Hello and welcome to Project Nitsuj. It’s time take a look at the next part of the Alicization arc, War of Underworld. Released in 2019 and done once again by A-1, War of Underworld was the part that fans were the most excited for. If the first part had too much talking and backstory and not enough action for you, War of Underworld was going to fix that. Here, it was going to be all action with little talking and with Kirito out of action we were finally going to get a chance to shine the spotlight on everyone else and see what they could do. Get ready for war, this War of Underworld
Opening and Ending Theme
The third opening is “Resolution” by Asuna herself, Haruka Tomatsu. Yeah, it’s a good song. Haruka can sing. It’s been a while since I’ve heard her sing that forgot just how good she was. Seriously, the first 15 seconds alone are enough to get you hyped for what you’re about to watch. The rest of the song is good as well, but those first 15 seconds are selling point. If you weren’t hyped after those 15 seconds, you might be dead.
The third ending is “unlasting” by LiSA. This is hands down my favorite ending from this arc. The slow piano, LiSA’s soothing voice and the deep lyrics just set this ending apart from the other endings we’ve heard so far. It really does feel like Alice is singing this song as she’s remembering her time with Kirito, the good times they shared and how she never thought this is where they would be. Fighting for their lives and refusing to give up because of what’s at stake.
Episodes 1-4
So the first episode of the new season is pretty meh. We see that Kirito has fallen into a catatonic state and is being taken care of by Alice (they claim he’s in coma but he’s not he’s responsive to some of the things going on around him). The remaining Integrity Knights come together and begin rebuilding their ranks to prepare for the Dark Territory’s eminent attack. While the knights go along with this, some are calling for Kirito to be executed for killing Quintella (and her rockin’ body). Fearing for Kirito’s safety, Alice left the Integrity Knights with Kirito. She returned to the village, but they refused to let a criminal into their village so, they live on the outskirts of the village where Alice spends her days watching over Kirito (Corbin: Hey why doesn’t she try sleeping with him? I’m sure that’ll wake him up). Near the end of the episode we see the Dark Territory has begun their attack and their first target is the village (scene here: https://youtu.be/QQJjP4vvjJo).
Nothing much to say about episode 2. The village gets attacked by orcs and goblins and Alice defends the place single-handedly (Goblin Slayer: Ohh~ Alice. You made me cum. Scenes here: https://youtu.be/Cbo4y7RuVqY and https://youtu.be/LprRtb1CxMM). Alice takes her leave with Kirito to fight off the invasion. Back in the real world, Asuna and the others have retreated to safety in a backup room where the terrorists are after A.L.I.C.E the main fluctlight that houses all the fluctlights. We find out that Kirito’s fluctlight has become largely damaged by the blast at the end of the first season. Because of this, his self-image (aka ego) has become damaged resulting in the state he’s in right now (in other words, science fucked up).
There’s a lot of talking going on in episode 3. First off, we find out that the terrorists are being led by a guy named Miller who was hired by the U.S to steal A.L.I.C.E. Since they’re locked out of the system they decide that their only choice now is to log into Underworld, find Alice, and retrieve her themselves. While they can’t log in as humans, they can log in as members of the Dark Territory and pick the two strongest warriors of the Dark Territory, a dark knight and the emperor (they didn’t put security locks on the villains!?). In the safe room, Asuna has decided to go into Underworld, find Kirito and Alice, and protect them both (or at least Kirito. She might cut Alice for putting her hands on her man).
In episode 4 Miller and Vassago enter Underworld as emperor and dark knight. The major tribes and guilds of the Dark Territory gather to greet their new king (not surprisingly the dark mage guild is my favorite. Also, not to be a complainer but I expected to see a few more mythical creatures in the Dark Territory. All we have are goblins, orcs, werewolves and giants that look like goblins. The rest are all human. Where’s the trolls, dark elves, and other dark creatures?). He tells them they’re going to war but the captain of the dark knights, who wanted to make peace with the Human Empire is against this war. His lover and second in-command Lipia (another man who couldn’t separate work from his personal life), takes it upon herself to kill Miller and fails resulting in her getting her neck snapped and her soul eaten by Miller which reminds him of the time he killed his childhood friend (as a kid) to discover where the soul goes (scene here: https://youtu.be/Q6wGJz46C0Y, oh God, why do I get the feeling he would have been the leader of Laughing Coffin if he got stuck in SAO?). The next day, Miller presents the head to everyone as a warning where the commander of the knights attacks Miller and tries to destroy his soul only to see he doesn’t have one, but at the same time has one (dude, you’re about to die. There’s no need to get metaphorical with us. Scene here: https://youtu.be/OtOnbmt6mlk).
