Review of Sword Art Online

Yeah it’s official, I don’t really like this show. I understand that it’s kind of polarizing and unfortunately I’m on the side of not liking it. And if you like it that's fine. It's ok to like stuff, but it's also ok to criticize things that you like. My intention is not to tell someone that they're wrong for liking something. My goal with this review is to get my opinion out on a show that I was really not a fan of and to educate people that might be feeling the same way as me, and maybe stop them from wasting their time bywatching it. Now with that out of the way, let me try to explain why this show fucking sucks.

I barely even liked this show ironically. This wasn’t a guilty pleasure for me cause when I watched it I felt no pleasure, only guilt. In fact I think Sword Art Online is now one of my least favorite anime that’s mainstream and I do not say that lightly. And it absolutely boggles my mind how popular this show is. I guess if I had to hypothesize, the reason SAO is popular is because there’s hot waifus in it, so if you like hot waifus then you’re lucky enough to be in the central hub for them.

It also doesn’t help that my expectations for it were pretty low. I looked at the poster and it just looked like some generic, fantasy romance anime in an online setting. It looked like something that just wouldn’t be for me. But with that being said, I tried my best to be a little bit optimistic. I was hoping it would be entertainingly bad like High School DxD was or I’d actually become an SAO fan and see what I was missing, but I really doubted the ladder. But alas I didn’t become a fan, and it wasn’t that unintentionally funny. It was about as emotionally compelling as reading Apple’s Terms and Conditions page. The real battle for me wasn’t hoping that the main characters would survive the fights, it was me fighting the urge to fall asleep.

But maybe I’m just being too harsh. To be fair, I did watch the first ten episodes late at night and I was yawning quite a bit and feeling tired during them. So during the afternoon where I continued watching the show I thought: “Now that I’m rejuvenated, maybe I’ll start to warm up to this show and be entertained for once. Maybe I’ll finally be excited with what’s on screen.” But then I continued watching it, and I still felt tired.

The thing is this show isn't very good if you over hype it. The art style is just generic as hell and never stands out. There were a few exceptions but overall I was not blown away by the presentation. It was giving me extreme Deja Vu because I felt like I had seen this show before even though this was my first viewing. In fact every aspect of this show I felt like I had seen a million times before and had seen done better. But probably the biggest issue I had besides this show being generic and boring is that I never got invested or interested in anything that was happening. Because in a show like this, hooking me in and making a first good impression is very important. For example I may not be a Bleach fan but at least Bleach kind of hooked me in from the start.

And I felt like that show had its own identity and had characters I liked. And I tried hard to latch on to something with SAO but everything was just so bland. It was like the show was afraid to be creative. I also didn’t give a shit about a single character. And the story was so boring, cliché and full of plot holes so I also didn’t care about that either. It personally took me fourteen episodes for me to start getting somewhat interested in what was happening. Fourteen!

And it’s not like this show is a slow burn either, this show moves by so quickly and they time jump so many times that it never really feels like they’ve been in the game for so long until the 14th episode. You’ve probably realized that the only episode I mildly enjoyed was episode 14. But even after that the show just gets worse and it still doesn’t make an attempt to be original or riveting. I guess the most eyebrow raising moment was in episode 15 but that grabbed my attention for all the wrong reasons. What happened in episode 15 you may ask? Well it has to do with a little word called INCEST. Now yeah maybe this is acceptable in some countries but as a grown ass American man it really made the hairs on my neck stand up. I just wanted to puke when I realized what was happening. Why the fuck did they add this? I did not need to see that!

I didn’t even get into the characters yet, but I honestly don’t have much to say about them because like the show itself, I didn’t find any of them interesting. Take the main character Kazuto or Kirito for example. He’s this badass swordsman, but he’s also an introvert and he doesn’t want any friends. But that’s ok because every girl he meets is so bad for him that he won’t feel lonely anymore. And I know a lot of people like this character. And that’s fine, in fact I actually think he could’ve been a compelling character. They had some potential for him in the beginning but instead they turned him into a harem anime protagonist. I guess he learns to live life to the fullest, which is fine but this message is never really focused on in many of the episodes. He also misses his family yet we never even see his sister or his mom until episode 15, so we have no visual context for anything he does.

