Review of Sword Art Online

How this anime could have been at least an 8/10, instead of what I believe is a low 6/10: 1) Make harem girls less about love and more about world-building: Lisbeth/Lizbeth and Silica 1A) Make Lisbeth's arc more about Kirito discovering his 2H ability and Lisbeth's family and being a blacksmith and less about love. 1B) Make Silica's arc about PK/Orange guilds, not about sexualizing a 12-year-old... I get the loli thing but could have been more about child vulnerability in video games. OR made her an acceptable age with limited fan-service. 2) Add more interaction with Klein and Agil, maybe even bringing back Kibaou for male stories +some anti-hero action.

3) Let Yui die. It's a Gary Sue moment when Kirito can "hack" into a mainframe to save her program, that he should know little to nothing about. Let her die, you can let go of some characters, hers was weird with Kirito, barely acceptable with Asuna. If you wanted to bring her back, it could have been after Kirito got the "Seed".

4) Don't let Asuna turn into a housewife, she was cool because of her fighting abilities and cool-sweet personality. The romance that is in the show is nice, but don't turn her into a damsel in distress.

5) Show more of Kirito's leveling and struggles in the first episodes and how he grinds the easy levels, in the beginning, give him some personality. Maybe he hates losing and he's arrogant? I understand it's so that guys can put themselves in his place, but this isn't a harem VN anime, it tries to be the OG is Asuna, and adding more girls to that is excessive fan-service. Also, add more about the Beta testers and how Kirito helped them after making himself an outcast.

6) Honestly, everything in the Fairy arc is mostly trash, I think it should've been a separate season. I believe SAO arc 1 should have been expanded with more world episodes with different player's experiences like episodes 5-6. Boss room of episode 14 felt rushed, more battle time would have been better.

7) Ending of season 1: Should have just ended with Kirito walking off into the distance in the hospital.

I enjoyed this anime, and it's kind of nostalgic so I rewatched it a few times, making the issues with this anime's pace obvious. I truly believe this idea is a great 'isekai' story, and there was so much it could have touched on JUST being in SAO, not the whole Fairy arc.