(Shizuku): *Impersonating Nitsuj* I’m Nitsuj dumbass! Welcome to Project Nitsuj dumbass! Today I take a look at some past reviews and correct my mistakes. Take for example Mahou Sensei Negima, which was a great anime that ignored the simple storytelling and turned away from the source to material to create it’s own unique story that is easily better than the manga could ever be. That’s right Mahou Sensei Negima is a great anime one worthy of being claimed as a masterpiece of animation.
*Isis along with Mira and Yin-Yang show up*
(Isis): Master, what are you doing? You went on a rampage that day. You destroyed three vehicles with a crowbar. I had to take you down to with 5 sedatives. Now you’re saying you like this anime? Have you finally lost your mind master?
(Shizuku): You make it sound as if I had a mind to begin with Isis. I’m obviously crazy like a fox and dumb as a troll. I’m also perverted as one. I mean, I reviewed so many animes and yet I gave bad reviews to animes that were obviously good. Take for example Maken-Ki, another great anime that has an amazing male lead with characters whose breast are so perfectly shaped and normal that real life girls wished they had them. That anime wasn’t boring at all. In fact let me tell you about Ikkitousen, I regret calling it a bad anime. That was a great anime, I can’t believe I said so many bad things about it.
(Mira): Really master? Do you mean it?
(Shizuku): Indeed I do Mira. In fact I go as far as saying that Ikkitousen is the greatest anime series of all time.
(Yin-Yang): No way! Even better than Hell Girl and One Piece?
(Shizuku): Those animes don’t come close to matching the genius of Ikkitousen. Hell, I go as far as saying that Ikkitousen is better than Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. But enough reminiscing about the past, let’s look at today’s review the Sword Art Online Extra Edition Special which-
*Nitsuj comes barging in*
(Nitsuj): What load of lies and bullshit are you spouting woman!
(Yin-Yang): Oh look Nitsuj 45 has returned from the dead. Still a fan of the Xbox One dumbass?
(Nitsuj): I’ll sue you! *Nitsuj picks up his samurai sword and begins swinging at Degeneration AI* And you! And you! And all of you! You are all being sued for gimmick infringement! *Degeneration AI escape the room and go back into the system* RAAAARGH! Degeneration AI~! *Nitsuj returns to his room and sits down* One of these days I’m gonna get those degenerate AI girls. What were they talking about anyway? *Sees that they were talking about Sword Art Online Extra Edition Special* Why God!? Not this I hate this special why would they decide to talk about this crap. Yep, I’m not gonna lie I hate this SAO special. Released sometime near the end of last year the Extra Edition Special was a near 2 hour special used to get people hyped up for the second season set to premiere sometime this year. Now you think with a special belonging to a promising series as SAO you would expect to see all new adventures focusing are Kirito and his friends right? Nope. All you get is a crummy half-ass clip show talking about the first goddamn season and you the viewer sitting there feeling as if you just wasted 2 hours of your life. Well no use in beating around the bush let’s take a look at Sword Art Online Extra Edition Special.
Now at first the special looks like it’s gonna be cool. We open up with Kirito and Sugaha riding on a motorcycle (didn’t know Kirito got his motorcycle license. With this Kirito has gone up a notch on the badass scale) their riding to his school where they’re going to meet up with Asuna, Silica, and Liz to teach Sugaha how to swim since she’s no good at it and since your physical attributes play a huge part in the game and a few quest require players to swim it’s pretty important that she learn how to swim. They go to the school and meet up with the girls (surprisingly Liz is the only one who doesn’t resemble her character in the games) where Kirito gets called to the nurse’s office for some counseling and has to miss out on seeing his girlfriend in a bikini (don’t worry man, tell her to wear it when she comes to visit you in your room tonight). He goes to the nurse’s office where we see the cute nurse (//youtu.be/H2yJ-VaMDYs?t=2s) who called him in for counseling was actually Kikuoka an elite member of the Virtual Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (quite the title) and the guy who is responsible for telling Kirito where Asuna was staying when she was still trapped in the game, allowed Kirito to keep his nervegear when it was supposed to be destroyed (not that it would of matter since you guys created another one) and kept the media off him as well as the other players when the game was beaten (okay that’s kinda helpful information, I was wondering why the media didn’t attack him when he got out of the hospital). He wants Kirito to tell him what really happened in SAO so that he can get a clear picture of went on in there and possibly figure out why Kayaba (//youtu.be/zkbHS3U9lJM?t=2s, ha, never gets old) created the death game in the first place (because he’s insane. That’s the only reason he created the game. There, I just saved you about an hour now let me leave). So in order to get Kikuoka off his back so he can go see the girls in bikinis Kirito agrees to tell him what happened in SAO and thus the hour long clip show begins. We cut to the girls and them training Sugaha how to swim a few times but even then it’s a clip show because they each talk about how they met Kirito and how Asuna began developing feelings for him.
