Review of Sword Art Online

Sword Art Online is one of the most famous anime of all time. It is not, however, one of the best anime of all time. The anime has odd pacing and doesn't have the best character interations but it's not popular for no reason. SAO's story is okay. The initial premise is that the characters are stuck in a virtual reality MMORPG and will die in real life if they die in the game. The anime handles this concept pretty well and it's clear where the story is going. The problem the anime has is that in the first half a lot of time passesand only certain events are mentioned which can leave you guessing at what stage of the story you actually are. The second half of the anime doesn't have this issue though. I believe one of SAO's strenghts is its ability to finish things and the episodes where it concludes part of a story or arc are the best parts of the anime.

The characters often feel a bit hollow and the villans are bad because: "bad person bad" without much further clarification or backstory. I'm also not a fan of the pattern in this anime where the main character meets a girl, doesn't tell them he has a girlfriend and they randomly fall in love with him. Overall the characters are subaverage with plenty of cringy interactions.

The animation was acceptable. The voice acting was okay and the sound was also alright. The opening is present in every anime opening quiz ever.

Overall SAO isn't the greatest anime; it doesn't have good characters and has an okay story but part of it has weird pacing. It can be enjoyed if you don't pay too much attention to details but it's definitely not for everyone. The main reason why I'd recommend anyone watches this season is so they have context when they watch the abridged version on youtube which has more interesting characters at times.