Review of Sword Art Online
Sword Art Online was only the fourth anime I had ever watched. At the time I had a lot of respect for the anime upon my completion , However looking back I am now able to see the many issues with Sword Art Online. The characters in Sword Art Online are nothing short of dissapointing. I entered this anime with extremely high expectations as I loved the premise. To be fair , my expectations were fulfilled for a small portion of the anime , but after a couple episodes the entire thing began to fall apart worse than an unlawful marriage. The main focus of everyepisode seems to be Kirito befriending another female player , make her feel love and then neglect them a couple episodes later. This is evident with Silica and then Lizbeth. This cliche is totally transparent and makes the situation feel more faked than a curious college girls sexuality.
The classic Tsundere behaviour of Asuna is beyond noticable at first , which is fine , but then it begins to go ridiculously overboard. It develops quicker than a teen girls breasts , as it goes from Asuna being furious at Kirito for using her real name , to Asuna threatening to kill herself if Kirito leaves her alone for an extended period of time.
Yui as a character is more useless than a knitted condom. She provides the anime and the plot with absolutely nothing and as far as I can see , Yui was a sad attempt to try and push a couple more episodes into this anime.
The stupidity of some of the characters at times during this anime is unbelievable. Asuna does not know how item storage works after a year of gameplay and Kirito lies about his level countless times to fit in but this ultimately backfires.
I have said all that is to be said about the characters of Sword Art Online , now onto the flawed system and mechanics of the anime itself.
The skips that the anime takes between episodes is ridiculous. The worst ones were a six month time period and 28 floors of a leap between one episode , and an 8 month skip between one more episode. They would have been much better off to include more of the floors in the episodes instead of the prick acting that goes on with Yui as this means the viewer saw very little of the floor bosses.
I could write an actual novel about the plot holes in this anime but for now the most memorable ones were the food plot hole and the pain plot hole. Kirito states that ''It's too bad the food here only satisfies your hunger virtually''. However for a good 4 episodes of the anime the characters indulge in all sorts of bullshit recipes from Asunas cooking skills. They then state they are ''stuffed''. As for the pain plot hole. It is made quite clear that pain isnt felt as pain in the game , but yet whenever somebody dies they grimace as their avatar is blown to smitherines.
Speaking of skills within Sword Art Online , they are a bit overdone. We hear nothing of skills in the beginning of the anime , but as it continues we hear of cooking , detective and even a listening skill. (All of which Kirito has mastered because of reasons) . These skills and plot holes combined with the plot convieniences of Clyde and Crystals made some episodes of the anime complete filler , rendering them unwatchable.
S P O I L E R A H E A D
As if the ending of Sword Art online was not flawed enough , as Kirito stands up and walks down the hospital hallway despite having lay inactive for over 2 years... The viewer also had to witness an attempted rape scene at the end of the anime. By the end of this anime my urge for death was strong enough without having to deal with that scene in addition.
Overall Sword Art Online was an excellent anime for about 70 minutes and from there on it slowly diminished into darkness , cracking worse than a failing relationship between an abusive father and his son.