The manga is completely forgettable. Skips over tons of stuff and honestly made zero sense when I read it. The LNs are the best source if you want to cover everything, but they've been removed from Baka-Tsuki as knight said. They can be found other places though *coughmyharddrivecough*. If you can't get the LNs, the anime does a decent job of covering most of the story through the first two arcs (currently on the third). Some small side-stories are skipped though, and a few things were changed.

 

I've recently gotten the first two novel English versions delivered - and due to their un-chronological format, I enjoyed the first one a lot more than the second one. (Since the second one only expanded on the first) Had I read them in a different order, I'd have enjoyed them more (and I think there's a 6th or so book that returns to the very begining of SAO game, which I'd also prefer to read fully chronologically).

Still, as a reread from Baka-Tsuki version, it was magnificently better. I always hated the double angled brackets that they used to quote terms. (Like "Kirito's <<HP>> was falling low.") Now, without the needless emphasis, it reads like a proper, professional translation. Which it is. I hope.



As for the Anime, I am enjoying it so far. Shinon freaked out more than I remember, but it has been a long while since I read the story, and this kind of discrepancy didn't get in the way too much. I feel like the tropes are being squeezed out for most of the drama possible, but I can't help but join in the fun. Although the need for a confrontation to occur in the fictional world is rather illogical - and somewhat less clear than I remember it being in the novel*, but sadly, cannot jump to check as BT took it all down, and now I only have 1-2 volumes for comparison. Waiting for a fight in a desert.


*And they keep insisting, that it's a vital part of the process. If they focused on the fact that they don't want the evil player killing more people, that would be fine, but they try to spin it as if Kirito has to face him off online as a sort of closure, and I don't buy that angle.

 

Definitely feels a bit contrived. I mean, it's not like Death Gun can't just respawn afterward and keep killing people. And they could focus killing off everyone else while avoiding Death Gun directly if they wanted to save everyone else.


Overall, still loving it though. Way more than first season. As I've mentioned a few times before, the complete lack of focus on issues such as trauma, social issues relating around SAO, public perception, etc in season 1 really annoyed me. In Season 2, it's still not where it could be, but it's a big step up from before.

 

The fanservice is just out of control in this, even by anime standards. So many serious moments punctuated with a shot of Sinon's ass. Or Sinon in some provocative pose. Or both. In today's ep, there's a scene where Kirito reaches a revelation about what Death Gun is doing while staring at Sinon's ass. Seriously. We see Kirito's face, then a pan and quick zoom on Sinon's ass, then back to Kirito's face with a look of realization. Half of me wants to laugh at the ridiculousness, and the other half wants to cry at the fact that the animators feel this shit is necessary. I mean, I appreciate a little T&A as much as the next guy, but there's a time and a place for everything, and this show has no concept of that. Every scene with Sinon's character in it has to have a shot of her ass, ass crack (because her shorts are too small to cover everything), tits, a provocative pose, or some combination of these with no regard for the mood or what the characters are talking about.

 

I think he was staring at the empty place where her sidearm pistol used to be hanging from. There's a loop on her belt that's empty in that shot. Understandable why you focused on other parts of the imagery, though.

Otherwise, it's standard Asian MMO clothing convention. There's lots of fan-service, but it wasn't getting in the way of the plot for me.

 

So the second season of the Anime ended just now.

The first arc was interesting, and I didn't have many opinions positive or negative besides that. The actual resolution was pretty creepy, and the final resolution was a bit too ... random.

The second arc was just a bit of randomly generated questing, which I enjoyed. Not a pinnacle of storytelling but it's very lighthearted to break up the two other arcs.

I didn't start liking the third arc - the switch to a completely different cast was offputting at best. That said, the last three episodes I spent crying like a baby - that's only the second time an anime's brought me to that state.

 

I didn't even attempt to watch the Asuna-centric shit after the Thor stuff was over. Seems the anime just can't help but break away from "start strong, finish weak" that the first season of SAO had.

Would have been much better had this Asuna stuff been going on at the same time the GGO stuff was going on at the same time.

 

Oh totally. And then we could have had 4-5 episodes between action sequences instead of 1 or 2. -_-

I don't plan to tune in if the show comes back for another two arcs. Pretty goddamn boring nowadays.