Review of Sword Art Online
*spoilers for a show that you’ve almost definitely seen by now* prologue Sword Art Online is perhaps one of the most unfortunate anime in existence. While it’s still a beloved gateway anime for new anime fans every year since it began in 2012, the international multimedia empire of SAO has been a derided one for almost half a decade now. Chances are, before even reading this review, you already feel that SAO is terrible or have at least heard dozens of arguments for why the series is horrible. It's such an acceptable target that even people who like shows that have all of the problems that thisshow has and then some, still shit on it. However, there’s paradoxically little coverage centered on what I feel is the core of the show’s problems, at least as far as the first season and arc is concerned.
SAO is not just bad because it features an unreasonably overpowered protagonist showered by an ever-increasing cast of spurned women who follow him and his OTP relationship around. It’s not just due to a dubiously crafted setting that left a whole lot unfulfilled. It’s not because of some of the mid-cour side stories that only exist to bring the wannabe lovers. It’s not even due to some of the most infamous, dubious, and poorly-presented plot points in the second half of the first arc and the entirety of the second arc rear their ugly heads, though you’ve likely put a pin in all of that like you should. Perhaps the most confounding aspect of SAO, why the first arc is generally more widely regarded compared to its successors while subsequently being one of the most corrosive disappointments, is how it leaves so many obviously compelling ideas criminally unfulfilled despite almost no one bringing them up!
Part 1: A Lukewarm Defense of the Aincrad arc being broken and disappointing on a macro level cuz people kind of ignore aspects of the show when shitting on it. This is what the review started as...holy shit, we are all fucked.
At its core, the first volume of SAO is a love story set in the backdrop of this expansive, fascinating sci-fi hellscape that’s far too big for just one light novel volume. As a result, the second volume was dedicated to side stories that introduced the bulk of who would ride Kirito and Asuna’s coattails in subsequent arcs as the two lovebirds went about being the protagonists of different stories. Perhaps not wanting to dedicate subsequent volumes to filling in the bible-length blanks the first one left behind in the subsequently dubbed AIncrad arc, and due to the author having new ideas, Reki Kawahara began SAO Progressive as a side-series to the main Sword Art Online cash cow. Sure, sometimes incrad could be revisited like in the murder mystery plot in volume 8 that makes up episodes 5 and 6, but those would mainly be flashback materials as the series moved on. 2 volumes were out for Progressive, and they probably wanted to sprinkle a little bit of that in for the anime, so episode 2 ends up being a condensed version of one of the Prog books. I bring this up both to address some of the disappointments some LN readers had, and to contextualize why the first arc is one of the worst-constructed stories put to animation. The second arc, Alphein, generally has all of the bases covered in terms of why people hate it, as will be discussed later.
While the idea that SAO is one of the worst anime ever made --mainstream or otherwise-- is rather overblown, it’s not a stretch to call the first arc one of the most poorly paced and structured stories in the medium. So much of the season’s problems would be fixed by giving it some breathing room. The only problem is that the show was slated for just 2 cours and each arc ended up being around 1-cour each. This leaves no room to add anime-original episodes to space out certain plot points or even stretch certain mini-arcs past 1-2 episodes. This is most apparent in the 3rd episode when Kirito joins a small guild, feels nervous about revealing his powerful “Beater” status after Beta Testers start getting a bad rep, catches feelings for one of the members after a talk they had alone, and watches all of them fall prey to a death trap only he could escape before going on a small quest for an revival item that wasn’t worth it.
Yes, all of that happened in a single episode. No, he does not express further hang-ups about it in the immediate proceeding episodes. This could have been a 3 episode arc where both he and we start getting used to these new characters before they’re taken away from us in the next episode and Kirito begins going on a fruitless journey that forces him to accept that he’s alone once again. Then we can spend an episode with him training, developing a reputation as a badass asocial (perhaps even antisocial) loner before side story encounters with the other girls and his eventual relationship slowly pull him out of it. Instead, he gets over it by the start of the next episode, offscreen, and goes from already kind of overpowered to downright absurd. The stuff with the guild and the first girl he fell in love with has almost nothing to do with the romance between Kirito and eventual soulmate, Asuna, moving forward. This is because the gap between episodes 3 and 4 is filled by one of the first arc’s myriad time skips.
