Review of Sword Art Online
Sword Art Online has become a phenomenon in the anime community. Since it has premiered it has gained both a large amount of fame and infamy. Nowadays it's really known for the latter, and seen as intensely mediocre by a lot of people. My thoughts on the matter probably won't be as articulate as some other people's, but I'll try my best to explain why I think SAO is a terrible anime. When I first heard of SAO's premise, I was already put off. While I understand that it has potential, it just sounded very fanfic-y to me and not really that appealing, which is whyit didn't really become one of those shows where I was like "MUST WATCH". Sometime later the infamy just caught up to me and I decided it wouldn't hurt to have a look-see.
The premise of SAO is essentially that some douchebag named Akihiko Kayaba trapped a bunch of people in the eponymous Sword Art Online for...reasons. The story follows Kirito, a lone gamer, as he strives to make it through to the end of the game safely, as losing in the game equals death in real life as well. On the way he also falls in love with a girl named Asuna.
Before getting into the main problems of the story, let me begin by addressing the "strong" points of the show as it were.
The show IS occasionally pretty in terms of visuals, however to say that it is artistically good is giving it a little bit too much credit. The character designs are honestly nothing special; they aren't vomit-inducing by any means, but they are pretty generic anime designs. They have a certain appeal but are nothing special. The armor and monster designs are also pretty uninspired and look like they were created by amateurs. It reminds me of the Tales series, whose art direction I also am not a fan of. This is no Final Fantasy XIV that's for sure.
The music is by Yuki Kajiura, who also worked on Madoka Magica (which is a MUCH better show than this piece of shit). It's a decent score, granted, but it's nothing too outstanding and doesn't in any way make up for the huge pitfalls that are the story and characters.
The story is very, very poorly paced, has terrible focus, and jumps the shark so quickly it's scary. The first episode is promising enough (though again, calling it excellent is a stretch); it sets up the stakes, gives a nice amount of tension, introduces the protagonist and main villain, and leaves you hopeful. Kirito is hardly an interesting character at first glance, but that's forgivable because it's only the first episode. The second episode introduces the supposed main female character, Asuna, and fleshes out the setting a bit more. It's nothing fantastic but the plot progresses a little and stuff actually does happen.
What follows afterwards however are like 5 episodes of irrelevant BS interspersed with incredibly poorly written, adolescent drama that feels like it belongs in fanfiction. The majority of the episodes are just propping up Kirito by having him win the affections of various girls in different ways, while also occasionally giving him a cheap source of angst for him to fuss over. The setting does get fleshed out more, but the thing is that this ultimately ends up being completely irrelevant to what BECOMES the main plot.
And what is the main plot? Kirito and Asuna's romance. And let me tell you, it sucks. It's incredibly forced, dull, and rushed. The majority of the development of their relationship happens off-screen, it does not feel natural or realistic in the slightest. What it feels like is that it was written as an otaku's fantasy version of what a relationship would actually resemble, because they lack the knowledge of how such a thing actually works, and how to convincingly portray it through writing.
It really astounds me as to how much of a cancerous tumor the entire thing turned out to be; they SERIOUSLY go into the woods to have a vacation and raise a kid while their fucking lives are on the line. I thought they were supposed to be trying to fight for their lives and go home? I understand Kirito is all about escapism and how this world feels real to him bla bla bla but this isn't executed in a mature and sophisticated way so it just feels like a stupid waste of time.
Kirito ends up defeating Kayaba through Deus Ex Machina (the power of love overpowers even videogame rules, how about that), and then we go into another bullshit arc that introduces a lot of other nonsense like Kirito's boring one-dimensional adopted sister who's in love with him (gee i haven't seen this incestuous imouto stuff in like every other bad anime ever) and an even more awful villain than the first arc.
In summation, the plot of SAO COMPLETELY failed to deliver on its potential. Instead of exploring philosophical, moral, and ethical questions about the setting and situation and doing good legitimate worldbuilding (which it at least seemed to be trying to do earlier on, albeit poorly), it threw all of that away to focus on a terrible love story. What the hell was even the point of writing this in the first place? The entire tension that was supposed to be felt was just not there, and with the second arc it just evaporates completely. It is the EXACT opposite of a compelling narrative, it's childish and amateurish writing at its most apparent.
With that out of the way, the characters in SAO are all bad. Kirito is little more than a blank slate for anime and videogame otaku to project themselves onto; he has a super edgy black coat and sword, he has a SUPER SPESHUL DUBBL SWORDS power exclusive to him (so much for SAO being fair), all the girls want him, everyone wants to be him, he has a super kawaii waifu who cooks for him, gets to play parent with a not-really child, saves the day even though everything says he shouldn't be able to, etc. He's as dull as dishwater. Calling him the "Black Swordsman" is an insult to Guts, the actual Black Swordsman.
The rest of the characters are all similarly paper thin and boring. Asuna starts out as an affirmative, tough female protagonist (though not an interesting one by any means), but gradually gets demoted to useless domestic waifu while her hubby Kirito does the actual heavy lifting. The misogynistic undertones present are honestly pretty gross.
The side characters are mostly irrelevant and pointless. The girls of the week are just flimsy archetypes and little more than that, they serve no purpose in the grander narrative at all. Lisbeth is easily the best one, and one I actually did kind of like, but I'm not going to pretend she was anything special either. While I say all of this, I do agree that Klein is pretty bro from what we see of him and that if he was the main character instead SAO probably would have been a much more tolerable series, because Klein at least seemed to have some semblance of a personality.
The villains are terrible and have no actual reasons for what they are doing besides the fact that they are bad people. Worse than that, they are not charismatic or interesting in spite of that, like Johann Liebert from Monster, Griffith from Berserk, Hannibal Lecter, etc. They just suck.
The main thing that keeps rearing its ugly head over and over again in all the things that are wrong with SAO is just how incredibly masturbatory it is. It seems strictly designed to fellate the main character (a stand-in for game and anime otaku), pandering to its demographic as much as possible, instead of focusing on delivering a focused narrative with compelling writing. Literally every single attempt this show makes at drama or generally invoking pathos falls completely flat because Kawahara obviously doesn't understand humans or the basics of writing enough to get emotional reactions that aren't mirthful laughter, disgust, annoyance, apathy or boredom.
I get that this is a shounen story and I shouldn't expect that much from it to begin with, but that doesn't mean it has to be terrible.
As elitist as it sounds to say this, the only reason I can see anyone propping this up as anything more than serviceable/mediocre is that they just haven't watched enough anime or read enough manga or just experienced enough stories in general to know there's SO MUCH BETTER STUFF OUT THERE. Seriously, even if you just wanted harem or moe stuff, there are better shows than this out there.