Review of Sword Art Online

So yeah, it's a shonen genre that is MONOGAMOUS. The world is ending. That aside, watching this series after years away from shonen anime has made me realize that the genre, or should I say the shonen subgenre of the anime genre, is undergoing a serious change. By the way, be advised, that after writing the whole thing and reviewing it, I realize that it has turned into more of an essay and in-depth discussion on the anime genre, rather than a simple review, so only read if that interests you. I'm giving this anime a pretty mediocre score, and I believe that many others havealso given it less-than-excellent scores, ranging from mediocre to abysmal. At the core of the issue, I think, is the PACING. There is no way to sugarcoat the fact that this show had terrible, terrible pacing. Years ago, when I was into huge, drawn-out behemoths of shows like Bleach and Naruto, I thought those had pacing issues. But no, Sword Arts Online has pacing issues.

My first thought after I had seen a couple of episodes and gotten a general grasp of the show's premise, its world, it's characters, and its tone, the first thing I thought was "there are only 20-something episodes?"

You see, SAO was meant to be, and should be, a painfully milked-out, overdrawn, over-dramatized grindfest stretching for hundreds of episodes, in the spirit of the Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach franchises. Now, you can probably discern from my choice of words that I don't exactly hold such franchises in the loftiest artistic esteem, but at least they are what they are. Sure, single story arc, nay a single fight, can stretch into painful dozens of episodes of "my sword is bigger and cooler than yours," but at least we get to be intimately acquainted with every minute aspect of the show, ranging from the over-large cast of characters enough to populate a small town, each of the special abilities, all the different locations, etc. etc. Getting immersed in a vibrant new world is the joy of watching shonen series, right?

I haven't watched an episode of Naruto and Bleach in, I don't know, 4-5 years? And I still remember KAGE BUNSHIN NO JUTSU!!!! and GETSUGA TENSOUUUU in the exact voice and intonation they were respectively invoked in. I watched ALL of SAO overnight last night, and the only names I remember from the show are: Kirito, Asuna, Suguha, and that's it.

I mean, it's a show about MMORPG, for god's sake, it was MEANT to be milked out. The thing about MMO's is that there is a lot, I mean A LOT, of content. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of enemies, equipment, items, and skills in each game, and the thing is, a player somehow ends up knowing every single one of those by the time his character starts wearing more than hardened leather for armor. That is the magic of grinding. With the premise of SAO, us watchers should have rejoiced with Kirito every time he took 30 episodes to complete a single quest to gain a shiny new sword, and the fan forums should've been abuzz for weeks about how awesome that new sword is, how it compares to that one other cool sword in the series, etc. We should've gone all fanboy, when Asuna finally mastered a flashy new technique after episodes and episodes of training, interspersed with being all depressed about how she was too weak to protect Kirito, etc (actually, the last bit's sarcasm; we can probably do without all the tearful WATASHIWA MAMORU scenes Amen).

That, i think, is the essence of the changes that are taking place in the Japanese shonen scene. Perhaps it's indicative of the hard times the Japanese economy is going through, but it seems that the investors and developers are wary of diving headlong into these big, decade-spanning, moneycow franchises that resulted in DBZ, One Piece, etc. I can't think of very many of those springing up in the last few years, other than the ones that were already ongoing. FMA Brotherhood, maybe? No, the manga series was already done, so it had no more coming. I seem to remember Ao no Exorcist starting to become something of a flagship franchise, until the developers VERY CONSPICUOUSLY decided to walk out on in right in the middle of the show. It's like, if a few years ago, they saw a popular and promising manga, they were like "how can we turn this into the biggest, most culturally-pervasive franchise we possibly can and milk as much cash from it as logically possible," these days they're like "Oh, this manga/light novel is quite popular these days. You think we can do a modest, 24-episode quickie on it and come out with a reasonable, well-calculated profit?"

As always, I'm in the danger of over-extrapolating and delving into the realm of international economics, where I definitely do not belong. But I lament that SAO really had the potential to become the Naruto, Bleach, One Piece of few years and hundreds of episodes later. It's very premise of an MMORPG gives it free reign for virtually limitless milking-out. Each boss of every 100 floors of just the first world could have been written into its own story arc going longer than the entire SAO season itself. Hell, if they suffered the quintessential problem of the anime catching up with the original light novels, they could just sneak in a filler season or two as some side quest, and no one would even notice. It would definitely start to feel drawn-out, but fans would no doubt continue to watch, as long as they gave us a sweet new piece of equipment or flashy new skill every now and then; that is the tested-and-proven formula of, not only shonen anime, but MMORPG itself. And to be honest, I thought the characters themselves were quite likeable and had every bit of potential to grow into a solid shonen cast, just as much as the cast of Bleach or Fairy Tail, given the right development. It personally offends me that they could whip up a decent, enjoyable 100-episode show out of something like D.Gray-Man (like, years back), yet wasted this goldmine of a shonen series on a 25-episode mini show (yeah yeah, they're making a second season, whatever, whatever, DID YOU NOT READ ANYTHING I JUST WROTE?).

Perhaps part of the problem is that those developers and investors are out of touch and do not trust power of the fanbase. Just give the fans something to rave about, and they will carry the show more than any author's penmanship possibly can. I mean, no offense, but since when were shows like Bleach watched and adored because of avant-garde writing style and quality of animation that constantly struggled to stay abreast of the constantly-evolving standards of anime? No, just give us a cool new world like SAO and ALfheim to play in, throw in some reasonably charming characters (which, the cast of SAO certainly can be), and, in no time, fanbase will be built, the flames of ship wars will be fanned (doesn't matter if KiritoXAsuna is so monogamously canon, KiritoXSuzuha and dozens of other ship camps WILL rise up), fan fics and fan art will pour out, and memes will be created to immortalize the show on the internet boards.

On an ending note, I would probably not be its biggest fan, if SAO were to evolve into a Naruto-esque megafranchise, as the shonen genre just doesn't do it for me anymore, but, if this trend continues, I would sure feel sorry that the next generation of shonen-watchers wouldn't have something nice and easy and generic to grow up on before finding their more specific tastes. I mean, I know, that if I didn't have shows like DBZ and Bleach to get me hooked to anime, I probably wouldn't have ended up enjoying the deeper, existentially-satisfying experiences like NGE and Bakemonogatari.