Pointless just pointless on the part on the team behind SAO. I mean seriously what is the point of this special it really makes no sense to me? This whole special is a complete insult to anyone out there who ever watched the first season of SAO. Now you probably think I’m being hard on this special well in order to understand why I’m so upset and why I don’t like this special you have to view it from my perspective. Say you’re like me and you took the time out of your day to watch all 24 episodes of SAO. That’s the equivalent of about 12 hours. Now say you’re an anime reviewer and you want to review SAO so you gotta sit down again and rewatch the anime to gather material and get a solid understanding of the series and make sure you don’t miss anything important. That’s another 12 hours right there so in total that’s about 24 hours of watching this series. One whole day spent watching the series from beginning to end and trust me while watching anime 24 hours sounds cool and all it’s pretty difficult. Trust me I’ve done it once it’s very draining. Now after watching the series months go by and this special comes out which pretty much sums up the entire first season in 1 hour. 1 HOUR! So than what was the point of the first season than if everything could be summed up in 1 hour? In fact, why even make the anime in the first place when you could of just watched this special and be all caught with the series. That’s what gets me upset. They’re downplaying the anime, they’re basically saying that all the hours they spent making this series and the hours you spent watching and investing yourself into the series could of all been summed up in one hour. That is bullshit. Now I know this clip show is a good way to get people who haven’t seen the series and want to watch the second season all caught up but again why watch the second season if you haven’t seen the first season. That’s like watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King without watching the Fellowship or the Two Towers. Who does that? If you did that without any knowledge of the series you would be so lost and confused when you watched Return of the King you would be constantly asking your friends whose this character, why are they doing this, what are they fighting for, why do they have do that, where are they going, what’s that thing, is Edolas a guy or girl? Just tons of questions you would be asking and all of them could have easily been answered if you watched the previous two movies before watching the third movie. Another thing I don’t like about clip shows is that it takes away the experience of the series. Everything is rushed out and you never really get a chance to soak it in or let it set in. Have you ever wondered why Star Wars was spilt into 6 movies instead of just one giant movie for you to watch? The reason for that is quite simple, to let the events from each movie seep into your mind and allow you to process it all. If Star Wars was shown in one giant movie there would be so many things skipped over, overlooked, cut short, and not explained as fully as you would have hoped. Yeah clip shows do a good job at naming all the major events of the series but they never really show you how it all led to this and why the characters are at this point in the story. That’s why a full episode and series is needed to show you how and why this is all happening.
I know I’m harping on this more than I need to but you have to understand for those of us who have spent time watching and rewatching the first season this special is like a slap in the face to us as if you say “haha, you wasted you’re time watching the first season when all you really had to do was just wait until the end of the year and a watch clip show summing up everything in one hour”. Just insulting to us the viewer. It’s like I said in my earlier reviews, the point of a special or OVA is one of three objectives. One, show scenes the anime skipped over to fill in the blanks. Two, provide fanservice which is something animes in the ecchi genre favor more. Or three, make a special that’s a good starting point for the next season and build excitement for that season. SAO did a lot of time-skipping which I heard annoyed a lot of people (it didn’t bother me all that much but I can see that being annoying). If the clip show had been showing other events that we didn’t see in the first season than I would have liked it and been a bit more open to it. One clip show episode that I really like and think is done excellently is the one in Ed, Edd, n Eddy. In the episode the Eds are remembering their past scams but the twist in the episode is that all the scams they show us are scams that we’ve never seen before. That’s very clever. That’s a clip show done right, it shows us past events that we never got a chance to see and get to enjoy. That’s what I was hoping this special would be like, I was hoping that we could get a chance to see other events that happened in SAO that the first season never showed us. Such as, showing us more floor boss battles, the months and time they skipped over in the first season, or what they did with players pking other players. Stuff like that would been a lot better than just retelling us all of the events that we saw in the first season. They really didn’t think this special all the way through, they had a chance to make something cool and add to the series while also filling in a few gaps and building a good starting point for the events about to take place in the second season.
