Review of Sword Art Online
Let me immediately say that Sword Art Online is a bad anime. Late to the party or otherwise, this is my opinion. I don't care about the innumerable other people who have already said this, that's irrelevant to my own conclusion. I'll do my best to accurately describe the reasons I feel this way. I'll start by getting elements I feel are superfluous out of the way; The art design, animation, sound design and music are mostly not worth noting, with occasional exceptions (constantly distracting sidemouth, music tracks that sound stolen from Naruto, etc.). They don't add or detract from the experience. The most important elements ofany story, I would say, are the aspects directly related to writing, be it the plot, the characters, pacing, theming, atmosphere, whatever. Sword Art Online fails rather egregiously in this regard.
The plot synopsis to SAO is misleading; Sword Art Online isn't really about being trapped in a death MMO, it's a love story masquerading as a harem anime with a death MMO as the back drop. Although that doesn't inherently present a problem, the love story is terribly uninteresting, and all of the other story is also rather uninteresting.
Kirito is a deeply offensive Mary Sue. He's the fastest, strongest, bestest player in the game, and he's so good at everything, and he's so charming that women fall in love with him after meeting him for a couple hours. He doesn't display much character, and when he does it's usually boring and generic, or it's brief and insignificant.
Asuna begins the series as a generic tsundere and ends as a completely generic love interest. Her main characteristics are also being the fasterest and strongerest and besterest, as well as being a loner type, until she stops that. After that, her only characteristic is being in love with Kirito.
Anyone that isn't the main two characters gets at best brief flashes of being characters. The two other waifus in Kirito's harem turn into non-characters after their respective episodes, and his sister's main characterization is "I really want to have sex with my brother, but I know I'm not supposed to, what do I do!?"
Three male characters could qualify as recurring side characters: Klein is almost likable but unfortunately comes off as creepy with his repeated attempts to solicit underage girls, presumably for sex, Agil is likable but he shows up so rarely and briefly, and "Recon" (I had to look up his name) is an annoying cuck who's only characteristic is that he desperately wants to have sex with Kirito's sister.
The main antagonists are also not good. Kayaba Akihiko is supposed to be enigmatic and all-seeing, but he ultimately ends up being a generic scientist person whose motivations are confused, contradictory and lacking. Sugou Nobuyuki (I also had to look up his name) is just a weird rapist fellow, and other than wanting to be a creepy rapist fellow, he vaguely alludes to being a corrupt businessman.
The pacing is incredibly poorly executed. The season has two arcs, and neither of them have particularly good pacing. The first arcs pacing begins as schizophrenic and confused, and then slows to a crawl, and then abruptly ends. The second arc is BORING. It remains boring until you realize that you have somehow finished watching the season. Nothing matters except for the ending, and there's also bizarre diversions that seem to only detract from the narrative.
SAO does its best to ignore any themes or ideas it could explore. It often flirts with being about the blurred lines between virtual and non-virtual reality, but it only ever touches upon it in a shallow and unintellectual manner. It even seems to specifically shirk ways to build upon a theme, by discarding potentially interesting ideas.
SAO has a superficially diverse palette of ethos and mood. Horror, comedy, tragedy, romance, drama, all of these and more are attempted in Sword Art, but none of them are mastered. The horror aspect is at first acknowledged but then abandoned, the comedy is unfunny, the tragedy comes off as melodramatic and laughable, as does the drama, and the romance is hollow.
Ultimately, Sword Art Online is a bad anime because it doesn't have anything about it that is good. I was not entertained except by laughing at it with close friends and pointing out all the innumerable flaws. I was not intrigued by any of the themes or characters. I was not invested in the plot, or in the world, or the interpersonal relationships. Sword Art Online achieves a 3 by virtue of being mostly coherent and generally competently made, (writing aside), which is something that is unfortunately not invariably true for anime.