Sword Art Online: Alicization War of Underworld Part 2

Episode 5

Note: This episode is listed as episode 17 on Crunchyroll and episode 41 on Funimation.

With this episode, the series concludes its adaptation of novel 17 and stretches 11 pages into novel 18, although with a little rearranging of scenes it ends on exactly the same scene that novel 17 does. How it gets there is not quite the same, however. Although the bulk of this episode closely follows the novel, the episode also includes a major retrofit designed to bring the series more in line with the movie, Ordinal Scale, officially being in the continuity. (Doubtless this was also intended to kill time in a story segment that only had 25 pages to adapt if it wanted to end at the most suitable point.) While this retrofit has been integrated in probably the only reasonable way that it could, and has a certain amount of cool factor to it, it does not entirely escape the sense of it being jammed in there just for the sake of making that connection.

Specifically, just when things look darkest, Eiji and Yuna from the movie appear and temporarily stall PoH (whose name is now officially revealed to be a shortened version of Prince of Hell) by the former battling him while Yuna provides song-based buffs. Yuna is, of course, not really there (she died in Aincrad), and this probably is not the real Eiji, either, unless he was one of the recruited Japanese players who just held back; the activation of the SAO server at the end of last episode, and Yui seeing the streams arriving in from that this episode, suggests that both are just remnants of the game, however – much like how Eugeo is in Underworld. Either way, Eiji gets a good, dynamic fight with several sharp moves, but he cannot beat PoH because that would disrupt the story too much.

The impact the two have is more to revise the reasons why dissent arises among the Korean/Chinese group. In the original novel, that was mostly on Moonphase adding up the inconsistencies in what's going on, arguing his case, and some being convinced by the inherent cruelty of what PoH was doing. (Kicking over the wheelchair of an invalid does not go over well.) Here, instead, the Korean players recognize Yuna (which makes them wonder if this really is a Japanese server, as Siune insisted last episode) and the Laughing Coffin logo (which they would know because of the book about SAO introduced in the movie). I would have been fine with the change if it had been left at that, but the internecine conflict being influenced by PoH's dark spirit was a bit of an eye-roller. It was not needed here.

A lot else is also going on here. On the northern front, Leafa is battling valiantly in defense of the orcs and pugilists because she knows that's what her brother would do. This was graphic content in the novel, and the ugliness of that struggle here is shown in maybe the goriest scene in Alicization: the one where the spear goes through her eye. Her near-infinite regeneration ability may apply, but that still hurts and wears her down mentally. She easily gets the award for the grittiest performance here. On the southern front, Sinon battles it out with Subtilizer, a battle which ultimately costs both of them limbs before Subtilizer abandons the battle to continue pursuit of Alice after Sinon starts to master the Incarnation system herself; we never see Gabriel's viewpoint here, but presumably he judged killing Sinon to not be worth the trouble at that point.

Stuff is happening on the Ocean Turtle, too. The scene where Rinko throws the wrench down the shaft is slightly altered from the novel; there the wrench hit Yanai on the head, here it hits near enough to startle Yanai into stumbling. This is a cosmetic difference, as the result – Yanai falling to his death – is the same. The channeling from Suguha, Asuna, and Sinon beginning in the reawakening of Kirito also begins, and he has a non-flashback line (albeit in a dreamlike state) for the first time in the War of Underworld part. Thus the hero's path to return has begun.

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Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld Part 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, Hulu, and Funimation .