Review of Sword Art Online
*SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* ATTENTION: This review will be very long. Actually, it’s over 7200 words long. Therefore I have decided to sum up the arcs in a TL;DR section below the full analysis of both the respective arcs in the story section. This review will also contain HEAVY spoilers for people who haven’t watched the show. So if you’re only here to know if I think you should watch Sword Art Online, then no. I do not think you should watch it. I’d rather suggest that you stay as far away from this show as possible. Let’s geton with the review.
"What?! You haven't watched Sword Art Online yet? You seriously need to watch it. It's this amazing story about a guy who gets stuck in a VRMMORPG and if you die in the game you die in real life! Doesn't that sounds freaking awesome dude?! You should know that the second half isn't as good as the first, but it's still awesome!"
The quote above is probably familiar to most people in the anime community as it’s the usual response you’d get whenever you tell people you haven’t watched Sword Art Online. Because of this there’s no wonder why I had sky high expectations for Sword Art Online, but as you can probably tell from the overall score on the right to this review I was nothing short of disappointed. Had my expectations not been so incredibly inflated by all the praise my opinion on Sword Art Online could have, and probably would have, been different. Alas, such is not the case.
As I have different problems with each of the two arcs of Sword Art Online I will be splitting up the story and character sections to deal with the arcs respectively. The sound, art/animation, enjoyment and overall sections will however be including both arcs.
Story: 2 (Appalling)
[Aincrad Arc] (episode 1-14)
The story and core concept of Sword Art Online is well known, as Sword Art Online is admittedly one of the most popular anime in the last ten years. Sword Art Online did a good job drawing me in with its first episode. In fact, I’d easily call the first episode of Sword Art Online the best episode out of both arcs. The first episode did everything a good first episode should do. They introduced our main character, they set the story up in a way which made in clear what was going on and what would be the main goal for our protagonist, Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya and Tsuboi “Klein” Ryoutarou, the first supporting character to be introduced. It introduced the Nerve Gear, which is the “Full-dive” headset used to immerse oneself in the game. It didn’t give us any unnecessary information and was very straight to the point, as it set up the rules that would govern their world until the game is cleared. All of these things I liked. The writing in the episode was quite mundane however, especially the dialogue of Kirito. I overlooked this though since I was hoping for it to become better as the show moved on. Overall the first episode managed to make me genuinely interested to see how the rest of Kirito’s adventure would turn out.
I got so hyped about it, in fact, that I watched the next four episodes purely out of wanting to see where the show would go next. When I, almost two hours later, finished episode five I took a break to really think about what had happened during those four episodes and I realized that the show was already in steep decline compared to the first episode. The second episode had been alright since it had some decent character development with Kirito as we got to see how he dealt with the other players calling him a cheater due to him having played the closed Beta of Sword Art Online before its release. Our second main character was also introduced, Asuna “Asuna” Yuuki, along with one or two minor side characters. The writing in the second episode had neither improved nor declined, which didn’t bode well for the future of the show but I still remained optimistic at this point. What also jarred me in this episode was the fact that a whole month had passed between episode one and two. They hadn’t even cleared the first floor yet and on top of that 2000 people had already been slain in the game. This is told, not shown. Unfortunately, the show does telling but not showing quite a lot.
The third episode did nothing to further the plot and did little to work on character development. Granted, the whole “die in game, die in real life” concept was used quite well in this episode but was quickly brushed under the rug not to be fully touched on again until the 14th episode. We also get yet another time jump of five months and ten floors. Kirito is now level 40. This fact doesn’t say much however since the max level is never declared in the show. All the show wants you to know is that Kirito is a much higher level than the rest of the players.
The following two episodes took a deep dive compared to episode one, two and even three. These episodes once again does nothing to further the plot (Nor do any of the episodes up until the 10th episode.) or characters. We are introduced to more unnecessary side characters, one of them being a loli, because every action pseudo-romance harem needs at least one loli. My enjoyment of show plummeted during these episodes as said loli nearly gets molested by a plant with tentacles. My decrease of enjoyment was also aided by the fact that the dialogue was no longer just mundane, it was now so bad it was almost laughable.
