Review of Sword Art Online
F's REVIEW: Sword Art Online had the potential to be one of the greatest animes ever since its premise is, to say the least, interesting. Having so many characters stuck in a mortal game is the kind of narrative factor that could lead to countless exits: perhaps a great dystopian drama where people reflect on their real lives at an artificial world while look for a way out, perhaps a big high caliber shônen in which the characters purely look for beating the villains and "save the world", or perhaps a shôjo in which is debated in an efficient manner the feelings that one placesin the virtual sphere (something that would work as a "sign of the times", seen the enormous proportions the internet has taken in the daily life of the contemporaneous society).
But Sword Art Online doesn't go for any of these. That would be GREAT if its intention was to surpass the limits imposed by such genres and create something completely innovative. But what really happens is, actually, quite the opposite: instead of following any of those alternatives or simply paving its own way, the impression I got is that SAO tried to hit on everything it could and bet on every option that diegetic universe could offer. That could come out as something good if the situations that fed off of this storytelling wasn't absolutely cringy, bad-written and unfounded.
By this I mean that the episodes work with such urgency that, when we face the death of a character (for instance), we don't get to feel anything. It's a colossal nonchalancy how all the episodes are simply overstuffed with so many plots, sub-plots and events that barely have a consistency on their own, even less altogether. As a result of this, 25 episodes feels like much more - which is another grotesque fault, since one of the thousands of poorly designed intentions of the show is to make us feel the time passing alongside the characters. The first 14 episodes happen throughout a period of years and we feel them as some hours on account of the minimal changes the protagonists go through emotionally. On the other hand, the last 11 episodes, that were intended to depict the period of a week (entitled to a deadline for the "hero to save the damsel in distress"), seems to be a lot longer thanks to its poor consistency in the actions and relations that only hold us off and turn everything out in something so dragged.
It's also necessary to say that the character development here isn't just bad, but almost absent. Among the first 10 episodes, when we still don't know them very well, it gets to be confusing and disorienting: the same protagonist starts the episode off in a completely dissonant tone than how it ended the previous episode out, and this proves to be more a sign of poor cohesion than of a multidimensionality. If this looks bad enough, just imagine having a handful of female characters that are inserted in the story just so they could fall in love with the main male one (yup, even his half-sister). And I didn't even got to mention the demerit the show acquired by delivering us one of the most unilateral villains in the history of the audiovisual language -- and the ridiculousness goes deeper when the protagonist guards up his sleeves an awful lot of deus ex machinas that set him up as an invicible entity against his foes.
In a universe so potentially extensive, filled with approachable possibilities, Sword Art Online simply fails miserably in EVERYTHING it sets out for. In this messy brainstorm with no cohesion at all, there are tiny details in the corner of the frame that give the perfect chance for something to be built with quality, something that the anime not only overlooks but runs from. The expectations for future seasons are bizarrely low, given the bitter taste left by almighty-Kirito and his harem in the end of this season. Even so, I'm willing to try. Not for any affection for any of those characters, that I honestly barely know and barely got a chance to develop some kind of fondness, but for the hope that the anime grows a conscience of the universe it built and what this implies as situation-consequence in its central figures.
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P's REVIEWS:
Succintly sayin', Sword Art Online is a total downer. I mean... the diegetic universe architected is so wonderful and gives the opportunity for a good storytelling, but... the quality is frustrating. The anime is a mess, nothing is developed, nothing happens and everything happens at the same time. We haven't got the time to absorb the events, because they are inserted in the episode with a ridiculous superficiality.
The protagonist is an overpower god-like teenager and EVERY-SINGLE-ONE of the female characters are in love with him, as if it wasn't enough them being overly sexualized. The fight scenes are clumsy so, yea, it fails even at giving us a little bit of tension. The aesthetic may be the only good point, given the details and prettiness of the ambiences along the frames.
In short, SAO is badly executed. Which is a shame, since the first episode sets up an intriguing atmosphere that could lead to many stories, fights and dramas of quality.
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F's RATING: 35/100
P's RATING: 09/100
MEAN SCORE: 22/100