Episodes 5-8
It’s the final countdown before the war in episode 5 as Alice and Kirito arrive at the camp of the Human Empire. We do get to see Eugeo and Kirito’s pages there helping and promise to watch over Kirito during the battle (man, even when he’s in a vegetated state, he gets girls. I get that we’re supposed to be jealous of him but even Reki has to realize this is ridiculous). We see that there’s some signs of like in Kirito (scene here: https://youtu.be/lXiy6qgSa0o) and Alice admitting that she loves him (scene here: https://youtu.be/wuXtpw21fjc). The battle will begin at the east gate where the Human Empire is vastly outnumbered 50,000 to 3,000 (alright. Everybody needs to kill at least 16 monsters and pick up the slack for the other 2,000).
We finally get our war in episode 6 as the war begins and to the credit of the humans they actually hold their own very well (except for one knight who ran away. Fucking coward). We do get some pretty decent fights throughout the episode (not even the awkward CGI in some parts ruins the episode for me) and the knights even manage to defeat the chief of the giants and one of the goblin chiefs (2 chiefs down, 8 to go).
In the majority of episode 7 we focus on the cowardly knight who ran away named Renly. In the past he accidently killed his best friend in a duel after his friend’s sword broke. He soon became an integrity knight where he was deemed a failure according to Quintella as he couldn’t bring out the true power of his weapon. He hides away in the storage tents where the pages bring in Kirito to protect him from the goblins. A goblin enters the tent (oh man, I’ve seen enough Goblin Slayer to know what happens next) where even in his vegetated state Kirito tries to protect them but can’t (this man has more balls than anyone in that tent). This act of bravery inspires Renly (it damn well better) and he finally draws his weapon to fight which is a very cool weapon, blade discs (Mira: Oh~ just like me). Renly heads out to fight where he takes out a bunch of goblins and even kills the second goblin chief quite easily (scene here: https://youtu.be/K8xQ-j066nM. How the hell are you a failure? You’re fucking amazing). With the first wave defeated, the Dark territory’s second wave prepares to move out which is the mages corp. They start by releasing a horde of gargoyles (again, sadly not voiced by Keith David) but they get taken out and Alice goes DBZ on us and creates a spirit bomb created from the dead souls of everyone on the battlefield and fires it at the enemy to end the episode (scene here: https://youtu.be/lSe1qUddjZw).
Episode 8 is a rather sad episode. After Alice rips off DBZ and destroys a good chunk of the dark army, Miller orders the mages to use the life of 3,000 orcs to create their spell (which is a rather sad and brutal scene). Alice finds out that Miller is after her so she volunteers to face Miller directly and lure him away so the others can attack the army from behind. Bercouli agrees with her plan, however he wants to join her and bring a third of the army with him to get Miller’s attention. As they all ride through the canyon, the mages launch their attack where Eldrie sacrifices himself to save everyone. The remaining forces take out the mages and Alice finally reaches Miller (he’s going to try and eat her soul isn’t he?).
Episodes 9-12
In episode 9 Miller orders all of his men to chase after Alice. We get a few other notable battles such as another knight named Sheyta (an emotionless woman) taking on a bunch of warriors with her transparent sword. She’s more than a match for them by herself where even though she slices off their limbs she doesn’t kill them which angers their leader (they follow the ideas of the Norse. You go down fighting like a proud warrior and die with honor). The leader and Sheyta fight to a draw where Sheyta retreats as her goal was to just stall them (scene here: https://youtu.be/amX4NTLmaPg). Meanwhile, Vassago leads a small force to the supply camp of the knights and has them completely surrounded where out of nowhere Asuna appears in the sky and drops them into a ravine (scene here: https://youtu.be/PHUgXXVEwxY. Wow, I have never seen such blatant symbolism in my life).