After coming to this realization I nearly dropped the show, but since I’d pledged that I’d finish the show I forced myself through the next 4 episodes to finally get to the 10th episode, which was the first episode since episode two that wasn’t just another filler.
One thing of note that jarred me was that in the 9th episode Kirito reveals that he has the unique ability to dual wield, an ability that is only granted to the player with the best reflexes in the game. How this is determined is never explained in the show. Kirito tells Klein when pressured to explain his ability that he has had the ability for almost six months and that he didn’t want it to become known as other players might be jealous of this ability. This is not only stupid, but incredibly selfish as people might have lost their life due to Kirito not using his unique ability and possibly slaying a boss quicker than it would have been with him only using a single sword. This has no actual effect on the plot and is just another reason Kirito is far superior to other players.
By the time the 10th episode rolled around an additional 18 months had passed and they had cleared an additional 63 floors since the 3rd episode, putting them on the 74th floor. In the 10th episode Kirito is challenged by Heathcliff to a duel, who is the guild leader of The Knights of the Blood, which is the strongest guild in Sword Art Online. If Heathcliff wins Kirito must join The Knights of Blood and if Kirito wins Asuna will be able to leave her duties in The Knights of the Blood and run away with Kirito. Heathcliff wins and Kirito is forced to join The Knights of the Blood. The whole reason why this episode is at all important to the plot is that Kirito, being the incredibly sore loser he is, suspects Heathcliff of cheating.
Once again, the story is not progressed for multiple episodes until the second half of the episode 13 when all the strongest players of the game are gathered to clear the final boss room of the 74th floor. The party beats the boss but takes heavy losses in doing so. Kirito sees that Heathcliff has only lost about half his HP and lunges at him. Heathcliff doesn’t notice the attack in time however and Kirito’s sword manages to get past his defenses, but doesn’t actually reach Heathcliff himself due to him being an immortal object which is revealed in the same instance. Heathcliff then reveals himself to be Kayaba Akihiko, the creator and lead designer of Sword Art Online and he tells Kirito that he intended to be the final boss of the game on the 100th floor.
The problem I have with this is that if feels like a cheap way to end the first arc a lot quicker than it could have as the only reason why Heathcliff is revealed to be Kayaba Akihiko is because Kirito is such a terrible looser that the immediately suspected Heathcliff of cheating just for being better than him. The situation is not improved after this however as Heathcliff promises Kirito that if Kirito manages to beat him in a fair fight he’d release all the remaining players still alive in the game and declare the game as “cleared”. Kirito accepts and the fights commences. The fight doesn’t seem to be going in Kirito’s favor and as Kirito is about to lose Asuna saves him by blocking the attack but is killed doing so. Stunned by the death of his loved one Kirito puts up little resistance for Heathcliff and is promptly defeated. Kirito’s body is immediately obliterated in the standard Sword Art Online fashion. Had the show ended at this note I would’ve been pretty happy with the ending, or at least I would’ve gotten the pleasure of knowing that both Kirito and Asuna are dead if nothing else, but unfortunately Kirito is revived purely out of power of will to drive Asuna’s sword through his opponent’s chest, even though her sword is inexplicably still there after its user had been obliterated. By the laws the show has set up until this point the weapons should also be obliterated along with its primary user since we have seen this happen multiple times. This, once again, feel like a cheap way to make the scene more “emotional” as it tries to make it seem that Kirito was only able to win thanks to Asuna.
Kirito later wakes up in an admittedly beautiful scene (beautiful from an art perspective that is) where he is reunited with Asuna. After talking to each other for a while Kayaba appears and tells them about what is currently going on. He tells them that all the remaining 6147 players were successfully logged out of the game and returned to the real world. Now, remember how many people had been killed in the first month of Sword Art Online? 2000 people had been killed. This means that over the span of the remaining 23 months “only” 1853 additional players were killed. Surely there should’ve been a significantly larger number of casualties over a time span 23 times longer than the first month. Granted the most inexperienced and reckless players would die quickly so it’s no surprise that the first month should have a very high casualty count in total but that only 1853 people died after that seem highly unlikely to me.
