The third season of Sword Art Online is finally upon us. The alicization arc has been long awaited by people like me, who have read the entire arc through the light novels. To put it into perspective, the show’s first two seasons were covered in books 1 through 9; alicization is books 10 – 18. So there’s a lot of content.

The series does a bit of a reset on the story at the beginning. We have a backstory of the boy Kirito playing with two other children, Eugeo and Alice. This, we discover, is him trying out a whole new scuba technology that is indistinguishable from real life. After being attacked by the third perpetrator of the incident with the deadly weapon, he is rushed to the hospital. The next thing he knows, Kirito wakes up in the virtual world, known as the Underworld.

Things are slowly explained as Kirito puts his problem-solving skills to the test on the inside, and Asuna shows off some detective skills on the outside. The real question is, what is the underworld and why does it exist? Eventually, you discover the beginning of the corruption within the Underworld.

So far, how does it compare to the light novels?

Pretty good, actually.

The first few episodes of the show do a great job of following the light novels almost perfectly. All the important parts of the building are present, and it’s really amazing to see the characters I read about come to life in animation.

Now there are some parts that are removed, which I really don’t agree with. Throughout the first six episodes, I counted two main scenes that should have been included and weren’t. These scenes were important to the character’s development; one for Kirito and the other for Eugeo. The biggest scene was for Eugeo as she is a newer character and we can always use some more build.

Then episode 7 happened.

Episode 7 threw the good pacing to the wind and rushed through about half a book’s worth of material, which I don’t like. We get a flashback covering Kirito and Eugeo’s journey to becoming Swordcraft Academy students, but it actually went much deeper than just a flashback. They also rush Kirito and her mentor’s relationship, which is very sad, especially since she comes back later, and would have helped further develop their relationship.

In general, I am very satisfied with the way the anime is developing. In the end, the book is almost always better than the anime or the movie, so I can’t really complain too much. The animation is absolutely beautiful, and I enjoy watching the story unfold before my eyes.