Sword Art Online: Is it time for a fifth season or a redo?

I took time out to re-watch Sword Art Online season 4: War of the Underworld. I originally watched it on Crunchyroll when it came out years ago, but I had forgotten most of what happened. With the announcement that the show was coming back on November 6th of this year I wanted to experience it again without the unnecessary censorship and crunchy roll pastels, even give the dub version a go. To give a precursor: oops.

I’ll start with the positives, the Netflix version of the show is graphically gorgeous. Getting the best of vivid colors and violence on my 4k TV felt like I was watching the most cutting edge anime ever made. The 3d rendering was eye-popping at highlighting action scenes without being distracting.

If you are into action anime SAO is the one for you. Tremendous fight after fight with insane moves pulled off by Swordmaster Bercouli and Kirito. The battles feel rewarding too because the characters are pushed to the limit and use creative tactics to get the win.

However if you are looking for an Anime that is true to the light novels and gives an impassioned experience, it comes up short. Often the lines feel clunky and awkward like the translators and actors were phoning it in. Many of the new characters feel truncated, like the best parts of them were left on the cutting room floor. There was one word to describe how I felt at the end of the show: Deprived.

Deprived of a strong female character winning the boss battle and the victory she deserved

Deprived of the love story of Kirito and Asuna this series is supposed to be centered on

Deprived of fully formed characters and story

Most of the villains of SAO are male and are poignant criticisms of the male ego and how it's allowed to run amok in video games. SAO takes its time in describing these villains and highlighting how their crimes in video games are no different from them committing these crimes in real life. When you create a game with the possibility of true to life pain, rape, torture and murder are you not empowering evil people to become experts at committing evil? Are you not teaching people to commit evil who otherwise would not have?

Kirito, throughout the SAO series, takes the role of the knight in shining armor and saves the damsels in distress from these monsters that used to be men. As the seasons progress Kirito’s kills become more gruesome and extended as he takes out his hatred and guilt on the ever more twisted baddies. When Kirito is sidelined for the majority of season 4, one would expect that this would be the time for some female characters to take the lead.

To a certain extent that is how War of the Underworld starts, a story about Alice and Asuna coming to grips with the fact they must lead because Kirito is now an invalid. Alice and Asuna are wrestling with their footing in the world, because even though they have become strong, they feel lost. Although viewers' first complaint about the recent season is the missing Kirito, it's not mine. My complaint is the missing characters that were supposed to take the spotlight.

Alice starts out as caring for Kirito and rejoining the knights' order to protect the realm from the invading Emperor Vecta and his monsters. We get this spectacular show of Alice wiping out a massive amount of enemy forces and demonstrating that she is the most powerful character on the show. Then she gets knocked out and carried off by Emperor Vecta and becomes the damsel in distress that Bercouli has to go save. Although I loved Bercouli’s last battle against Vecta, I started to become frustrated. When does Alice stand up and fight? She has the advantage because they need to take her alive, so why doesn’t she break some heads? She had this spectacular battle with Kirito in the prior season. When does Alice kick some more butt? (Spoiler) never. She spends the rest of the season running away and letting others do the fighting for her.

Asuna’s character arc is better with her fantastic battle with the leader of the laughing coffin and Yuuki’s sword art. She had a moment of courage when she entered the Underworld to save Kirito and Alice. I wanted desperately for Asuna to deal the final blow in this battle but felt robbed when it was Kirito who had to win the final fight. Again a reminder this is Kirito’s story and no one else’s.

Naturally you would think with Kirito returning from the dead and smashing the baddies, he would profess his undying love for Asuna and the lovers would get the ever after everyone wants, and they kinda do, we don't get to see it. Enough to make me flip tables. The main characters get to spend two hundred years together building the perfect world, and the show skips over all of it. Whoever did the emotional pacing on this show should be blindfolded and shot. We get all the sob stories of Kirito hating himself for using his friends and seeing them die, the revulsion of the baddies and their crimes, but no time dedicated to the payoff of the romance and the excitement of reforming a world. Even when Kirito and Asuna escape the game, Asuna tries to have a tender moment, and we are rushed away from it.

I hope this time away from the series has given the directors a chance to stress the depth of the characters the series was recognized for before this season. Every anime can do great battle scenes with blood and gore. The reason we keep watching is the societal criticism and the strong emotions that are experienced as humanity navigates a techno saturated world. SAO has the potential to return to greatness which were seasons one and three and hopefully five will make it happen.