Kirito then asks Kayaba why he did everything he did. Why did he spend countless hours on this deathtrap of a game? Could it be the fame he was after? Personal enjoyment? Or was he just completely out of his mind? The answer he gave made me realize how horrendous the writing of the show actually was and how little thought went into creating these characters and writing their dialogue. Kayaba answered with a simple: “I don’t remember”. This pissed me off more than anything the show had pulled so far. More than the fact that the arc is 75% filler, more than the scene where a loli was almost molested by a tentacle plant, hell, it pissed me off more than when Kirito came back to life through the power of being a main character. All the buildup of the show thrown away simply because the writers couldn’t be asked to give Kayaba the least sense of meaning and reason. This scene made me feel as if the writers were trying to paint Kayaba as a morally grey character, meaning that he’s not actually a good nor a bad guy, but fails spectacularly since they can’t even provide a reason why Kayaba did the things he did.
We then get to see Aincrad fall to pieces as we hear Kayaba talking about his childhood dreams. I once again thought that if the show would just fade to black now and end I’d be at least slightly satisfied with the outcome but as I already knew that the show had an additional second arc and a whole other season in the works my hopes of the show having a decent ending were promptly crushed. The episode ends with Kirito waking up in a hospital, feeble and weak, but he still manages to get up and walk out of the room as the end theme plays and credits roll. Here the show breaks more rules, or more importantly it breaks THE rule of Sword Art Online. That if you die in the game you die in real life, and it does so in two main instances. It is explained in one of the shows earlier episode that all the players were disconnected for a couple of hours to be moved to hospitals to be put on life support since players were placed in a state of unconsciousness while playing. The action of disconnecting the players and transporting them to hospitals should have killed them, since it is stated in the first episode that if the Nerve Gear is forcefully removed or disconnected the player will die. Unless Kayaba willingly allowed all players to be disconnected during a certain period of time they shouldn’t be alive according to the rules the show set for itself. It would make sense however is this were to be the case considering that it wouldn’t be very entertaining for Kayaba to see all his subjects die after a couple of days from dehydration, but since it’s never explained or stated in the show I can’t look past it and simply assume that the show writers decided to not tell the audience.
The other instance the show breaks this rule is a pretty obvious one. When both Kirito and Asuna were killed by Heathcliff but neither of them actually died in real life. I can understand that Kirito was spared due do him dealing the blow which cleared the game and him being spared could’ve been his reward, but unless Kayaba kept Asuna alive for no reason what so ever she should be dead. If there were to be a certain amount of time between dying in the game and dying in real life Asuna surviving could also be possible, but since the show once again didn’t declare that there is a certain time span between dying in the game and in real life I can’t assume that the case would be such.
The show simply ignores its previously set rules and shrugs it off as if it were nothing.
TL;DR [Aincrad arc]
The Aincrad arc of Sword Art Online starts of strong with a good first episode but quickly declines from there with episode 1, 10, half of 13 and 14 being the only episodes which drove the story forward. This means that the whole arc is 75% filler. (14 - 3.5 = 11.5 11.5 / 14 = 0.75 = 75%) The writing is alright at best and laughably terrible at worst. Character development is almost completely left out and most side characters are only seen once or twice and play no role in the plot. The show struggles to tell a coherent and engaging story thanks to the jarring time jumps which riddle the whole arc. World building is completely missing as by the end of the show you can’t name a single city, town or dungeon as they are never given a name. Most places in the show look either identical or very similar and unoriginal, they are undeniably beautiful however. The show goes back on its promises multiple times in breaking the rules it set for itself. Had the show only been one arc of 14 episodes or if the entire 25 episodes only covered the Aincrad arc and the show had ended with both Kirito and Asuna dying I might not have hated it as much as I did.
[ALfheim arc] (episode 15-25)
Remember the thing most people told me when recommending Sword Art Online to me?
“You should know that the second half isn't as good as the first, but it's still awesome!”