Let’s put this into perspective. At the end of episode 2, Kirito and everyone trapped in the SAO game that isn’t dead yet cleared the first of 100 floors. In episode 3, we’re already at floor 28, and when episode 4 rolls around, Kirito is already exploring an area in floor 47 for a side-quest. Each floor can house several forests, fields, and at least 1 town as far as we know, and it took a month + thousands of deaths for the first dungeon in floor 1 to be found, let alone beaten. The time between the first floor and the 28th in episodes 2 and 3 is 4 months. The 2nd half of episode 3 takes place in floor 49, over a year after the game launched. Keep in mind that episodes 4-7 are essentially side-quests introducing future pseudoharem members or only slightly progressing the relationship Kirito and Asuna (who was only introduced in episode 2 before coming back in episode 5) form before the last 7 episodes are focused squarely on their relationship and how they eventually clear the game while falling in love. On top of that, episode 8 skips to floor 74, further reinforcing that not only does progression only take place every ¼ of the game without any of it feeling earned or tangible, but that things just happen in this show with almost no semblance of pacing or connective tissue. On paper, spending a few episodes on side-quests that flesh out the world before getting back into the meat of things seems like a good idea. However, as established, we’re about halfway through the game at this point and Kirito has already undergone about half of his entire character arc offscreen. They won’t even be finished introducing characters via side adventures that have nothing to do with clearing the game at this point since the threat of escaping the labyrinthine hellhole that is this game has long since been exterminated like a large chunk of the player base.
Weirdly enough, most of the less plot-driven episodes show people making a living in these floors, almost as if they’ve come to terms with this being their life now. By episode 8, when we're finally back to the plot-driven excursions, it's actually confirmed. Entire cities are established and run by both NPCs and players alike. Sure, people still have an objective to clear, but even as early as episode 4, this has gone from a “trapped in a death game” setting to that of another MMO, the latter of which was likely what most of the game devs had intended. The only one seemingly exempt from this thought process is Kayaba, who has disguised himself by becoming the leader of the most prominent guild in the game, the Knights of Blood. They become the main group leading the charge to clear the game now that the whole idea of “those nasty Beaters” has been dropped by episode 6 and only gets mentioned whenever people talk about Kirito’s reputation. Kayaba or “Heathcliff” himself apparently wanted to see what happened after putting them in this hellhole of an MMO, at least until episode 14 has him say he hardly even knows why he did this beyond a vague memory of a castle beyond all laws in restrictions. In replicating that, we have Aincrad but the vivid image is still little more than a hazy memory.
Theoretically, all of this could have made him a tragic character, one who was genuinely fascinated in creating the ultimate escapism platform where he could truly become the charismatic leader he was likely seen as during his career. Maybe his rockstar status in the game industry could have been something he wanted to keep and directly translate into something else. Perhaps we could have seen that ambition combined with the stress of working on this game during crunch periods for several years before his life came crumbling down and his control freak tendencies or some kind of character flaw to that effect drove him to trapping everyone, including himself, in his own creation. Perhaps over the 2-year span this arc takes place in, he gets so accustomed to life as a guild leader clashing with the guilt of being directly responsible for the deaths of thousands that he forgets why he created the game in the first place. This deadly simulation has turned into its own lived-in civilization complete with different cultures, anyway. Perhaps the weight of all of this could have made him seek someone he knows could kill him and end the game, turning him into the final boss he was destined to be once he knew Kirito was capable of truly challenging him and when he was eventually called out by said challenger.
