Review of Sword Art Online

Disclaimer: This is my first review, so I'm not entirely sure how to do it, and although I'll try to avoid it in the future, I feel the need to talk about spoiler material in this one, so be warned. Also, there will be a TL;DR if you want to skip. First of all, the biggest problem with SAO is all the potential it wasted, it had good concepts, art and acting, but the story itself was a bad application of the good ideas, while the protagonist and his love interest were annoying and forgettable respectively and all the other characters that could have beeninteresting pass by without development or even much screen time, instead feeling as tools to advance the plot (technically every character and event in a fiction is this, but they shouldn't feel like they are just this, that's my point)

I'll explain it in more detail later on, but for now I'll talk about the small details, from this point on there will be spoilers.

My first problem with the show started right on the first episode, I'll try to be brief on this one. The microwave explanation for the nerve gear made no sense, and why would people be so willing to put a death machine in their heads? Then there's the actual game, a game with no mages or ranged classes would not be that popular (I admit, this one is a total nitpick, but it still annoys me), then there's "resources in an MMO are limited that's why I'll use my beta tester knowledge to go to good places to level up" talk, it was bad both because it made no sense and because the protagonist I should side with already started like an unlikable jerk.

After that it was pretty much a bunch of forgettable episodes that didn't really advance the plot and were just trying to give the protagonist some pseudo-character development, but it's not character development if the events don't add to your character, he kept shifting between attitudes all the time with no real solid character traits.

The aspects of this taking place inside a game were also really thrown at you with no care about the presentation, with inconsistencies like sometimes they feel pain and sometimes they don't, or how in the first episode and a lot of times they activated the skills by will but for some occasions they had to access the menu to use some and so goes, it felt like this anime was just thinking any reference is good because people will automatically relate to it.

Now for the supporting cast, they were all there to highlight how awesome the "hero" supposedly was, that's really just it, even the love interest was forgettable. The first villain's actions were also questionable, saying he wanted his own world to watch, but trapping himself as a player too with the death rule applying to himself, or even the need to kill people if he could just trap them there, especially when later he wasn't portrayed as a really evil guy, just one crazy idiot.

Now for the second part of the series, the second villain made much more sense, but was too forgettable, just your typical power-hungry lunatic. The plot started making even less sense from this point on, there had just been a huge tragedy about a virtual reality game and then people immediately go play another one, including the main character's sister, he almost died there and spent years trapped, what is the logical course of action for his sister? PLAY THE SAME TYPE OF GAME FOR NO REASON WHEN FLASHBACKS SHOWED SHE WASN'T EVEN REALLY INTO GAMES TO BEGIN WITH, she was there just for the sake of being a plot device.

The side-characters and "people" of this world are simply retarded, just think about it, would you act like they did if you were trapped in a virtual reality that could kill you? Would you simply go and play a new one after such an event had just ended? You wouldn't.

There is much more to criticize about this one, but I'll leave it as is because this is already too long.

TL;DR: The protagonist is an idiot with no real character traits to him, but treated as awesome, all the side characters are merely tools for the plot and highlighting the hero, everyone in this world acts like a moron, the plot was an awful application of good concepts and the show is full of small details inconsistencies to big-time errors that completely ruin immersion.
The animation is good and so is the acting, but that is not nearly good enough to save this show.