“You should know that the second half isn't as good as the first”
“Second half isn't as good as the first”
“Isn't as good as the first”
“AS THE FIRST”
After finally finishing the first arc of Sword Art Online I had to take a break from Sword Art Online as to not have the pain of watching the first arc fresh in my memory. I dreaded going back to watch the remaining 11 episodes and I wasn’t willing to believe that the second half could possibly be worse than Aincrad had been. Unfortunately for me, I was wrong.
The first episode of the ALfheim arc is the exact opposite of the first episode of the Aincrad arc, as in it’s one of the worst episodes of the whole arc and not the best as the first episode of the Aincrad arc had been. What is to become of the second arc plot-wise is not explained in the first episode but is rather explained in the second episode. Our main “villain” of the arc, Nobuyuki Sugou, is also introduced, more on this creep later. We also get a better look at the new main character of the ALfheim arc, Suguha Kirigaya, who we are told in the beginning of the episode is Kirito’s adoptive sister but is later in the episode revealed to actually be his cousin. She ends up adding nothing to the plot however as she provides nothing more than fan service.
In the episode we find out that two months has passed since Sword Art Online was cleared, but 300 people still haven’t woken up yet. Asuna is one of these 300. Kirito visits her frequently in the hospital, where one day he meets both Asuna’s father and a man named Nobuyuki Sugou. They talk for a while and Asuna’s father leaves, which leaves Kirito and Nobuyuki alone with Asuna. Nobuyuki is quickly painted up as the bad guy of this arc as he, immediately as Asuna’s father leaves, starts acting like a sleazy creep as he strokes Asuna’s face and sniffs her hair. He then tells Kirito that he is to wed Asuna in one week, even if she is yet to wake up by then. We, along with Kirito, are informed that after the company called Argus, the developer studio behind Sword Art Online, was run into the ground by debt the maintenance of the Sword Art Online servers was entrusted to Asuna’s father’s company, RCT. Nobuyuki tells Kirito that he is the “director if RCT’s Full-Dive research department.” and he says this means that basically “deserve” to marry Asuna since she’s essentially dependent of him for sustenance. This all makes it very obvious that the writers didn’t even try to hide the fact that his is going to be the main antagonist in the ALfheim arc, compared to the first arc where they at least tried to make Kayaba a more or less neutral character. Kirito goes home saddened by the conversation with Nobuyuki. The next day Kirito receives an E-mail from Agil, who was his close friend in Sword Art Online but as he didn’t add anything to the plot I didn’t bother mentioning him, with a screenshot of an avatar resembling Asuna from within another game. As I already said, this episode is one of the worst in the whole arc as the dialogue between Kirito and his cousin Suguha is cringe worthy at best since we get to know that Suguha has feelings for Kirito. Yes, you read right. She knows she’s his cousin and she loves him. The show went there. I could hardly believe it myself. The show has actually stooped that low.
The next episode starts off with Kirito visiting Agil to talk about the screenshot. Kirito finds out that the screenshot comes from a game called “ALfheim Online”, which is another VRMMORPG very similar to Sword Art Online and that the screenshot was taken at the top of the biggest tree in the game, called the “World Tree” and to get to the top you must beat the final boss of the game. ALfheim Online was released one year after the Sword Art Online incident and is based on the same structure as Sword Art Online, The Cardinal System. The game is revealed to be owned by RCT Progress, Asuna’s father’s company. This only further enforces the obviousness that Nobuyuki is behind the 300 people, including Asuna, who haven’t woken up yet from Sword Art Online. Why anyone would ever buy and play a VRMMORPG after Sword Art Online or why these kinds of games are still legal is never explained.
To save Asuna from Nobuyuki Kirito goes into ALfheim Online where he meets Leafa who promises him to help find Asuna. I was unhappily unsurprised when Leafa is revealed to be his cousin. This reveal made me very reluctant to continue to watch the rest of the show. Why it did so was because the interactions between Kirito and Suguha are by far the worst written and directed scenes of the whole show, so to have the whole arc filled with dialogue between them would be insufferable. To avoid having to re-build the strength Kirito possessed in Sword Art Online it’s half assedly explained that Kirito regains all his previous power simply because ALfheim Online is based in the Cardinal System which Sword Art Online was based on. How this makes any sense what so ever is never explained.
