Review of Sword Art Online

This anime can be described by one word: self-insertion. That's right. If you are looking for a wish-fulfillment character that you can ogle and admire, you've come to the right place. This anime has everything for that, good art, sound. Those with an escapist deriving pleasure will like this. Now, for those viewers who want to find meaning in their mediums, who want to identify with characters, sorry you will be disappointed. With this anime being a 25-episode only adaptation of an extensive light novel, its quite apparent that there will be lots of cherry-picking in scenes, and that the anime developers were mostly interestedin revenue than quality. So a 9 rating for enjoyment is really just for those who came to experience short-term pleasure, but sadly others will have a 1 for satisfaction.

So all in all, what you have as a whole is a mediocre package delivered. Our crude taste buds are engaged, but your aesthetic higher level buds will suffer.

So how is all of this represented?

Well, firstly, good art and sound are self-explanatory.
For self-insertion, we confront a main male character who is an idealization for any male viewer. Again, this ties in to the escapist's affinity for such anime. It's arguably not a bad thing to be: we all want to escape from our mundane lives into the shoes of an awesome character. But in terms of deriving meaning and significance, you're not going to get much and the anime will leave you with a bitter unsatisfactory aftertaste.

So how is the story bad? Well, again the creators are appealing to the self-insertion character: for some full episodes you will find the narrator become popular with cute chicks, and then future episodes they have no significance. In other words, you got creators who dispose characters. Characters whose only significance is to show how awesome the main character is. And again, it's not a dumb thing on the creators part. They know that kind of thing is appealing to many viewers, and thus will earn revenue. I don't blame them, that's just how people make a living. But for mature audiences, I wouldn't waste time watching this, instead I suggest reading the light novel which I hear has more literary value, and does not exist for the sake of appealing to the viewers crude tastes.