#21.12.24

Joseph Woll by Michael Chisholm

Yeah wow I didn't like this season! At all! It was a waste of fuckin time! Even this last episode is just 5 minutes on Namek as we formulate a plan to rush down the enemy with Pito's new RPG and then press the win button. LLENN's scaring the shit out of the NPC guy is neat, I didn't care for the reveal of what the NPC guys actually were though. And then yeah season sucked. Boohoo. I want real SAO back.

When the GUN commander tells Team Sonic about Shadow's backstory he tells them of a meteorite that landed on earth containing Shadow whom was then researched on and whatnot, before an accident destroyed everything and Shadow was put in stasis. My initial reaction to this obviously incorrect backstory was that it was an intentional lie, the GUN commander omitting information that made GUN look bad and Sonic and the gang would learn the real truth later. The movie even seems to follow up on this in that Sonic and friends literally talk about needing to find more information and even outright say "we're not trusting anyone until we learn more". What's the point of planting a seed of doubt in GUN then that isn't really followed up on? Even GUN's relative antagonism the rest of the movie is due to a misunderstanding on Rockwell's end, but they're never actually called out for what they did to Shadow or whatever. It is a narratively unfulfilling series of events and god why couldn't they just faithfully adapt the already good Shadow backstory instead of changing it pretty much exclusively for the worse.