In the 3rd episode of the ALfheim arc, or the 17th episode of the show it is revealed to us in a scene atop the World Tree that Asuna is being held prisoner by Nobuyuki who goes by the name “Fairy King Oberon” which is by far the most ridiculous villain name I’ve ever heard. He himself is almost as ridiculous a villain as his name would suggest as in the same scene tells Asuna how he would enjoy “taking her by force”, a.k.a raping her. He then, purely out of convenience for the viewer, reveals how he managed to trap all 300 players in ALfheim Online after they were released from Sword Art Online. Whether the 300 players, with the exception of Asuna, are actually players within the game or just stored on a server is never explained. Keeping them active in the game would be a dumb thing to do as the 300 players could tell other normal players in ALfheim Online the truth, and that’s exactly what I’ll assume the show did since it’s the worst of the two decisions. As he was giving this explanation I couldn’t help but to laugh at how forced the whole concept of the ALfheim suddenly felt. This is the direct quote for Nobuyuki himself: “It wasn’t hard to use a router to capture a portion of the players as they were being freed from the game.” It doesn’t take a degree in computer science to understand that this wouldn’t work. The only way I can think of that would make such an absurd feat possible were if whilst the players were locked within Sword Art Online their minds were stored on the servers which RCT Progress took over when Argus went down, but since this isn’t possible nor logical I will keep calling it a forced explanation given by the writers to force the “plot” of the show forward, instead of ending it right after the first 14 episodes. Nobuyuki then tells Asuna why he captured the 300 players within ALfheim Online and what he plans to do with them. He says that through months of hard research, he and a small team of scientists have figured out a way to inject new information into human memories which will allow them to change the emotions related to said memories, and that memories might be able to be completely altered, created or removed. I have to give the show credit where it’s due though. The whole concept of removing, creating and altering memories is not completely ridiculous as such science is being worked on today and as the show is set in 2024 them being that close to such technology is not out of the question. To be telling all of this to Asuna is quite idiotic on Nobuyuki’s part as if Asuna manages to escape and tell her father about what Nobuyuki is doing behind her father’s back he’ll most likely be thrown in jail. The show also deserves some credit for realizing that having an antagonist without any sole purpose, (ahem, Kayaba) is worse than having an antagonist with a ridiculous one.
The show then curls up in a ball while suckling on its thumb like the child it can be compared to as it spends the next six episodes on filler side-stories, cringe worthy drama and character interactions and petty attempts at making the viewer care for Suguha’s feelings towards Kirito. Most scenes in these episodes are so insignificant and useless to any kind of character development or furthering the plot that they aren’t even worth mentioning, all except for two. These two scenes I will talk about briefly, not because they’re well made, not because they’re important and not because they invoked any kind of emotion. I will talk about them because they’re so horribly bad that I didn’t believe my eyes as they unfolded before me.
The first of the two scenes take place in episode 21. In this scene Asuna escapes her imprisonment and goes searching for a way either out of the game or off the World Tree. Here is my first problem with this scene. As she escapes and goes searching for a way out she walks along the branches of the tree while she could just jump right off the branch right down to the ground. She’s a damn fairy. She has wings. She can fly. This stupidity just shows how little thought is put into the scenes. Asuna then comes across a room filled with terminals displaying holograms resembling brains above them. She quickly figures out that these are the minds of the 300 players which are all being experimented on. Why these are even inside the game is never explained, as I’m fairly certain that it would be significantly easier to just experiment on them in the real world and not within a VRMMORPG. As she continues to search for a way out she gets caught by two purple tentacle monsters who start touching her quite inappropriately. What these monsters are exactly is not explained. If they were players shouldn’t they look like all the other players and not like tentacle monsters? My guess is that they’re only there for the purpose of molesting Asuna. Doing this, the show just reduced its main female lead to nothing but a bag of meat to be sexually exploited by the show to cram as much fan service out of each episode as possible. She is then returned to her cage in the tree, which concludes the scene. We learnt nothing during this scene that we didn’t already know which shows that she show writers are now completely desperate after things to fill this burning pile of garbage up with.
