Review of Sword Art Online

TL;DR: I don't think the author knows how normal human-beings nor games work, despite the series' heavy dependent on these two elements. The art and character designs are fantastic sans the protagonist, he's just the generic edgy kid who has the power of god and anime on his side. If you turn your brain off and overlook the nitty gritty of this anime, you will find great character design, environment settings, battle sequences, and even witty dialogues from time to time. BUT.... If you start paying attention and think critically for just a second during the entirety of this show, you will start hating more andmore of its elements as the "story" progresses. I don't think the author knows how games work mate.

There will be slight spoilers below.

Hard-hitting questions like:

"Why does Kirito has to be an edgelord who claims to be "the best beater in beta" while wearing all black and unable to say words like 'the giant dude who tried to kill us back then must've changed the bosses mechanics from the beta'?"

or

"I thought this is suppose to be a Parmadeath-IRL-MMORPG with intense actions and strict time limits, not slice of life WTF happened?"

or

"Is he really 14 or 400? He knows kung-fu, have vast amount of knowledge without the help of Wikipedia, watches lower level friends die with no emotions even though he could've saved them by doing ANYTHING other than letting it happen (the fact that he lived means he killed all those monsters by himself aka he could've saved them kids), can hack a game while inside said game, AND revive like Jesus."

or

"How many episodes is this cafe exposition/recap crap gonna last?"

or

"Was the rape scenes really necessary?"

And so on...

To sum it all up: A 14-year-old who is the best hacker and martial artist known to men beats every single adult including a cheating GM, then defies hard-wired game code to pull some main character halo bullcrap to saves his virtual GF TWICE from just some dude, then a creep who rapes her every day while having to deal with his incestrous little sister.

Now... Time for some real spoilers of the "story", so you don't have to suffer through this crap. Why story in quotations? Well, there is no story. Or rather, there is no story permanence. Nothing mattered in the end, nobody gave two shits when anything happened.

So anyways, in the beginning we are introduced to this awesome death RPG where if your character dies, you die in REAL LIFE! Oh shit! The story is gonna pick up real fast and be tense AF right? RIGHT? Nah, the main protagonist grinds on his own in an MMO with ALL endgame contents locked behind multiplayer dungeons, but manages to become one of the best of the best, obtains a skill which appearantly NOBODY ELSE in a MULTIPLAYER game ever had, and has raid-level gear from some 40-men-dungeon despite never grouped, and has the reflexes and skills of a martial art master at the age of 14, all in the span of around 2 episodes. I don't think the author knows how games work mate.

Then he purposefully watch a bunch of low level teammates die, when he could've totally bust out his shiny unique skill and save them. Then he met the female protagonist who is supposed to be so much stronger than him, but somehow needs him to save the day every damn time and falls in love with him. They just fuck around for half of the season. In a death game. Picking flowers and shit. And fishing, fishing was cool. Putting the AI daughter bullcrap aside, this 14-year-old, HACKED THE GAME. While INSIDE the game. In 5 seconds no less. To save his AI daughter or something. I don't think the author knows how programming nor games work mate.

Gloss aside all that bullcrap, the BIGGEST SIN is the ending of the first arch and the whole second arc. First the ending, he somehow overcomes the hard wired game code and revives himself to kill the last boss. Then turns out, the villain did this just because he can. Then the villain from the first arc becomes the savior of the second arc who helps the main protagonist defeat the creep who raped his girlfriend. On screen. Several times. There were also tentacles involved, but I guess if you are into that kind of thing good for you. Once again, I don't think the author blah blah blah...

In conclusion, I can understand the appeal of the characters and settings, but the flaws are just too jarring for this series to really shine. A generous 5/10 for the characters sans the protagonist.