Review of Sword Art Online
Not everything that is good is successful and not everything that is successful is good. This is something that we all implicitly understand, yet only a very few people actually believe. We all like to think that we are somehow different and our hard work will get recognized. But because the world is what it is, there are many great pieces of media that have simply faded into obscurity. The opposite is also true and, for some reason beyond my understanding, it seems to be the most common in the world of writing. There are many authors whose entire work can only be described ascomplete hogwash, yet somehow there are hordes of people ready to consume more. Sword art online is one of these works securing its author Reki Kawahara a place of honor (or shame) right next to Emil Pagliarulo and Patrick Rothfuss, who in my opinion, are the greatest names in the world of dogshit writing.
The world of SAO is absolutely atrocious. Our heroes find themselves stuck in what the author thinks is an MMORPG game world. After the first few episodes it becomes painfully obvious that the author never played a video game in his life and so his understanding of games is about on par with my grandmother. I dont get how this can even happen. Did the guy literally do no research whatsoever? How hard can playing WoW for a week or two be? Anyway, the rules of the world are mindnumbingly stupid and they constantly change as the story goes on. The players don't feel any pain, except for all the times that they do feel pain. Weapons from the same blacksmith all look alike, except for the times they dont. You get the idea. So how did our heroes get here? Well, they used magical VR headsets with the ability to literally kill you. Not only that but after the whole fiasco the old headsets don't get recalled or anything. Amazing.
With the world out of the way, we can finally dissect the story. It is pretty obvious that the author wrote what he wanted to happen first, and then wrote the story around that. This combined with the fact that the author can't write for shit results in massive chunks of the story feeling like complete filler as the author struggles with getting the characters where he wants them to be. After enough time has passed, the show just gives up and essentially forces the desired scenario to happen, no matter how nonsensical it is. This usually results in characters rushing headlong to their doom just so Kirito can either save them or have a sad moment. This, combined with the vain attempts at dialogue and straight up shameful attempts at foreshadowing, create some of the most unintentionally funny scenes I have ever seen. The best example of this would be Kiriot using starburst stream. The author realized he should probably try to hint at what was going to happen and so he had Asuna essentially look into the camera and say "Kirito, I don't know man. You've been seeming sus lately. It's almost like we have an impostor among us. I saw that you wanted- DON'T LIE TO ME KIRITO! YOU SUSSY BAKA! Anyway, let's move on.". After this a group of random high level adventurers rushes to their death so Kirito can save them and solo the boss. As you can see, the story is garbage with its only real message being that you shouldn't preorder games.
I wanted to have a whole paragraph dedicated to the characters in SAO, but then I realized there is only one character I have something to say about. That character is obviously Kirito. Kirito is a "Gary Stu" and a bad one to boot. He has no personality other than being the best at everything. In the end, this gets so bad and he becomes so awesome that he literally overpovers the programing of the game. In the Gary Stu Olympics, Kyrito would place second after giving Kvothe a run for his money.
And if all of that wasn't bad enough, the second half of the season manages to be even worse than the first. They essentially just rerun the same plot, only this time with incest and a rape subplot. I will have to quote MandaloreGaming here: "Telling the same story again, just with an imminent dicking subplot doesnt make it good.". I finally got to use that quote so I guess it wasn't a complete waste of time. Either way, don't watch this. It's a waste of your time.