Review of Sword Art Online
Sword art online is not one about action, but instead is a pseudo harem monomyth despite what the first episode suggests. It implores the same marketing tactic as Accel World, and Guilty Crown, where the 1st episode is merely a showstopper/crowd-pleaser with alot of eye candy and flashing lights as well as a misleading title, in order to accrue a sizeable fanbase. But if we ignore the 1st episode, and look at the anime as a whole it can be said that the anime was adequate for its intended purpose. //Story The story is quite simple, and it seemed to copy the core ideas of hack//sign, butto a lesser extent, that is it focuses more on romance rather than action after the 1st episode. The story seems to advance rather too quickly after the 1st episode, where it seems to bounce from the 1st floor, to the 50th floor in a mere episode. As an aside just to explain the floors, the anime featured a large tower which the hero must climb, similar to that of Druga, that featured floor 1 to 100 that had a very powerful boss awaiting on the top floor. So it was quite clear that the 2nd episode sparked large displeasure/controversy in the audience. So just to reiterate an important point, the plot moves very fast, it was expected there to be minor 'time' leaps and that the entire anime would revolve around climbing the tower that was featured in the anime to be the ultimate obstacle to freedom. But that was not the case. Sword art Online's story ended mid-season, in a rather, pathetic fashion. For a damsel-in-distress or monomyth anime, in regards to the 2nd portion of the anime, it did amazingly so in it's portrayal, but as an action-game anime, it failed miserably. The plot moved too fast, the romance seemed to be forced, for example where suddenly two protagonists get together in a romantic relationship almost seemingly out of nowhere (though there were small hints), and the fact that the circumstances which brought this about in the anime was unrealistic. The manga on sword art online could explain clearly why people in the virtual game could live as well as other questions on the context of the world of Sword Art, but the anime failed to explain adequately such small questions, resulting in an un-cohesive/disjointed anime with too many questions to be asked about the world. So if a person watched only the anime, without reference to any of the written works of Sword Art Online, the anime seemed to be fundamentally confusing. Sci-fi worlds must have depth, Sword Art Online lacked depth due it's seemingly short time frame.
//Art and Sound
The art and sound is something you'd expect to be top notch in an eyecandy anime like this, the first opening song, "Crossing fields" by LiSA seemed to resonate with the anime very well. Other notable mentions are, Innocence by Aoi Eir (2nd opening), Yume Sekai by Haruka Tomatsu (1st ED), and Overfly by Luna Haruna (2nd ED). The music in the anime was pretty well done, and seemed to blend well with the situations depicted in the anime.
//Character
The MC seems to be the most random personality on the anime, he's indecisive at times, a genius at times in decision making, and may other inconsistencies with his character. In the monomyth structure, where the hero saves the 'damsel in distress' the hero seems to become stronger, more intelligent or at least improve in character as the story progresses, with Kirito( MC), the reverse seems to happen. So as character progression goes, there seems to be regression rather progression in the case of the MC. The other characters, seemingly very vague, despite the anime being a fantasy. Other animes such as Hunter x Hunter, go out of they way to explain the background of side characters that are going to die in the next episode. Though I don't expect Sword Art Online to have this kind of depth in it's 25 episode anime( which could've been split into seperate seasons to make it seem less rushed, especially at the end), it could've at least explained more about the important female characters that turned the emotionally stagnant Kirito into a Cloud Strife.
//Enjoyment
I can't say I didn't enjoy the anime, but the appalling story development and heavily flawed characters make it difficult to progress with the anime. The story seems to jump at random speeds; from very fast, to slow, to fast, to very fast (at the end). The ending of the anime reminds me of Avatar Kora where the last episode seems to be 6 episodes smashed into one episode. So for enjoyment I'd say I'd be a 6 or a 7.
//Verdict
Overall, due to the reason stated above, I'd say the anime is around a 5 (mediocre), the anime was heavily over hyped due to its flashly first episode, but from then on, it seriously let down fans on the episodes afterwards. The anime seemed to combine 2 seasons into 1 seasons for some bizarre reason which just caused disjointedness, and a very strange final episode.
But if you've read this far, I'd like to thank you for reading my review.