Common Name: Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online
Alternative Names: SAO Alternative: Gun Gale Online, SAO: GGO,
GGO Alternative
Score: 6/10, 3/5
Length: 12 Episodes, 1 Recap Episode
Genre: Video Game, Action, Comedy, Drama, Military
Summary: Abnormally tall for your typical Japanese woman, Kohiruimaki Karen has had a bit of a rough life. Due to her personal complex about her height, she finds it difficult to socialize and just live her life in a world that wasn't made for her. So, after getting egged on by one of her few friends, Karen tries out various full-immersion MMOs until she is born anew within the game known as Gun Gale Online. Reborn as a tiny, rabbit-like avatar she has dubbed LLENN, Karen has found a place where she can feel comfortable about herself and vent all her worldly frustrations as she guns down creatures and players alike. As she gains some renown as "the pink devil," a universally feared PK'er, LLENN starts to gain the attention of one Pitohui and her unhealthy obsession with death, forcing LLENN and Karen to become either her savior or unwitting killer.
Review: While I'm fairly certain that I haven't been keeping this fact a secret from anyone, I'll just outright state, here and now, that I have never watched the main SAO franchise and have no intention of ever doing so. That was my opinion before watching this spin-off series and that opinion has still not changed. Put bluntly, I don't know if it's me or the series itself, but I just don't get SAO as a franchise. With the series as a whole, I've been lead to understand that the main push of the franchise is watching Kirito be a badass and have all the chicks crush on him because he's meant to serve as wish fulfillment for the audience. As a series about games, however, it's generally well-known that everything on that level is absolute nonsense full of convenient contrivances and, as I understand it, literal deus ex machinas that make the impossible possible for Kirito. So, what we end up with is a show with lazy writing and no actual thought put into making the setting to make it engaging or something we, ourselves, might want to escape to.
Now, it'd be one thing if you could go to that world and pull off the same bullshit Kirito does.
That's just not possible, though, because you are not Kirito and Kirito is the only
person allowed to totally ignore the rules of the game.
Focusing in on the actual show I'm reviewing today, though, I find myself in a similar situation. One in which I can't even get a spin-off series that is only loosely connected to the main franchise and is meant to be perfectly ingestible on its own. Half the initial appeal of this show, for me and many others, was that it was written by the author of Kino's Journey, thus removing the worry that this show would fall to the same, awful writing the main series has suffered for years now. By all rights, GGO should have been something of a fresh start or a hook to pull a new audience into the original SAO if things went well with this series. Yet, clearly, that didn't happen. Rather than being the "savior of the SAO franchise," I've noticed that GGO has mainly gotten two kinds of responses from its audience. The first and one that I more connect with is the feeling that this show is no better than the original. Full-to-bursting with plot armor, contrivances, and batshit insane game design, this show gave way to the same lazy writing that put the main franchise in the ground for so many people. The second camp, however, essentially argues that GGO is a masterful work of parody. In other words, this argument believes that the author intentionally made a terrible story built around a nonsense game and premise just to lampoon the first series at its own expense. Interesting as that second notion might be, I'm not wholly convinced of it since that just sounds like little more than an excuse to make up for an inherently flawed idea. Granted, I might just not see the parody this show was trying to pull off because I don't get the thing it was trying to parody in the first place.
Right, I'm getting ahead of myself again.
Regardless of one's personal opinions or beliefs regarding the intentions behind this show, GGO Alternative was created to be wholly new entry-point into the SAO universe. Characters from the main series like Kirito, Asuna, and Shino are nowhere to be found in this series and aren't even mentioned beyond the effects the SAO Incident had on the world. Rather, we are greeted with a whole new collection of characters who have picked up Gun Gale Online to escape from the harsh realities of their world in favor of an idealized one. The show's main character, Kohiruimaki Karen, for example, is a socially awkward college student with an inferiority complex born from her being unusually tall. To escape from her titanic body and fears about what other people might think of her, Karen tries MMO after MMO until, by simple luck of the draw, she's given an extremely tiny avatar in the world of Gun Gale Online, her new home. Instantly falling in love with her new form, Karen and her avatar, LLENN, go on a rampage across the world for fun and stress relief. For the sake of expediency, LLENN (and Karen by extension) go from total noob to a solo threat in a very short while as she slowly finds a gimmick strategy that works for her and adapts that gimmick in any way she can to fit her current scenario. What that usually boils down to, however, is just her hiding in plain sight and opening fire as soon as an opportunity presents itself; all while dodging bullets with superhuman speed.
I won't deny I got a good chuckle out of the "Chad" LLENN memes that cropped up as
people realized that Karen picked up her game faster than Kirito did his.
