declaration towards this guy and...
I already have to call total bullshit. I already know everything revolves around this gun that apparently kills you in real if it kills you ingame, but he just shot a random holo-TV screen!
*sigh* Anyways, right when the screen is shot the pro clutches his chest in pain and his avatar disappears. The masked man also calls himself Deathgun, the edgiest name this side of the Sonic fandom.

Next scene is Kirito and Asuna taking a walk through a park... That's everything. You probably already know Oroboro started the second Sunset Shipping Contest (Don't worry, I'm planning on entering... unless the heat doesn't kill me first). In it he also linked two interesting articles on how NOT to write romance. This scene is exactly that. Boring and stale fluff. I could hear Asuna's personality leaving her body when she talked (Or the soul of her german VA).

Unnecessary flashback to 4 hours before. Couldn't they have just switched the scenes? Kirito meets a government official who gives him a tried and true expostion dumb: Everything we've seen in the intro, that the guy died in real, that it happened again, that GGO is the only MMO in Japan with pros (ha, as if), you can make real money with it and it's impossible to find out who or where the devs are. I can't imagine the last two working together in any way considering we live in a world where Paypal's stocks probably drop if Elon Musk doesn't tweet for one day.

There's also a moment where Kirito literally imagines a bullet literally coming out of the socket to home in on the guy. It's just funny.

The official literally begs Kirito on his knees to play GGO and help with his investigation. We cut back to Asuna and Kirito on a bench and more unnecessary fluff.

Finally the last scene, which is also our introduction to the next Kirito girl: Sinon. She just snipes a random guy, but that was enough to confirm my biggest fear going into this. Remember when I complained about Suguha having the same german VA as Twilight (the guys in the discord should considering I brought it up every week). Well, now guess who's sharing her german VA with Sinon...

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It's Pinkie Pie.
Sinon has the voice of Pinkie Pie.
Alright, at least Jennifer Weiss is using her serious voice, so you don't really notice until you know. Still feels wrong. Very wrong. Now that I think about it, she would fit great to Llenn from SAOA. Especially because Jennifer Weiss (despite her name) has a habit of voicing pink characters: Pinkie Pie (since gen3), Tikki from Miraculous Ladybug, Mari from Evangelion, Zuzu from Yugioh, Flora from Professor Layton, Wave the Swallow from Sonic (or is she purple).

This blog has gone on long enough. I'll talk about the opening and femKirito later. If the plot moves at around the same speed as Fairy Dance there'll be plenty of time.