Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II – Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

What is this?

LLENN is back as she and Fuka prepare for the latest round of Squad Jam. This time she wants to have a rematch with the girls from Team Shinc and she managed to take M and Pitohui for a ride. With such a powerful lineup, they should have no problem clearing away the competition. There’s just one problem: none of them have played GGO in the last two months! Will they be able to win or will rustiness take them out of the race?

An alternative to Sword Art Online: Gun Gale Online II is based on Sword Art Online alternative: Gun Gale Online light novel series by Keiichi Sigsawa with illustrations by Kouhaku Kuroboshi. This is a spin-off Reki Kawahara‘S Sword art online concession. The anime series is streaming Crunchyroll on Fridays.

How was the first episode?

Jair Taylor
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After a six-year absence, our favorite gun-toting gamer girls are back for a new season. As someone who never really cared much Sword art online in fact, I had a lot more fun with the first season of this show than I expected, and while the stakes are certainly lower, it delivered enough intense action and humor to make up for it. More importantly, it seems to have been made by someone who at least understands the basics of PvP gaming, which is more than can be said for early versions of the game. SAO and MMO, so for that reason alone this game will always be a winner in my book.

For the most part, this premiere picks up where the first season left off, with LLENN getting dragged into another Squad Jam event, this time with the intention of getting even with the Amazons of Team Shinc. But instead of simply pairing up with Fuka, she’s joined this time by M and, most importantly, Pitou, who seems to have cooled down a bit from her season-long murder therapy session with LLENN. While she is still more than happy to have beaten the competition, she is mainly there for the two of them to have fun together. While this seems like it could be an interesting little team, we’ll have to wait for the episode to see how it all plays out, as most of it is premiere-style and mostly consists of re-introducing all of the teams from Season 1 and re-establishing the dynamic between our heroines (and M, I guess, too), which is fine, but not the most exciting thing for an opener. The only notable thing about the entire premiere is the revelation that all four of them weren’t acting GGO in a few months since they’ve been busy, and if there’s one thing I know about competitive multiplayer, it’s that lack of practice is a death sentence. It would be nice to see how much this hinders their performances.

Actually, there is one more thing that stands out here, and this is what it looks like: compared to the first season, it already feels like a slight deterioration in visual quality. While nothing in this premiere looked completely bad, the designs looked a bit more simplistic compared to the first season, and there was a weird shiny filter above the characters that looked a bit off-putting. Coupled with the fact that Photos A-1 doesn’t have a good track record of stable productions lately, and the preview for the next episode consists entirely of photos, I’m more than a little concerned that this could go downhill quickly. I hope I’m being paranoid, but it would suck to have to wait so long for another season, only for it to fall apart. That’s a thing for the future though, and at this point I still like this spin-off enough to see where the new season goes and if it manages to be half as entertaining as the first season, we should be in for quite a ride.

Richard Eisenbeis
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Despite what the 3.5 star rating might suggest, this isn’t a bad episode Gun Gale on the Internet. The only reason it has such a low score is that, aside from a cold opening, it doesn’t have any of the shooting that the series is famous for. While this is a bit disappointing, it is actually the best choice for the series going forward.

There is a personal drama at the heart Gun Gale on the Internet (which gives you a higher stake than for people just playing for fun). This is the show’s strongest point, but in cases like this episode it can also be a double-edged sword. The second half of the first season – including its climax – was very focused on LLENN and Pitohui. And after six years between seasons, it’s understandable if that’s the only thing you remember from the first season.

Therefore, the purpose of this episode is to remind you about all the other characters that will be important in this story and their connections to LLENN and Pitohui. The episode does this quite well, showing the various teams talking about their failures and their desire (or lack thereof) to face the two young women again.

He’s also good at stacking the deck against our heroes. Apart from LLENN, our heroes are woefully exhausted. Fukaziroh was grinding in ALO, and Pitohui and M were busy with real-world affairs. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. LLENN is the winner of the first Squad Jam – and she or Pitohui would have been the winner of the second one if it weren’t for Pitohui’s personal death game and it takes LLENN to save or defeat her. The idea of two of them on the same team – along with the other teams’ need for revenge – is enough for all the other teams to unite and hunt down LLENN’s team and Pitohui first. We get a taste of this result in the cold open, and by the end of the episode we are left with the question: LLENN and her friends are so good, can even players like them overcome such a difference in numbers – especially when they are as rusty as they are?

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