Review of Sword Art Online

MILD (OBVIOUS) SPOILERS BELOW Sword Art Online is a show that constantly gets the cold shoulder from people well-versed in the medium of anime. This is mostly because of its immense popularity and its status as a series that introduces many younger viewers to anime itself. It also has a much more important role when it comes to its genre; it is widely considered as the show which kicked off the isekai trend. After watching it, I can definitely understand why the isekai "genre" became so popular. Although I don't have too much experience with isekai shows, only having seen Re:Zero and Angel Beats!, I've witnessed therecent boom in its popularity recently. Still, I found the premise of SAO to be incredibly interesting, which helped me get invested really quickly. As someone who used to play MMORPGs a lot, the entire setting felt familiar in a very good way. It helped SAO to become a very entertaining anime for me; I finished it in just a couple days.

Because of the familiar atmosphere, interesting premise and setting, I saw very early on that SAO had the potential to be a 10/10. However, I'm not ignorant to the community, and I have already heard of the many flaws this anime has even before watching it. For the most part, these were true. However, albeit really blatantly bad, they weren't impactful enough to deteriorate my rating and overall opinion of the show.

The first point is the pacing. This was an issue mostly in the first half of the anime, the Aincrad arc. Following a stellar first two episodes, rather than providing actual world-building and showing Kirito's growth as a player, and his early struggles in the world of SAO, there were awkward time-skips all over the place in the first 5-6 episodes or so. To make matters worse, some characters were introduced who were fairly interesting and had great potential, only to not appear again until the very last episode. The entire harem thing felt really forced and out of place, to be honest. Paired with the time-skipping, it didn't equate very well. Luckily, the pacing became much more stable and easier to understand in the second half of the show, the Alfheim arc.

However, the worst victim of the awful pacing was the main heroine, Asuna. More specifically, her relationship with Kirito; the two of them fell in love by around episode 10, but absolutely without precedent. They partied together and got to know each other better, but there was never a reason for them to become lovers. Although I liked the impact of their relationship on the show, it was much more of a forced romance than one which was properly built up to and then fleshed out.

The other main issue with the anime is the characters, just in general. They are all terribly bland, without much personality at all. The best ones were Sugu and Yui; while they didn't have too much to offer either, their place in the narrative made them likeable characters. Kirito had high potential as well, but in the end, he fell very short. As for Agil and Klein, they were ultimately uninteresting, as well, so was Asuna. And since she was the main female protagonist of the anime, it was terribly disappointing to see that what I've heard from the community about her is all true. I'm just hoping that all of these characters get better in later seasons.

Overall, however, the story was very good, very engaging, and very entertaining. The animation was extremely solid, with a very respectable job done by A-1 Pictures. The soundtrack was straight-up incredibly epic, fitting the 2 or 3 amazing fights in the anime well.

So to summarize, despite the glaring flaws the anime had, it had plenty of personality, and plenty of soul. Maybe I was a little biased because of my previous experience with MMOs, but it's not like I could look away from that.
It was one of the most enjoyable and exciting anime series I've ever seen. And really, I'm sad that it didn't live up to its full potential. I thought about its rating for a long time, more than any other show. But in the end, I gave it a better one than it maybe deserves, purely because of the amount of fun and captivation that I had with it.
I'm looking forward to watching the upcoming seasons, and the movie as well. SAO is definitely a series I'm not going to drop.