Review of Sword Art Online

As a kid, we have all been told to be wary of strangers and to never get in a van just for some candy. Reki Kawahara is the stranger that our parents told us to be wary of. He teamed up with A-1 pictures and lured us in with a nice concept, flashy visuals, and amazing music; promised us a good story with decent worldbuilding and character development if we got in the hype van. But then he locked us in, forced us to watch sword art online, and left us on the side of the road, scarred for life. Sword art online is the classiccase of a promise unfulfilled.

Story:
The concept of sword art online was definitely its selling point. Millions of players got stuck in an MMO all of a sudden and now they are forced to complete the game but there's a catch, die here and you die in real life. You could do a lot with this setting. This could have been a tragic story of survival and struggle in a world where everyone only looks out for themselves, or this could have been a story of cooperation, where the players band together, forms a social order and collectively finds a way to beat the game and get out of here. But the writer forsakes all of those for romance and a harem of shallow women. Now, the first two episodes are decent, it develops this constant sense of danger but that passes away soon enough when you realize that the important characters all have thick plot armor. Make no mistake, this is a trashy power fantasy with fan-fiction level writing. Plot convenience is so frequent that after a while you will feel deeply disturbed and be worried about the author's health if you see a well thought out plot in this anime. Even after all that, this is the only arc that is somewhat enjoyable; that is, if you shut down your brain and just focus on the fanservice and the power fantasy aspect of the show. But even this is not a constant, they manage to sabotage this as well.

The alfheim arc destroyed whatever little shred of enjoyment you could have derived from this show. Ever wondered how a soap opera would have been if it was made into an anime and animated by A-1 pictures? well, you won't have to wonder anymore. I honestly think Reki Kawahara finished Mario just before writing this arc. The Alfheim arc has Asuna, our female lead literally locked in a cage waiting to be rescued by Kirito. While kirito roams around playing daddy to an AI. Add a dash of incest to this plot and you now have the complete alfheim arc.

Character:
Kirito, the cream of the crop, the pinnacle of man, the very definition of overpowered. One look from him and girls will fall madly in love with him. He is the epitome of perfection, highly trained in sword-fighting, a master of a hacker who needs nothing more than the UI to hack the game and will win every fight with ease. Kirito is basically Jesus when he is in a game. None of the characters including our leads in this anime has an arc. All of the characters are as basic as they come and there is no development whatsoever. Kirito and Asuna just meet up a few times and then they suddenly fall in love and get married. Believe it or not, this is the most development they have given to any relationship in this anime.

Now let's talk about the antagonists to our perfect protagonist. The first villain is basic with shallow motivations, he could have been portrayed as a developer obsessed with making the perfect game but rather than that he just says that he wanted death to have meaning in his game. Death can have meaning in a game, a lot of games exist where death is meaningful and none of those involves murdering a player base. The second villain is just a disgrace to all the anime villains ever even the lame ones. I previously said that the Alfheim arc plays out like a soap opera but even soap operas have better antagonists than this. Noboyuki Sugou is just as one dimensional as our heroes, he is evil just for the sake of being evil. On top of that, he is incompetent which is weird when you realize he is the director of a successful company. His main goal is to marry Asuna and at first, you would think that it is because he wants to secure his position in the company. But soon after it will be made clear that he just wants to rape a comatose girl in the virtual world when he sacrifices his position and millions of dollars just for that fetish.

The art is good, and that's great because if you wanna stick for the fanservice then at the very least you need good art. Character designs are very good and you will find many pretty waifus from this series. Sound is also decent. It was produced by A-1 pictures so you can expect good production.

In conclusion, this anime is recommended for zombies only. Watch this only if you want those creases in your brain ironed out. SAO had a lot of promise and that is why you will see so many angry rants about it. It could have been a good show but it turned out to be over hyped garbage of a show. Credit where credit's due, the hype generated by SAO brought the isekai genre into the mainstream which paved the way for better shows to be produced and that is the only good thing about this show.