After LLENN, her beloved gun P-chan, and her teammate place second in the Second Squad Jam in the VRMMO Gun Gale Online, what is there left for her and her acquaintances to accomplish? A lot, evidently. Namely, the Third Squad Jam is about to launch, and there’s more than a few old friends looking for payback against LLENN and her bloodthirsty third-place rival, Pitohui. LLENN is thinking of sitting this one out, but Pitohui talks her into joining by reminding her that she owes the Amazon brigade (really a bunch of middle school girls) a rematch. Then Pitohui convinces LLENN to merge their teams into a single entry for the Jam, and that gets people talking! The episode ends with the Jam about to commence!
When you want to get a busy season off to a running start, you have two options: make a really long first episode (like Re:Zero’s season three), or cram everything into a fast, normal-length one. SAOA:GGO opts for the latter. Episode one feels very much like a “get all the necessary background ASAP” installment. It’s fun, but it’s banking on the viewer knowing and loving (and remembering) the characters from season one. I recalled most of the main characters and the frequently featured teams pretty quickly, but the teams that didn’t feature as much before also didn’t ring as many bells for me. That’s okay: this is clearly setting up the rest of the season as quickly as possible, and hopefully the subsequent episodes will fulfill the series’ promise. If you liked season one, as I did, you’ll probably like season two. Do be aware of some content that is not for everyone, like a castration joke early on and one of the characters barely censored by steam in the bath. In any case, if this is your jam (ha!), get ready for more of the action and humor of the previous season!
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
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