As LLENN slowly and steadily gains more and more infamy in the game, she starts to gain the attentions of characters that become her frenemies, temporary allies that promise to gun each other down later, over the course of the game. Most notable among these is the character known as Pitohui, named after a species of bird with brightly colored feathers that possess a neurotoxin to deter predators. Serving as a pseudo-friend and primary antagonist of the series, it is generally understood that Pito's human counterpart has taken a liking to GGO for similar reasons to Karen in that it is an escape for her. Though the identity of Pito's owner is propped up like some kind of grand mystery, the pieces are all there from the very beginning, revealing that she joined the game for two particular reasons. Firstly, she joined as a form of stress relief amidst her struggling with her high-stress career, taking her frustrations out on other players with particularly vicious PKing practices. The second reason, however, which serves as the push for the show's main plot, is her desire to escape from life itself. Due to an absurd level of FOMO (fear of missing out) over her missing out on playing and getting stuck in SAO the day the incident occurred, thanks to a personal/professional obligation, Pito's player gains an unhealthy obsession with death. Wanting to both dole it out and get that thrill of risking her life and that of someone close to her, Pito's owner finds a way to turn GGO into her own, personal death game where her life rests solely on the skills of another player.
According to the parody theory, Pito's basically supposed to be an evil Kirito.
No clue where they'd get that idea though.
Alongside LLENN's vaguely tumultuous frenemy relationship with Pito, which forms the backbone of the series at large, there are a few others that earn an honorable mention at the very least. Greatest, at least in stature, among these is LLENN's ally and Pito's manservant/lover known simply as "M." Out of the entirety of the cast, M has one of the most infuriating and difficult positions in the show simply because he is working on both sides of the Pito problem. On one side, he works quietly and tirelessly to undermine Pito's suicide attempts, laying plans to see just barely succeed at making sure both he and she stay alive. For this, he recruits LLENN and the connections she develops over the course of the show's two PUBG-like tournaments by essentially pinning their, his and Pito's, survival on her success. On the other hand, he does everything that Pito asks of him, regardless of how insane she and her requests might be, because he is as obsessively in love with her as she is with death and killing. This contrast, while interesting in concept, falls flat during its execution. Rather than some calm, quiet, considerate schemer, M and his real-world counterpart seem like little more than pathetic mockeries of who or what they could have been. As they beg and plead and fawn over Karen to make sure she goes along with this insanity any and all ability to take them seriously is lost thanks to their incredibly toxic relationship.
"Hello, police? Yeah, a psychopath just broke into my apartment is and is trying
to coerce me into a suicide pact between him and his homicidal girlfriend.
Can you please take care of this for me?" should have been
Karen's first and only response to this nonsense.
Secondly, not so much a person as a whole group that functions as a single entity, there is the Amazons. After going head-to-head with this team of beefy soldier women in the first PUBG tournament, LLENN and the Amazons reach something akin to a respectful and playful rivalry. They are, for all intents and purposes, the most healthy relationship in this entire show and the perfect example of what a competitive friendship should be like. While they are part of separate teams, they laugh and banter and take shots for one another so that they can have fun together, no holds barred. More than that, regardless of who wins or loses, nothing is taken personally. No one's life is threatened or on the line. It's just a tick on a score box and on to the next game with the only thing being at stake being whose job it'll be to buy the snacks next time they hang out in the real world. For several reasons, these girls are the best influence on LLENN and Karen in their respective worlds. In GGO, they have fun together and teach LLENN how to just throw caution to the wind so everyone can have a blast. In the real world, the girls actively look up to the older Karen and help her feel a little better about her self-image since they associate her height with natural beauty.
Full disclosure, these girls are probably the best part of this show.
The contrast between them and their avatars is simultaneously hilarious and
strangely positive given their acceptance of beauty in every form.
Last, but certainly not least, there is the late addition to the character roster of Karen's best friend, Shinohara Miyu. On top of being the catalyst that got Karen interested in GGO in the first place, Miyu is, unequivocally, Karen's best and greatest friend. While her part is relatively minor, it is essential to what little functionality this title has. When Karen starts to really buckle under her anxiety and insecurity about her height and being abnormal and an "other" in Japanese society, Miyu gives her an escape that Karen falls head over heels in love with. When Karen is roped into the Pito problem by M, she is the first person Karen turns to and, instantly, she's in it to win it because, understandably, Karen is upset by this. Once's she in it, though, her portrayal starts to fall flat but, thankfully, not nearly as offensively as Pito and M's portrayals. While Miyu was already presented as having something of a pervy old geezer joke personality, all of the overconfidence and shamelessness of that persona is cranked up to 11 once she's in the game itself. To make it even worse, that fact is made all the more weird and cringy since, like Karen did with LLENN, Miyu also wins the loli lotto in GGO's randomized character creation algorithm. This means we end up watcher her get a tiny, blonde, dual grenade launcher- wielding loli avatar with a proclivity for flirting with her fellow loli avatar, LLENN.
