Review of Sword Art Online
Sword Art Online's premise is a fascinating one. It promises for a great story, but ultimately fails due to typical failures faced by many animes. The show centralizes on the story of people trapped in a virtual reality game. The seemingly innocent and fun game has suddenly become a nightmare; everyone must fight to survive. Now, to this point the show seems extremely promising. It is a plot which forces the characters to experience what human nature truly is. Are humans innately good? Are they all selfish? What does it truly mean to be human? At this point, I am sure any reader is confused as to whyI have given this show a bad rating and call it a failure. I will divide my critics into these sections: character, romance, unnecessary plot/items, typical hero, endings, and incest.
Character: At the beginning, character development is extremely key. We're introduced to many people, including the main character, but we still don't know them. This allows for suspense as the viewer does not know how people will act in certain situations. I consider this a good thing, it keeps us on our toes and makes everything unexpected. However, after a point, SAO completely abandons this and becomes "here's a character, now you know everything about them." Characters do not develop as everything has been presented to us.
Romance: There is a point in the show where romance takes over the story completely. I am unsure what the decision behind this was, but it was extremely forced. The reality of death is forgotten and the original story crumbles. I think this was fan service and fan service always kills things.
Unnecessary plot/items: A character is introduced that is a child. Clearly, she is added to the story for the "cute/loli" aspect, hoping to attract those people who are very much into that. This character serves no purpose and is rammed into the story line, ultimately serving no real important value. (I can not delve deeper or reveal the name as they would be spoilers).
Typical Hero: At the beginning, our main protagonist is very human. He makes mistakes, he has doubts, he shows all the things you'd expect from a human being. That is, until a few episodes in. Suddenly, he's the best swordsman around. And if there are unwinnable situations, he keeps going or powers up...or whatever cliche hero thing you can think of. Suddenly, he becomes every hero in every anime.
Ending: SAO has a point that it should have ended. It was already falling apart, but clearly fame and fortune was dragging it on. We go through another arc of "online gaming", but this time there is no grittiness that came with the base SAO. It's truly just became another bargain bin anime at this point.
Incest: There is a point in this series that introduces the idea of incest and brother/sister love. I can not see how this aids in the plot or is important. This, to me, seems as though it was placed to entertain some of the more perverted people in the fan base.
SAO seems to have run out of ideas and struggled to keep itself going. As the story faded, they tried to reach out to a wider audience by forcibly adding irrelevant content.
I would not recommend this series to anyone.