The plot of Alicization is literally that some Japanese navy R&D contractors discovered the literal physical form of the human soul and how to put it into a machine and immediately launched a program to develop blank copies of the researchers' souls into fully sapient synthetic humans with free will, to serve as drone pilots. They had to do this because simple copies of their literal souls would immediately explode on realizing they were copies, and for no clear reason "so yes it is a fully functioning human, but ontologically completely obedient" was undesirable for an enslaved military AI that they want to mass produce and use as disposable cannon fodder. Like ethically the entire point was that this was bad, and even the non-"alicized" synthetic humans were still people whose lives mattered, even the designated villain ones who it took pains to show were normal people put into like ork bodies and who still actively rebelled against being made to play the part of the villain in their horrible fantasy world simulation, but the premise was still very silly.

It's... still not good, but it's also not as bad as the earlier seasons. Still extremely gross in places, though.