Manga: Alternative GGO

SAO Alternative Gun Gale Online
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Karen Kohiruimaki always felt out of place in the real world. Due to her extreme height, she found it hard to make friends with other girls her age. Everything changes when she's introduced to VR and Gun Gale Online. In GGO, Karen is free to play the cute, chibi avatar of her dreams! Can Karen find friendship in this bullet-ridden MMO...?

Ahhh yeaaaaah, brand new Sword Art Online, with brand new characters! Or you know....Gun Gale Online as it where. There's some brilliantly drawn, fun colour pages at the beginning, and the art in general is very well drawn. There's lots of detail and the characters are fantastically drawn too! Llen is cute but not overly cute you know? 

Karen as Llen is cute yet badass. That's literally her all over. As Karen you feel for her. I didn't have a great time at school because of my appearance either, and I really empathised and related with her and her situation. Pitohui is hilarious and badass...but also kind of shady. Like maybe it's me being overly suspicious but she seems shady and I couldn't shake the feeling the longer I read. M was an interesting partner choice for Llen and it was funny to watch the interactions between the two of them! 

We get introduced to Karen and how she met Pitohui and started to get in to the game. Standard really. Then we swiftly head in to the Squad Jam competition. There's plenty of action and a good, swift pace. There's some brilliant tactics and each scene is drawn with excellent detail, as are the guns and the bullet lines and so on. 

There's fun action and battles, but there's also a couple of mysteries too. I have my suspicions about Pitohui and who she really is but there's a piece that doesn't quite fit and I'm curious to see how it's going to play out. Either way, this is an explosive first volume that sucks you back in to the world of GGO and expands on what we already know, showing us more of it as well as introducing us to new, interesting characters! There's even a tiny, tiny cameo!