I also found it hilarious that he’s nicknamed: “The Black Swordsman.” Well let me tell you he ain’t the real Black Swordsman to me. Idk just seeing this skinny teenager calling himself “The Black Swordsman” was just so funny to me. He isn’t really that convincing of a badass, he’s just kind of powerful from the beginning of the show. And some of the powers he used just didn’t make any sense. This is evident in episode 4 where he somehow becomes immune to sword damage, somehow. Like all the sword attacks just pass through him like he’s a ghost. Where the fuck did he get that ability from? They never established before that he could do that, so how the fuck can he do that? It makes no sense!

Now you could argue that this show is made for a more kid friendly audience, but there’s a lot of sexual tension in this show that isn’t really appropriate for kids. Like there’s an older guy who wants to fuck Asuna, a teenager. Like that’s not very family friendly. And watching it as an adult, I found it to be pretty dumb and stupid. So I guess the target audience is teenagers and weeaboos who are still virgins. Which is fine, but like I said before, I don’t think I’m the target demographic for this kind of show and it’s just admittedly personal preference. For me this show is everything I don’t find fun in anime. And maybe this show is supposed to be something you turn your brain off to, but I kind of didn’t want it to be that. I actually think there’s some potential with this show but I’ll get into that later. For now let me talk about the second main character, Asuna.

Who didn’t have nearly as much potential as Kazuto. She actually had somewhat of a character arc at the beginning. She becomes a sub leader of the Knights of the Blood and she's more confident in herself thanks to Kirito giving her the motivation needed to step out of her comfort zone of being a lone wolf. But after she falls for Kazuto in episode ten, her character arc abruptly ends and is never developed ever again. She starts focusing on Kazuto and becomes a damsel in distress, which means that she doesn’t really grow as a character. Her traits are that she only has eyes for Kazuto, and she knows how to cook well which is kinda sexist but whatever. As for the other side characters, well I legit have nothing to say about them, because they were pretty forgettable.

As far as the dialogue is concerned, all I will say about it is once I first heard one of the characters saying the word “noob,” I immediately cringed so hard that I thought I traveled back in time. Yeah that’s the quality of writing we’re dealing with here. And I’m not saying that I could do better because I’m not a screenwriter, I don’t wanna write stories, I’m just saying the writing really needed some work.

Now I don’t wanna sound like too much of an asshole for this review because if I really think about the concept of this show, I guess I could see some potential for it. You have this virtual MMORPG in a fantasy setting, I think you could do a lot with that. I would’ve liked it if this show took more of its time developing the story and characters in a more compelling and natural way. Because as it stands, the pacing in this show is kind of overwhelming. They really needed to slow the tempo of this show down a lot. Like when certain characters died near the beginning of the show, I just didn’t care, because I barely even knew them even though the show tries to make a big deal out of their deaths. And later on I kind of forgot they even existed or mattered as characters since the show was moving at such a fast pace that I didn’t have time to think about their deaths. I think it would’ve been a lot better and more emotional to see these characters suffer more, which would make their eventual victory much sweeter.

Because there’s like barely any tension or stakes in this show so I think that’s something that could’ve been improved. I also would’ve liked to see the romance build up longer and then finally pay off in the last few episodes, because seeing Kazuto and Asuna confirming their feelings for one another early on in the show isn’t as satisfying as seeing them getting confirmation way later on. I would’ve liked it if we saw more of Sword Art Online and how it operates as a world. I also think it would’ve been nice to see the real world’s perspective of the game and how it’s affected people’s lives. Maybe we’d see more of Kazuto’s mom and his “sister” and see their perspective on things. It might sound like I’m spitballing ideas here, but it would’ve been cool to see some of my ideas come to fruition, but no, that’s not what happened here.

So what did I actually like about this show? Uh, I guess the music was alright, and as generic as the art style was, it at least looked competently made. I’ve mentioned it before in this review but I thought episode 14 was ok. It was the only time where I didn’t know where the show was going to go next. But really the best compliment I can give this show is that it’s semi watchable compared to other things. Like I’d rather watch this than watch School Days ever again. Which isn’t a very high bar to jump over but I’ll take it.

Now I can complain and nitpick for more paragraphs but I think you guys get the idea. I just don’t like this show. It’s not one of the worst anime I’ve ever seen but it’s still not good.

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON 09/25/2023