Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation” starts off the tournament with an unfair fight. It’s quite fitting for a PvP shooter game, which is essentially what GGO is. However, the end of this episode will leave you wondering just who was the fight unfair towards.

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation”: Details

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Yes, there is much, much gunplay in this second episode.

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation” is the second episode (you can read my review of Ep. 1 here) of the second season of this science fiction, adventure, and comedy-drama anime. Said anime is the anime adaptation of the Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online light novels and manga by Keiichi Sigsawa (Kino’s Journey, Tale of a Single Continent).

Originally, 3Hz (Dimension W, Princess Principal, The Devil Is a Part-Timer!!) was the animation studio behind the first season. However, for this second season, the animation studio is instead A-1 Pictures (Black Butler, Sword Art Online, Solo Leveling).

Production Cast

Alas, we don’t know who is behind Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation” in particular. However, we do know that all of the main staff behind the first season are returning for the second. This means that Masayuki Sakoi remains the director behind Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II in general, with Yōsuke Kuroda as the writer, and Yoshio Kosakai as the character designer. Starving Trancer (aka. Yusuke Seo) is the one who composed the music you hear in this second season.

Speaking of which: the opening theme song for Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II is “GG” by ReoNa. Meanwhile, “Little Dancer” by The Jazzin’ Park is the ending theme song for the same.

Voice Cast

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation” features the voices of Tomori Kusunoki (Reba Buhr in English dub) as LLENN / Karen Kohiruimaki, Yoko Hikasa / ReoNa (singing) (Allegra Clark in English dub) as Pitohui / Elsa Kanzaki, Chinatsu Akasaki (Faye Mata in English dub) as Fukaziroh / Miyu Shinohara, and Kazuyuki Okitsu (Ray Chase in English dub) as M / Gōshi Asōgi.

When and Where to Watch

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation” made its airing and streaming debut (read: simulcast) on October 11, 2024. You can watch this episode only on Crunchyroll. In fact, you can only watch this season only on Crunchyroll due to this season of the anime being an exclusive there. However, you can watch the first season not only on Crunchyroll, but also on Hulu or Prime Video.

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation”: Synopsis

At least we now know the context behind this thumb.

Alas, Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II only just recently began its run. In fact, Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation” only just made its debut four days ago as of this writing. Thus, I will present to you Crunchyroll’s official synopsis for this episode instead of a spoiler-filled plot summary. You can read that synopsis below:

SJ3 has finally begun. The battlefield is located on an island surrounded by the sea. The word “UNKNOWN” is written on a small hill in the middle of the island. “Is this ‘UNKNOWN’ the ‘special rule’ for this battle?”

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation”: The Good

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Without context: this new season shows that Keiichi Sigsawa understands how games work a lot more than Reki Kawahara.

Fortunately, not much has changed about what’s good about Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation”, and that’s a good thing. The story continues to be most excellent in quality. Mostly because Keiichi Sigsawa is showing that he understands how games work a lot more than Reki Kawahara ever did with Sword Art Online. The most obvious being the devs of GGO introducing a little map control to this in-universe tournament. Without spoilers: the idea here is that they slowly shrink the map in order to force the players to engage in closer and closer combat. This not only produces more intense action between the players, but it also eliminates the winning strategy from the previous tournament: camping. No team can camp when the map is slowly shrinking, and that produces much more entertaining battles.

Adding to that depth of storytelling is the quality animation from A-1 Pictures. They show once again that they were the studio behind Sword Art Online, lending some very high quality animation to this episode. Especially in the gunplay and explosions. Those are very important for an anime of a first person shooter game like this one.

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation”: The Bad

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You can tell that that there’s something dastardly on Pitohui’s mind with that smile.

Honestly, even the most ardent action junkies will be satisfied by Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online II Ep. 2 “The Great Freight Car Operation”. Even though there’s no blood or gore whatsoever, the gunplay is quite entertainly complex enough to satisfy most gun nuts. It’s only if you want something a bit more relaxing to watch that you might not enjoy this episode quite as much. In that case, may I suggest Senpai is an Otokonoko, Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF, Blue Box, and/or Astro Note? Those anime should be relaxing enough to chill to.