Review of Sword Art Online

!!DISCLAMER!!: My overall rating is based on how much I personally enjoyed the show, not on overall quality, please read the full review for my overall rating. Also, some minor spoilers ahead. Before you read this please note that I watched this show when I was much younger and inexperienced in knowing the difference between good and bad writing. SAO was and still is my favorite anime, however I will write this with as little bias as I can. Now onto the review… Production value:The first arc of SAO, the Aincrad arc, has a lot to offer in terms of animation, music, world design and sound design. The animation has stunning visuals, with the highlight being the different floors in castle Aincrad. I personally am in love with each floor and their designs that range from relaxing and pretty to just plain cool. I’m also a huge fan of the character designs, especially the eyes, which have depth and reflect light in a way that matches the aesthetic of the background almost every time the angle focuses on them.

Like the animation, the music sets the mood for nearly every scene, the keyword of both being “immersive” as it sucks you into every beautiful, heartfelt and exciting moment without fail. All of this, combined with the crisp sound effects, are like an orchestra playing a skillfully and passionately made piece that hits me to my core and captures the aesthetic of the whole show.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your view, this is the most expressive thing about this show.

Plot:

Starting with the a bit of the good, the premise/concept of SAO is a very good one, survival of the fittest in a virtual reality fantasy game is something that both lovers and haters of SAO agree is a good start and the theme of whether or not being trapped there is “all that bad” is an interesting take on it as well. Each episode is an interesting look at this world and how it effects the lives of those trapped in it, some embrace it while others live in fear of being killed in this deadly game. While this makes each episode charming and fun, a big problem is that its very good episode by episode format isn't what the show is trying to say. SAO is constantly saying that it’s this big important task to clear all 100 floors, beat the game and survive to the end, but each episode feels like it’s own side story inside the plot that never actually kicks off, with the exception of every 4 episodes or so having something to do with the overall story. I think the absolute biggest problem that SAO has is it’s timeskips, which occur three times and cut out roughly a whole year and a half of the time we see in this show. These timeskips take away crucial development for the world and every character in SAO and I’m my opinion, the heaviest blow to the story that I’ll touch on later; the romance. Ending this segment of my review, the main word that comes to mind is “inconsistency” due to the ever changing structure of the narrative.

Characters:

The characters in SAO are incredibly charming and upon meeting them, you instantly want to see more of each character (for the most part). However, when you first meet the character is the last time they’re interesting. With the exception of characters I’ll mention in a bit, the characters in SAO like Silica, Agil, Lizbeth and Klein are very lovable and seem like lots of fun, but they’re introduced, then simply cast aside for this entire arc and honestly for the rest of the show. These characters experience almost no changes from the start to finish of the show and have little to no importance to the plot and are ultimately disappointing.

Asuna, however, is my favorite character and while she is by no means a brilliantly written character, she experiences the most changes from the start to finish of the show and is consistently cool, interesting and lovable throughout Aincrad, as well as being the only character besides Kirito or ever do anything useful in this arc.

Now to talk about the elephant in the room; Kirito. A large portion of the anime community hates this character for being dull, inexpressive, uninteresting and overpowered, to which I agree… to some extent. While I feel Kirito is a heavily flawed character in terms of writing, I also feel that there is a large part of his character that no one talks about. Kirito is a socially awkward nerd and I feel the reason he’s quiet and inexpressive is not because he’s “super cool” or “uninteresting”, it’s because he’s shy and has been shown to be very socially impaired IRL. In regards to him being overpowered; the point of SAO is that it’s a survival game, which means if he loses, he dies. Kirito just barely wins the fights that most people complain about and don’t forget that he both lost to Heathcliff and was nearly killed by Kuradeel, but only survived due to Asuna’s intervention. Don’t get me wrong, some of his wins were definitely a bit much, but I think people are simply too harsh on him. While I do think he has a lot that he’s lacking as a character, I think he’s still a bit charming and extremely over hated and misunderstood.

The romance:

The romance in SAO is very mediocre at best. While I love Kirito and Asuna together, their romance was ruined primarily by timeskips. I think their chemistry was good, but when you don’t allow time for a relationship to develop, it just feels fake and manufactured. While we see that the two are clearly in love, we haven’t a clue as to why since you know, THEY NEVER SHOW US. I’m told that this is fixed in SAO progressive and I am wholeheartedly looking forward to seeing these two fall in love naturally and without bs timeskips.

Conclusion:

I love SAO wholeheartedly and I think I always will, but that doesn’t mean I can just pretend that all these bad choices weren’t made while making this show. The biggest problem with SAO isn’t it’s characters, it’s concept, it’s world, it’s romance or anything of the sort, it’s that it didn’t take these things hardly anywhere. The wasted potential of so many amazing ideas in this show is what I think truly makes this show as hated as it is. As for me, I’m going to continue loving the good things Aincrad has to offer in my little hole of nostalgia, regardless of all these things. So with that, here is my rating of the show.

Production value: 10/10

Overall quality: 6.5/10

Enjoyment: 10/10