Review of Sword Art Online

This anime is like wish-fulfillment drug for male teenagers and adults who're addicted to online gaming and can't deal with real-life challenges. It basically shows them what they want to see - a perfect male hero who is loved by all the girls (including his effing cousin), who can solve any problem, and despite only playing games since he was 10 - is still fairly handsome and thin (yeah, that's how it works!). All the girls are cute, forgiving, compassionate and inferior in terms of skill and wits to the main male character. Even the main female lead, who stars of quite good and strongis sort of degraded through the series to this pretty princess-wife type of character who is only there to be either saved by a hero or abused by the villain.

The online world, despite of being an effing death-trap is still portrayed as a better place than reality. Because hey, at least there is no homework, work, parents or that other pesky things that just get in the way!

I'm not giving this a 1 or 2 because honestly it stared of pretty good, the art was nice and pleasant and there were moments were I enjoyed it later on, but hell did it leave me disturbed and upset at the end. In terms of plot the second half was simply dreadful... (and some questions from the first part were also left unanswered.)

On some levels, especially the ones considering representation of women, this anime is disgusting. What's even more frustrating it's not that straight-forward about it but it hides this under the game reality rules and some illusion of a strong female character.