Review of Sword Art Online

I must say i really liked the first half of the series. I won't say the premise is original, but it is very interesting, and the first two episodes will have you on the edge of your seat. The problem, maybe, is the pace in which this story was told. There are lots of time skips that sometimes make you angry, and lots of random episodes that seem to be irrational filler that give nothing to support the plot. But if you can make a blind eye to the unnecessary fanservice and filler, the first 14 episodes are really enjoyable, and, at least the final episode ofthis arc was surprising and rewarding.

So if you are planning to watch it, the first part of the show works pretty well on it's own, and even if it's not perfect (in my opinion) it's very enjoyable.

Now, the real problem is the second arc of the season which starts in episode 15.
Not only it lacks of a real plot whatsoever, but it feels completely unnecessary, and the show just goes downhill from here.
Our once "strong" female lead is held hostage until the end of the season by the villain of turn, whose only real motivation is... marrying a comatose girl against her consent, and probably rape her?...there are other things going on, but everything is so uninteresting that you will probably be banging your head against the wall until the end of the season.
The last episode does gives you a good closure to the WHOLE experience, but it isn't worth the pain of watching this 11 train-wrecking episodes that ruined the whole thing for me.

So, my recommendation is to watch just the first 14 episodes, and if you are really curious, watch episode 25 in the end. You won't be missing anything at all.

My rating of "7" is just for the first half of the series which i think fulfills the objective of entertaining the viewers (which, seriously, it IS the objective of every show). I would give the second half a 3, but i don't want to bring down the first part that works well on its own.