Review of Sword Art Online

The first time I watched Sword Art Online, I fairly enjoyed it. I was really invested in it and I absolutely adored everything about it. The execution, the story, the characters, I had thought it was all amazing. Coming back to it again after a few years, I can honestly say that looking past all of its layers from an objective standpoint, it's a sub par joke of an anime more comparable to a 13-year-old's power fantasy, than an actual attempt at a competent and compelling story. Background: It's not even like saying it was rushed is false. SAO was originally a submission for a writing competition afterall, and the creator himself has stated how he had rushed the creative process just to submit it in time. Despite this though the story was too long to qualify and was thus never submitted. Reki Kawahara continued the series as a web novel before being asked to Publish SAO later on.

I had watched Sword Art Online 2 years ago, in the March of 2015.
I was relatively new to Anime at the time, having only seen two Anime previously (Notably Naruto and Dragon Ball Z) but I had heard of the series' popularity and thus I decided to give it a shot.

I was captured by the Characters, by Kirito, Asuna, and their various interactions throughout the story. I thought the concept of the game was inventive and something new. I fell in love with it.

As time went on, I started exposing myself to more and more anime. I had also heard of the strong Negative voices against Sword Art Online, but I dismissed them since I had personally thought that it was a decent Anime.

But I came back to it recently, watching it again, and this time...seeing all the flaws that everyone else had seen in it.

I write this review as someone who had once seen this series before and loved it, but I've come to understand all the negatives and cons of Sword Art Online and have come to give my opinion on it once again.

Story:

I don't really believe I need to explain this much as the basic premise of SAO is already written in the Anime's Synopsis above.

I will say though that not only is Sword Art Online's Plot and Story terrible, but the game itself is terrible in theory.

All throughout the Anime, as we see Asuna and Kirito progress through the game we're introduced to Game Concepts that are only there to either...

A) Act as a plot Device, helping pull SAO's already terrible story forward along.

B) To impress the viewers with how seemingly amazing and complex the game and world of Aincrad is.

Kirito throughout the story is constantly boosted to ridiculously powerful proportions compared to everyone else in the game, the only reason for such power being that "He played the game for a few weeks before" or "He tries harder than anyone else" which is just plain dumb given how many people play the game. Does he manage to complete seemingly impossible feats given the guidelines of the game simply because he has the motivation?
It's honestly the dumbest excuse for overpowering a character I've ever seen.

Side characters and hell, even Main characters' personalities seem like one-dimensional plastic, feigning depth character-wise. You can always predict what the character will do or think. There is absolutely little to no development of any characters throughout the course of the story. Any attempt at character development is mind-numbingly fake it's a wonder how anyone believes it for genuine story telling.

The pacing of the story is utter garbage. Within the first few episodes, the anime had already managed to surprise me. I genuinely thought that I had skipped an episode when it turned out that it was the actual content of the next episode. So many opportunities could have been had to flesh out the world of Aincrad and her inhabitants, but none of them were taken.

Each episode is seemingly a filler showing the various levels of the game without showing how they got there, just the end result. The Adventure without the journey is terrible, that's all there is to it.

Not to mention the incredibly dumb decision the Anime took about halfway through (I'm not spoiling, but you'll see it for yourself if you watch it)
It completely ruined anything the Story had going for it in the first few episodes.

Art:

The Art of Sword Art Online isn't anything special. It isn't very bad in any sort of the word, but it isn't very good either. It's just okay. It has the samey kind of Art that A1 Studios Anime are known for. It exercises some bright colors at times and some of the backgrounds could even be called stunning or even beautiful, but its use of CGI in some scenes is god-awful and probably unnecessary.

The character designs seem pretty generic for anyone that isn't Kirito or Asuna, looking like generic Fantasy world trash, no creativity involved for several player designs.

Sound:

The sound is, I believe SAO's one redeeming quality.
The Soundtrack for Sword Art Online is amazing.
Tracks are atmospheric, emotional, and heart-warming.
Yuki Kajiura's work here is impressive, there's no denying it, her work is spectacular, and it definitely pulls up SAO's grade for me, but the Music can only do so much.

The Voice Acting for Sword Art Online is well, okay. I particularly liked Tomatsu Haruka's performance as Asuna, and Kirito's voice is well off enough. But other than those two I wasn't particularly compelled or struck by anyone's voice.

Character:

Overall, the characters of Sword Art Online are bland Archetypes of already popular character types present in the Anime Community. Little to no variety is visible from their obvious personas.

Kirito is a lame protagonist, being the typical 13-year old who wishes to be the best at what they do, in this case, video games. Like I previously mentioned, all his various power in the story is given no logical explanation and is more often or not just present to make Kirito cooler in the eyes of the Audience which it spectacularly fails at doing. But to make us support him in his endeavors. Which is really hard to do given how absolutely dumb and naive Kirito is sometimes. Constantly ignoring obvious solutions to simple problems in favor of over dramatization.

His Development is crappy, and he's still essentially the same person at the end of the story, with minor changes to his character that come without any valid explanation or logical reason.

Asuna Meanwhile, in my opinion, is the typical Tsundere. Yes, she is likable, but just like Kirito sometimes her character frustrates me when it comes to the very simple problems presented in some of the subplots of SAO. Her actions are always predictable, and sometimes even don't make any sense/ are out of character.

Overall she's nice and a decent character, but compared to the many other Anime heroines out there, isn't much as her unique position in the story isn't fully explored/taken advantage of.

The other characters in SAO are what I'd like to call bland and generic. They lack any kind of vibrant or recognizable personality as they can pretty much identify as the exact Archetype which they are modeled after within the story.

Enjoyment:

Like I previously mentioned, when I initially watched Sword Art Online, I enjoyed the crap out of it, but after I got over my initial excitement. What remained was the failure of a compelling story, laden with plot holes and numerous irrational actions within the story.

One might enjoy it he or she decides to turn off any part of his mind that covers critical thinking because without taking time to think about what's actually going on in the plot, you might find for yourself an okay anime.

Overall:

Sword Art Online is a sad tale of what-ifs and could've beens.
It had so much potential to become a great anime with its (At the time) inventive concept regarding being trapped in fictional game worlds
Yet it spectacularly failed to present anything meaningful throughout the course of its 25 episode runtime.

If one wanted to really try and give it a shot, by all means go for it. You might enjoy it like I did when I originally saw it, but if you come into it with a critical mind and lot's of doubts, then it's almost a guarantee that it won't be an enjoyable experience.

For all of these reasons and more, I have decided to rate Sword Art Online a 4/10. It's not terrible by any means, but in my honest opinion it is not worth your time watching it as it is a below average anime that got it's fame by change riding on the coat tails of the then emerging VR technology.