The second scene takes place at the bottom of the World Tree between Suguha and Kirito. In this scene Kirito tells Suguha, a.k.a Leafa, that the reason he wants to get to the top of the World Tree is to save Asuna just after Suguha tries to tell Kirito that she loves him. Suguha is shocked by this however as she now figures out that the guy who calls himself Kirito within the game is actually her cousin who she loves in the real world, Kazuto Kirigaya. I honestly found it baffling that the writers actually expect the viewers to believe that Kirito and Suguha haven’t talked about what they’re doing within the game at least once while conversing in real life, or that Kirito hasn’t told Suguha in the game why they’re even going to the World Tree to begin with or that Suguha hasn’t realized that Kirito in the game is Kazuto Kirigaya in real life as they look and sound exactly the same.
I just wanted to get my problems with those scenes of my chest. Now back to some actual “plot” progression. Episode 24 starts off with Kirito reaching the top of the World Tree and is reunited with Asuna, but Nobuyuki catches them and locks them both in place with his administrative powers. After monologuing for some time Nobuyuki chains Asuna up to the roof by her wrists, making her unable to cover herself at all as he starts off by sniffing her hair and rubbing up against her. Once again the show reduces her no nothing more than a bag of sexualized meat. When Kirito then begs Nobuyuki to stop he gets mad and drives Kirito’s sword through his back while he’s still unable to move. We then get shown that Nobuyuki can control something called “Pain absorber” for each individual player. This feels like something that was thrown into the scene at a whim because they realized that you can’t really torture someone in a game where they can’t feel pain. He turns down Kirito’s Pain Absorber Level from 10 to 8. Exactly how much pain you’re susceptible to at the different levels is not declared so it becomes hard to relate to the agony he has put Kirito in. Nobuyuki also says that at level 3 it’ll start to affect his real body. You’d guess that after what happened with Sword Art Online VRMMORPG’s shouldn’t even be legal anymore, or that there should be serious regulations put on them so I find it highly illogical that such a thing as a Pain Absorber Level would even be allowed to exist within the game. Nobuyuki then goes back to Asuna to rip her top off. He then tells her how he’ll first rape her in the game and then go to her hospital room in real life to rape her there once again. I feel like this is only done to ensure that every single person watching hates Nobuyuki’s guts so that when Kirito eventually beats him people will view Kirito as more of a hero. Also, who the hell decided to program in the function to RAPE within the game? It's like the show forgets that it takes place in a videogame which should have some restrictions to it.
We then see Kirito surrounded by a white light, monologuing about how he’s actually useless and weak. And like clockwork we get the obligatory deus ex machina moment every really bad show must have at some point, since the writers aren’t creative enough or have written themselves into a corner. Out of nowhere, Kayaba Akihiko appears to grant him higher authority than that of Nobuyuki. With these powers, Kirito removes all authority Nobuyuki had, effectively rendering him useless. He then reduces Nobuyuki’s pain absorber lever to 0, even though he knew that at level 3 your real life body might be affected which makes Kirito no better than Nobuyuki, if not worse as he holds no regard for his life. Kirito also tells Nobuyuki not to run, since Kayaba Akihiko hadn’t run no matter the situation. Through this the show actually tries to make the audience like Kayaba, even though he killed nearly 4000 people. Why the show is even trying is beyond me.