So Asuna enters Alicization-atrix (https://youtu.be/bq0iH3hxfjo) as Stacia the goddess of creation in episode 10. Aside from her hair being longer (that’s going to get in the way of fighting) she also has the power to alter landscapes but is told to use this sparingly because of the huge amount of data being transferred and since they’re using backup computers it’ll overload her fluctlight. Asuna gets to see Kirito where we get some reaction out of him (scene here: https://youtu.be/wKWJBU5_DjI. Aww, this is nice). Her meeting with Alice doesn’t go so well as Alice straight up attacks her for seeing her Kirito (aww, this is hot). Bercouli breaks up the fight (scene here: https://youtu.be/v704sJhRV4Q,boo~) and invites Asuna to join their war meeting where she explains to them what’s going on and they tell her what’s going on as well (scene here: https://youtu.be/MejlgzGpDUo). Asuna agrees to help them fight and the war meeting closes. Later on, Asuna tries to go see Kirito again but Alice gets in the way. Both ladies try to one up the other by talking about their experience with Kirito and this battle of the lionesses attracts Kirito’s page as well as Liena who also want to share information about Kirito so the lionesses decide to sit down and talk about Kirito starting with Asuna (scene here: https://youtu.be/_9ee8nvlNrs).
Episode 11 focuses on the rest of Kirito’s gang. Miller has his men allow American users to join Underworld under the disguise of a beta test for a new game. Within hours Miller will have thousands of American gamers at his disposal to fight for his cause. Yui catches wind of this and alerts the people at Raft where she delivers a very good speech about how Alice is the collective consciousness of everyone who plays VRMMORPGs. The group decides to counter Miller’s plan with Japanese gamers as well however, there are a few complications. First off, no operational UI which means they can’t log out. Once they log in they’re in until they either die in-game or the boys at Raft can regain control of this situation (it’ll be ALO all over again). Speaking of death, the second complication is no built-in pain absorbers (in other words, if you die it’s gonna be excruciatingly painful). Third (and probably the biggest one), there’s a good chance players will lose their accounts (Good God no. I’m not a big MMORPG guy but even I know how painful it is to lose an online account. Imagine, all that time and money spent building a character up and they could all be gone because you logged into a game you weren’t supposed to. I would be so pissed). Naturally, everyone is upset by this news and has doubts about helping out (there’s an easy solution to all of this. Create a new account and log into- oh wait it wouldn’t work. According to Yui their stats transfer over to Underworld. If they create a new account just for Underworld they’ll enter as low-level players who’ll easily be killed) but Lizbeth gives a speech about how those who play VRMMORPG or rather videogames in general are looked down upon by society. Society says we don’t contribute to the world and how we’re just lazy people who refuse to get a job and pay taxes. That these virtual worlds are just hiding spots for recluses who refuse to grow up and live in society. But, Lizbeth thinks otherwise. These worlds that they play in are real to her. These worlds are where she met her friends and connected with others, and its where multiple people connected with each other as well (scene here: https://youtu.be/RvG9TeF4qgE, and society dares to say these connections aren’t real).
In the final episode of the season the American players enter Underworld as red knights and begin attacking everyone including their allies in the Dark Kingdom (sadly, this is a pretty accurate description of what American players would do as soon as they enter a new open world game). Alice gets captured by Miller and Asuna along with the others try to chase after him but there’s just too many red knights (they’re not really that strong but there’s a lot of them. Underworld is slowly turning into Dynasty Warriors). Just when hope seems lost, Sinon appears ready to fight and help out (scene here: https://youtu.be/rhycJmQ3Lk4. (Sinon): Bring me Kirito~).
And thus war began and delivered on some amazing action and fights. Tune in next week to see how it all ends. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.
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