The only thing I’m taking away from this special that I like is the last 20 minutes. We go back into ALO where the whole gang (Kline and Agil included) go on a quest to conquer this underwater dungeon in the hopes of finding a whale for Yui to see. They find the underwater dungeon and accept the quest from a person standing outside the dungeon which is to reach the center of the dungeon and bring back the egg to him. The gang succeeds in getting the egg and make their way out of the dungeon only to find out the person who gave the quest was Kraken in disguise and the egg is the egg of the next ruler of the ocean. So the gang has to fight Kraken who overpowers them and is about to finish them off but they get saved by Leviathan king of the sea (which is probably the coolest adaption of Leviathan I have seen). Kraken retreats and they give the egg to Leviathan and gives them a ride back to the surface on the back of a giant humpback whale. Now that’s what I’m talking about. This is what the special should been like more of this please. The special should have focused more on the gang and their adventures in the world of ALO instead of this crappy clip show which took up the majority of the special. We should have been seeing more of the world of ALO such as the different quest they went on, what’s the new goal of the game now that Kirito has reached the top of the tree, let me see the other races, and let’s see some more character growth. I would have loved to see Kirito and Asuna go on an actual date in the real world or go on a date in ALO you know just simple stuff and letting the two grow as a couple.
Final Thoughts
This might not come as a shocker to you but I hate this special. The majority of the special is spent on clip show recapping the events we’ve all seen from the first season which in my opinion we didn’t need to see again. The last 20 minutes are good in that they show more of ALO and we see that Kirito is still a bit shaking around Sugaha because he’s unsure how he should interact with her. Should he treat her like a little sister and watch over her giving her special attention or should he treat her like a normal player and trust that she’ll be alright and help her out when the time comes? Playing with a sibling in a MMORPG is always though, you wanna protect them but at the same you don’t wanna be too overbearing and let them play the game themselves. The animation and music are still the same, it’s nice to see the characters still have their loving personalities and there’s a little fanservice with the girls in bikinis that doesn’t go over top at all and is just there to be there.
Final Score
The SAO Extra Edition Special scores a 2/10. If you really do decide to watch this special just watch the last 20 minutes that’s the only part of the special that’s good. This special could been used as a way to explore the world of ALO more and serve as a good build up for the start of the second season but instead they blew it recapping what we already saw from the first season. In my mind I know what they were trying to do with this special but it takes away from the series more than it helps the series. Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next-
*Car alarm goes off*
(Nitsuj): That’s my car!
*Nitsuj gets up and walks out the front door to see that his car has been vandalized*
(Nitsuj): AHHHHH! My car! Who did this!?
(Yin-Yang): Now you should know the answer to that.
(Nitsuj): Degeneration AI~!
(Isis): We thought we give your car a paint job to make it stand out more.
(Nitsuj): What the hell is your problem! Look, it was cute at first but now you’re going way too far.
(Mira): Oh we’ve only just begun.
(Shizuku): This can all come to an end if you agree to do AI Arc.
(Nitsuj): Never! I will not respond to threats given to me by my assistants. Now move the hell out of my way I gotta go to the carwash! I am so pissed right now that I can’t even think of what I’m going to do to you guys. But rest assure I will think of something. Something big! The kind of thing that makes WWII look like. . .arrgh! I can’t even think of a witty comparison.
*Nitsuj gets in his car and as soon as he starts it blue paint comes shooting out of the steering wheel all over Nitsuj’s face.*
(Mira): This public paint bombing and vehicle vandalism was bought to you by Degeneration AI. Reminding you that if you’re not down with that we got two words for you.
(Degeneration AI): Suck it~!
*Nitsuj doesn’t say a word and just drives off not giving them the satisfaction of seeing him mad*
*All videos, images, and music belong to their respected owners and not me*
Thanks for reading. As always feel free to leave a comment, feedback, or request in the comments section or send them to iamprojectnitsuj@gmail.com