Review of Sword Art Online

When you have a series like Sword Art online, you'll usually have two and a half camps: lots of people who like it, lots of people who don't, and a small group that fall in the middle. I fall pretty much in the third camp. SAO is a cool, though not wholly original, concept. The whole 'trapped in a video game' opens up a lot of avenues for the creators to take, even more-so in SAO because it's set in the future. Basically, the creators had an open canvas and could have made something great. How did it turn out? Ehhh....just above average? Lemme explain. First,I'll say what was good. The art and music were wonderful. Not the best I've ever seen, but they were certainly great. I'll even include the action scenes in this as well. The fights were (usually) exciting and fun, something you should expect out of a video game anime.

As for the other important stuff....

The story was okay at best. It overstayed its welcome. I felt it lasted about twice as long as it needed to. It just seemed to feel stretched after the first half. I won't say why exactly, but if you watch SAO, you may see what I am talking about. Also, the plot seems to shift from a story that could have been very cool and deep, to one that is very average and a little disappointing.

Also the pacing seems weird. The entire SAO experience is done more or less in time skips between episodes. Toward the end this changes, but it just felt like a lot was missed because the writers wanted to move the story along. I think the characters and the plot suffered because of this. I'm not saying that time skips can't be done, but here they just feel jerky and awkward.

Now for the part that disappointed me the most: the characters. Every aspect of the plot could have been forgiven if not for the poor character choices. I say 'choices' because all of the characters and their characteristics are not bad. Some are wonderful! Unfortunately this show seems to waste them.

Before I go on, I will call the characters by the names used most in the show. Some have screen names that are different from their real life names so I just wanted to clarify.

Let's start with the hero. Kirito is probably one of the worst hero characters I have watched in a while. He's boring, his character seems to change at the strangest of times for convenience, and he has the same problem that Superman does: he's as powerful as he wants to be because he's the hero...and that's the reason. I can't say anything too in depth unfortunately, because I don't want to venture into spoiler territory.

Basically though, he's not just the hero character. He's the one-dimensional hero character. Sure he's got some flaws, but those seem to disappear pretty quickly once they become inconvenient...which is the exact opposite thing flaws should do. He just seems to always be able to overcome everything, despite everything saying he shouldn't, which could seem commendable, but here it is just illogical and annoying. I found myself saying 'but you (the writers) said no one could do that and now it's ok!?' He seems to be pretty much perfect throughout most of the show, and that doesn’t make for an interesting character to watch.

This is probably more of a mix of the character and the plot, but he seems to benefit from it the most so I'm putting it on him.

Asuna is the second lead in this show. She is one of the wasted potentials of this show. Early on, she is awesome (and she doesn't need to have convenient plot twists to be that way). She's independent, she can fight extremely well, and she is really fun to watch. I honestly wished she would've been the main hero of this story instead of Kirito. After a while though, this character seems to get less and less interesting, and eventually she becomes little more than a plot device. It's horribly unfortunate.

The supporting cast is...well...not good. One is a girl named Yui and the other Suguha. True, there are more side characters (getting to them in a sec), but they barely have enough screen time to be called ‘supporting characters’. These two are probably the next most seen characters aside from the main characters...and how unfortunate is that? Both just drove me nuts for some reason. Whenever they were on the screen I just felt like my time was wasted. If it wasn't 'being cute'(and not much else) for one, it was fan service (and not much else as well) for the other. The 'not much else' seems to be to drive the story-line into unnecessary and very uninteresting tangents. A good chunk of the audience's time is wasted with these two, which isn’t the point of supporting characters. They are meant to support the plot, not be the main focus of it.

Why do I not like these characters so much? Mostly for the reason above, but also; they took time away from the other side characters.

There are a lot of characters who are in about one or two episodes, while some are in just a few more than that. Some are really just side characters. Others seem like they should have been more prevalent and even upgraded to the sorely lacking supporting cast. The two who should have been upgraded are Klein and Agil. These two are just below the line of support characters. They have a lot of screen time compared to the other side characters, and are quite honestly are much more interesting than the actual support characters. However, as with Asuna, they are merely wasted potential.

The rest of the side cast is mostly one-episode characters, which isn't unusual in anime, but they are very forgettable. I barely remember what they did and couldn't even guess at their names. The worst part is that they are all females.
Which brings me to my main problem with the characters of this show; I honestly don't think the writers know how to write good female. Asuna is literally the only female who has any personality at all at that goes away as soon as it starts to outshine the great, mighty, and horribly uninteresting Kirito. This seems to be a problem in some anime, but here it just is glaringly problematic. Every female is either here as fan service, as a villain, or just as episode filler. It's kind of sad and I hope in the SAOII this is fixed.

I like a good strong male protagonist as much as the next guy, but I can also love when a female dominates the spotlight. None dominate so much as a candle in this show.

That's it!

'Wait...what about the villain?’ you must be asking.

....Fine....

The villains throughout the show have little more use than to be something for the hero to fight. I'm not even saying fighting their philosophies (or lack thereof in this show) or even to try to turn them good. They are literally there just for the hero to beat up and really nothing more substantial than that. I am a guy who really enjoys watching villains usually, but these just were bad at being the bad guys.

Alright, time to wrap this up.

I know I mostly looked at the bad of this show. Is it terrible? No. Is it amazing? No. Is it average? Eeeeeehhhhhhhhh....just above. I really mean JUST above. The art, music, and action are enough to make me recommend the show, but it wouldn't be a shame if you missed it either.

Thank you for reading!