After slicing, stabbing and dismembering Nobuyuki multiple times with his pain absorber set to 0, he finally manages to save Asuna. Asuna then returns to the real world for the first time since before Sword Art Online while Kirito stays behind to talk to the ghost of Kayaba. The thought of Kayaba’s consciousness somehow remaining within the source code of the game is completely ridiculous. Unless somehow programmed in himself into the Cardinal System before releasing Sword Art Online this would be completely impossible, since ALfheim Online only used the same engine as Sword Art Online and didn’t completely remake Sword Art Online itself into a new game. Even if he did program in his consciousness into the Cardinal System, that consciousness shouldn’t retain any memories gained by Kayaba in Sword Art Online, and shouldn’t remember who Kirito is since it should be a version of Kayaba from before Sword Art Online. Kayaba gives Kirito “The Seed”, which is the program used to simulate Full-Dive VRMMO environments and tells him that he can do whatever he wants with it. What he does with it is revealed in the next episode and is the idiotic decision I’ve ever seen Kirito make.
The next episode starts off with Kirito rushing to the hospital to meet with Asuna who has finally woken up. When he reaches the parking lot of the hospital Nobuyuki gets the jump on him, cutting his arm open with a knife and he falls over. Nobuyuki then starts kicking him while he’s lying on the ground, telling him to get up. He takes a stab at Kirito but misses due to “his glasses fogging up”. This is possibly the most retarded instance of plot armor I’ve ever seen in anime. Kirito then manages to overpower Nobuyuki with a single hand, takes his knife and tries to slit his throat. He lacks the guts to do it however and leaves Nobuyuki crying on the ground. The rest of the episode is mostly filler, but we do get to know that ALfheim Online is forced to shut down after both Asuna and Kirito tells the authorities what had been going on in the game. The fact that it took two VRMMORPG incidents to place a ban on such games is astounding. Remember what Kayaba had given Kirito in the previous episode? Remember that I said that I found his decision to be completely and utterly idiotic? He uploads The Seed to the internet so that anybody and their grandmother can make their own VRMMORPG granted they have the server to handle it. This is beyond retarded. Beyond crazy. Beyond idiotic. I can’t describe with words how much I abhor Kirito at this point. After all he’s been through you’d think that he’d never want anybody else to suffer the same, but by doing this he has guaranteed that such event will occur multiple times over and over and over.
To be completely honest, I never expected to hate the ALfheim arc as much as I did and I sure didn’t expect it to be worse than the Aincrad arc, but I was so very wrong…
TL;DR [ALfheim arc]
There isn’t much to summarize about these dreadful 11 episodes. The ALfheim arc did nothing right and almost everything wrong. It reduces its main female character to nothing but an object to be oversexualized. The new female character which is introduced is only there to be an incredibly awkward love interest for Kirito. There are no significant side characters. It leaves much to be desired in terms of character development and world building just as the Aincrad arc had. This arc has about the same amount of filler, though it’s harder to calculate since the plot is not as concentrated as it had been in the Aincrad arc. The antagonist is horrible, and is arguably worse than Kayaba had been. This arc had literally no redeeming factors.
Characters: 2 (Appalling)
[Aincrad arc]
Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya.
There isn’t much to say about Kirito other than what I have said already, and as you can tell I haven’t gone very deep into Kirito’s personality but only the show can be blamed for that. Kirito is essentially an empty shell of a person. He rarely shows any kind of believable emotions and is never able to make me care what so ever about what happens to him.
He is outrageously OP however, as he can far out level everybody while playing solo which anyone who has ever played an MMO can tell you is complete and utter bullshit, he can take on a group of up to 10 people at once without breaking a sweat, he is also rewarded the ability to be able to dual wield which is a unique ability that only the player with the best reflexes can use and this only makes him even more ridiculously OP, he can hack the game from within the game itself to turn a stupidly advanced AI into an object in the game in just a few seconds, he defies the hard written code of the game to come back to life by the power of boner to kill Heathcliff, he manages to get every girl he meets to like him even though he's an asshole because the show is actually just another terrible romance harem that happens to be set in a VRMMORPG.
He’s a wish-fulfillment character in every sense of the word.
Asuna “Asuna” Yuuki
Asuna is honestly far better than Kirito in terms of showing human emotion as there are some scenes where I actually care about her, but when I say “some” I really mean 1 out of 10 at most.
She is introduced in the second episode as a badass who could possibly even be better than Kirito, but after a few episode she is completely stuck in the “Kirito-kun” harem and manages to do nothing at all on her own.
