Review of Sword Art Online

EDIT: This is a couple years and many more anime seen between my original review and now so my score has dropped. My brother was the one who introduced me to the show. I had no real inclination to actually watch this until we both sat down. The first couple episodes were awesome! A completely different concept with VMMORPG (I believe that's the name I'm looking for), and with the threat of everyone dying in the real world as they die in the game? Raise the suspense level! Then...there's the jump from floor 1 to floor 37 or something and I went wha...? Did Imiss something? Then there's all these side stories that I really couldn't care less about. I just wanted the main story!

The Black Cat's Guild was a good CD arc for Kirito but then he went back to being a little a** again. Then Ausuna...what can I say about Ausuna? She went from being a completely new player to being one of the best in a couple episodes from the audiences perspective. Where was the level upping? Where did all these guilds come from? There's so much that got left out for all these side stories! Than the game got beat. I cheered than looked at what episode I was on...I wasn't happy. Could they have done SAO and ALO in two separate seasons? YES! They actually should have in my opinion so we could have gotten more emotionally invested in these characters. Most of the secondary characters that barely had any screen time were very interesting and wanted to know more about them! But alas, we were stuck with Kirito and Ausuna. That was way too fast for me and that's all I'll say about that and I won't touch ALO or I would be here for hours.

The animation was decent but they did reuse some of the same animation a few times (especially noticeable in the ALO big fight with the different races) and it looked sloppy in a couple places. But for majority of it I will admit it was amazing, especially in the first OP.

The OP and ED's sound were amazing and everyone is right, the sound is amazing in the show. The voice actors...well...I just have a couple issues with some of the voices but that's neither here nor there just a personal preference.

The only other thing I have to say is that there was WAY too much fan service in this show. So much so that it was extremely obvious which got annoying after a while. If that could get knocked down about 10 knots than I would've enjoyed the show a bit more.

EDIT: So I would give this a 6.25 rounded down to 5. If you enjoy shows that have a lot of fan service and are about video games for the first couple episodes than go onto slice of life that has no concern for character development or a story that makes sense, than this show is for you. I did enjoy it and might possibly watch it again (SAO arc anyway), but there's no way I'm watching season 2.