Review of Sword Art Online

To start things off, the reason why i even decided to watch this. I have this one friend who always freaks out over a lot of anime adaptations of the light novels in which he reads. But man was he really freaking out over this one. In the beginning i was not really interested in watching this but he , for the love of god, would not shut up about it and kept nagging me to watch it. So just to stop him i decided to pick it up. Story: I am going to separate this into two parts. FIRST ARC: SWORD ART ONLINE: 9 Ifound the best part of this anime was the first arc of the story which was set in Sword Art Online, which was the name of the anime. At the time when this came out, people were still in the hype of playing Diablo III and people were going nuts over how Sword Art Online is just like watching Diablo III Hardcore mode, where if you die, you die for reals. But this added a touch where if you die in the game you would die in real life, i then can already tell there is going to be a lot of drama that is to come, and i LOVE drama. The story was great, i am not really sure how to describe it, it is cliche in that there is a hero and he gets really strong and overcomes obstacles every single time one is thrown at him, but even though it was super cliche'd the process, the execution was pretty damn great. I don't really want to say too much about it, I will leave it to you to watch and see for yourself.

SECOND ARC: ALFHEIM ONLINE: 7
As far as story goes i would say that this was not as amazing as the first one. Because there was not crazy penalty for dying it made it seem a lot less intensive which was one of the things that made the first arc really great. If you die in this one you just have to wait for a resurrection time, that's it. What is interesting to me about this arc was the ability to fly and that you have no levels, everything is from your own skill. That part of Alfheim Online is pretty cool.
The plot of this arc is pretty creepy and messed up, that is not to say that the first arc's plot wasn't messed up, just this one is a lot more creepy and messed up. Sugou, that bast*rd man, wants to have his way with Asuna and change 300 people's brains and altering them, adding emotion, adding memories, deleting memories and what not.
This arc had a few great points but overall i did not enjoy it as much as the first arc. That is not to say it was not enjoyable.

Art: 9
The art was pretty great. It was calming to watch during the calming times and it was intensive when there was a crazy battle scene. They did a great job with animating the emotional faces. It looks pretty simple at a glance but i think it can go further than that.

Sound: 8
The sound of this anime goes well with all of the scenes. It has this medieval feel to it, since the game is set on a medieval time period. OR I ASSUME. I am pretty bad at classifying these kinds of things. Opening 1 and ending 2 were my two favorite songs in this anime. Opening 1 was Crossing Fields sang by LiSa, She does a really good job and when i first heard it, i thought that it really worked well for what Sword Art Online was at that time. It felt adventurous. Then the ending 2, Overfly sang by i forgot who was really great too. It was due to it's somewhat rising tension feeling it gave when it began. It started off slow and it rose, and had this rush feeling to it which really reflects well on the second arc where Kirito was in a rush to save Asuna.

Character: 9
Kirigaya Kazuto:
This guy is just so damn cool. He acts normal and chill when he's not in battle and when he is in battle he is completely courageous and strong. I can't really say to much other than I like this kind of main character.

Yuuki Asuna:
At first i thought this character was kind of cool, it is nice to see a really strong and cute female that fights and is totally badass. But as the series progresses i somehow feel myself liking her less and less but still ended up liking her though.

Kirigaya Suguha:
Continuing from above, as i start to like Asuna less i started to like Suguha a lot more, I am not really sure why but something about her just makes me feel like she's a better character than Asuna.

The characters in this anime was great, even during the second arc of Alfheim Online, i would still time to time think back to Klein or Mills and hell even heathcliff. I just think that they were amazing characters.
BUT THERE WAS ONE CHARACTER I TOTALLY HATED ASIDE FROM SUGOU. F**KING RECON. MAN HE JUST SUCKS. THIS IS SOLELY MY OPINIONS AND I REALLY HATE HIS A*S.
That is all for characters. LOL

Enjoyment and overall: 8
After i watched the first arc and two episodes into the second one i actually dropped this anime because i did not really like the plot of Alfheim Online and it seemed pretty inferior to the first arc so i dropped it. Then many months later i decided to pick it up once more and i am pretty glad that i did. I thoroughly enjoyed this and i hope if they ever make more it would be as good as this.

Til next time
~Tomislol