Yui
A minor character who is so unimportant that I didn’t even bother mentioning her. She is beyond annoying and is only there to explain very obvious thing to the audience and to be used as a deus ex machina plot device for the main characters to proceed with the paper thin plot.
Kayaba “Heathcliff” Akihiko
The main villain of the Aincrad arc. There, once again, isn’t much to say about the mastermind behind Sword Art Online in terms of personality as the show doesn’t give him one. He does have more impact in the plot than any other character in the show with the exception of Kirito.
The writers tried to make a morally grey character with Kayaba but failed miserably.
There are also plenty of minor supporting characters in the Aincrad arc, but they’re all so insignificant that I can’t even take the time to talk about them.
[ALfheim arc]
Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya.
There really isn’t a difference between the Kirito we see in the Aincrad arc and the Kirito we see in the ALfheim arc. He’s just as empty as before, if not more of an idiot in this arc.
Asuna “Asuna” Yuuki
Asuna is basically reduced to nothing in this arc as she is locked up from the get go and isn’t released until the last episode. She’s a damsel in distress who is only used for far service from time to time.
Suguha “Leafa” Kirigaya
Suguha is the main love interest for Kirito in this arc. Suguha is also his cousin. See the problem? Had she not been related to Kirito in any way I wouldn’t have a problem with this, but since they are I have serious trouble fathoming who thought that making them cousins was a good idea. She doesn’t really provide any actual plot progression and the slight personality she has is completely overshadowed by her feelings for Kirito. Every single one of her lines of dialogue are either directed at Kirito or are about him.
Nobuyuki “Fairy king Oberon” Sugou
I’ve never seen writers try to make the audience hate a single character so much as they tried to make you hate Nobuyuki, and honestly, they didn’t do a very good job at it. Repeating the same threat over and over again without actually doing anything quickly makes those same threats lose their potency. Just like all the other characters in the show, he completely lacks a personality with any particular traits other than being a creepy asshole.
Yui
Yui hasn’t changed much since the first arc. She’s still only there to be convenient to the audience and Kirito to explain what is going on. She is way more annoying in this arc however, since she now almost completely resembles Navi from Legend of Zelda.
Art: 7 (Good)
I remember how people would tell me Sword Art Online had amazing animation and art, especially in the fights but there isn’t much there to praise. Sure, some of the environments look stunning and some fight scenes are fluid and well-choreographed but everything about the animation screams unoriginality. It’s as if there is a very specific way a character, place and fight can look in these kinds of action harem light-novel adaptions which makes most of them look very unoriginal. Also,the show uses an abundance of still frames, even in fights which is incredibly jarring.
Sound: 8 (Great)
What’s there to say about the sound quality, sound track and voice acting except that it’s absolutely phenomenal? It’s the best part of Sword Art Online by miles and miles. The sound track is beautiful and varied enough not to get repetitive. The sound quality of bare feet on a wooden floor, the clashing of swords as well as something as simple as someone talking off their VR helmet, it all sounds absolutely fantastic and I have to give mad props to whoever is responsible for this. The voice acting is also top-notch. It really is too bad that the characters never said anything at all meaningful.
Enjoyment: 1 (Abhorrent)
I personally didn’t enjoy anything about Sword Art Online, except for the sound and certain scenes in terms of animation. This, unfortunately, didn’t cover up the tremendous amount horrible character interactions, poorly executed plot points and completely unnecessary filler episodes. It will honestly be hard to find an anime which I will dislike more than I disliked Sword Art Online.
Overall: 3 (Terrible)
Sword Art Online is nothing but a pseudo-romance harem which happens to be set inside two VRMMORPGs. Characters completely lack any personality, there are way more episodes of pure filler than ones that actually drive the insanely thin plot forward, both antagonists of the show are on opposite sides of the spectrum but both are so far on either side that it becomes extreme which completely ruin anything they might have had going for them. Additionally, Kirito seems to be so incredibly dense that anything and everything revolves around him, including the show and all side characters.