Wait...what am I complaining about?! That sounds AWESOME and not at all problematic!!!
With the stage set and all the characters of any real import given their moment in the sun, I can honestly say I think I would have adored this show so long as what I have dubbed "the Pito problem"
wasn't the main crux of this show. Pretty much everything else about this show, I either loved or am willing to tolerate more than the Pito problem. Everything, from the jank bullshit regarding the mechanics of this "game" to the contrivances thrown in ceaselessly to explain something absolutely pointless to the simple acknowledgement that GGO is probably made by Japanese EA, considering the level of micro-transactions for guns that can be stolen from you and destroyed in the game, isn't nearly as bad in my eyes. Are those things stupid? Most definitely. Do they break my engagement with this show as bad as the Pito problem? Most definitely not. Where these things can be waved away as a parody on the nature of MMOs, rather than SAO itself, or simply some contrived nonsense to string the story along at least they didn't wholly kill any and all enjoyment of the show. With the contrivances and bullshittery, I can at least laugh at the insanity. With someone threatening to kill themself and someone else if unless a third party comes to be their savior by besting them in a video game, there is absolutely nothing to laugh at about that. First off, this is kind of an actual problem with online games in general. Death threats and suicide threats are an actual problem and one that shouldn't be mocked since it only devalues those threatened by them even more. Secondly, what sane person would go along with that, rather than calling the police first thing?
Oh, right, the answer is no sane person would.
Now we come to the heart of my problem with the Pito problem. On the surface, I can understand why Pito would cling to LLENN as another PKer who uses this game as a form of stress-relief or a coping mechanism, thus making them equals on some level. What I cannot and will not get behind, however, the actual reason why these two are equals and why LLENN is the only one allowed to stop Pito's attempted murder/suicide. The reason in question is simply because, supposedly, underneath her being a good and empathetic person who would go out of her way to help a friend, LLENN is just as insane and unhinged as Pito. Where the show gets this idea or where this insanity springs from, nobody knows or particularly seems to care so long as it gets her to win. All that can be said for sure is that, at randomly convenient moments, the "fuck it" switch in LLENN's head gets flipped and she goes into a berserker rage and fights with pure adrenaline and zero decorum. In this berserker mode, all caution and care are thrown to the wind as she stabs people in the balls, rams other cars headlong, and literally tears out another person's throat to achieve victory. Now, were the show to address where this insanity comes from, I might be inclined to buy it as an inherent character trait. What the show seems to be expressing though is that anyone can be insane so long as they meet the proper condition to let their insanity or Freudian "Id" loos on the world--a rabbit hole of an issue I have no desire to explore. It's just that LLENN and Pito's insanity is weirdly compatible for the plot's sake, thus making her the ideal opponent and counterpart for the Pito problem.
I say they're compatible, but I'm pretty sure Pito doesn't hallucinate that here weapons are alive.
Had the show just thrown all this compatible insanity and Pito nonsense out the window, I think I can say with certainty that I would have loved this show. Without these issues, GGO Alternative was well on its way to becoming a fun, silly, and vaguely accurate portrayal of having fun with Battle Royale game and using the friendships a person would form in a game like that to overcome personal hangups. The relationships that LLENN and, by association, Karen forms with her fellow players is one of the most compelling aspects to this show and the only one with any significant value to the show at large. Yet, once the Pito problem rears its ugly head halfway through the series, all of that gets thrown out of the window until the time comes for LLENN to cash in the metaphorical friendship tokens she's been steadily acquiring the whole time in exchange for favor during the inevitable confrontation with Pito. Beyond that, I have to say I was fairly impressed with what this show had to offer. The character designs were fun, diverse, and memorable. The art and animation were decent, kinetic, and affecting when it wanted to step things up a notch. The show's music was fairly middle of the road and very "anime." As to whether its "good" or not, it's hard for me to say. On one level, it failed tremendously because I still have no desire to seek out the main series this show was based on. On another level, assuming that it is a work of parody, it failed to present its intention in a manner suitable for anyone unfamiliar with the original product, thus making the parody nonexistent as for as I'm concerned. Yet, on one final level, I can't say I wholly dislike this show. It has a great many problems, to be sure, but I won't say I didn't enjoy it on some level. So, here I am, basically forced to shrug away a yay or neigh verdict because one's enjoyment of this show may wholly depend on their ability to understand the in-jokes or tolerance for contrived anime bullshit.