This is a character we’ll never get to see in this show. Even subsequent appearances as a tech ghost effectively exonerate him as he helps Kirito overcome obstacles and generally gets referred to in a light that isn’t unilaterally negative. Eventually, Kirito himself is inspired to make a digital utopia akin to what SAO’s Aincrad world could have been, though that’s peering into SAO 2’s turf, meaning I’ve digressed for long enough. Still, perhaps the potential highlighted by this one scene was enough to burn people, make them feel like there was so much more to explore that was only hinted at in the end of this first arc. We’re just left with a bland twist villain who turned out to be the shady mastermind all along when, with a little more time to explore him and his guild, we could have peeled back the layers of his character as the seeds began being planted for this one big revelation. A relatively blank character is less frustrating than one who turns out to have all this potential backstory and depth at the last minute when it can no longer be explored. However, that’s Sword Art Online’s first arc in a nutshell. The first 4 episodes span 50 floors while the last 10 span 25 before the game ends prematurely. There’s a whole world that’s barely covered beyond the 6 or so side-quests that introduce characters who only gain their own varying degrees of relevance in future arcs. There’s a character beyond the protagonist who is constantly called a Gary Stu. There’s an interesting tragedy beyond the almost blank slate villain. There’s a lot here that gets skipped over because that’s what the novels did. Perhaps that’s why Progressive was made and why so many were looking forward to it getting an adaptation.
That being said, all of this implies that SAO wasn’t at least sometimes absolutely broken in the moment to moment, episode by episode viewing like it already is on a macro level. The devil is in the details, so it’s time to talk about what a miserable experience the show actually was on rewatch.
Part 2: The stuff everyone talks about when saying SAO is dogshit cuz on a scene by scene basis, SAO’s so bad you almost completely ignore the bigger picture disappointments and ideas the show had ⅓ of the way in.
The first episode showed some promise with solid direction and a clear idea for its main lead, Kirito. He’s reclusive and whenever he does want company, he wants it kept to just one other person as he values his life and that of whoever is immediately with them over any friends they might have. Then, episode 2 ruins all of it when he decides that despite there being an obvious skill ceiling for solo players in an MMORPG, he’s gonna distance himself from someone he hit it off with (Asuna) after not even trying to defend himself and Beta Testers from erroneous accusations of letting people die while they hoard all the boss and game knowledge. Even worse, he plays himself up as a villain for no good reason! This isn’t even all of the baffling decision making characters make in that episode. Remember the Beaters plotline that was introduced in this episode? This is what it’s all about: beta testers helping out newbies and getting the rug pulled out from under them by the devs, all the while being blamed for everyone’s deaths before Kirito says “your average beta tester was a pussy, I’m the real pro gamer” and subsequently being called a cheater until Beta Tester and Cheater became the silly portmanteau you probably forgot about until reading this review. Sure, you can argue that Kirito didn’t want Asuna strung along for the backlash, but he could have easily diffused the situation by pointing out the obvious instead of doing all of this.
4 months later, i.e the start of the next episode, Kirito’s asked to joining a 5-person guild with people he saved while doing something on his own, and accepts with only a hint of nervousness at joining an entire crew of people he doesn’t know after ditching someone who was likely willing to stick with him during the Beater backlash he instigated and watching Klein offer him the chance to join his guild with his friends and running away cuz he didn’t want much company. This is definitely a result of bad adaptation given that episode 2 was from the prog novels while this third one and the side-stories not major to the main romance or game are in volume 2 of the original LN. However, anime only viewers wouldn’t know that and would instead just see broken, wishy washy character writing as they give up and just call him a Gary Stu episode 4 onwards when he solos entire armadas of high-level douchebags and almost 1v1s entire bosses with either some or no help from others. Even episodes that aren’t riddled with nonsense, such as episode 3, fail due to the show’s god awful structuring and pacing. Those are the better episodes, by the way. The worst ones are definitely the likes of episode 2 and the bulk of the arc’s back half, where nonsensical decisions and ideas come about.
One thing that is consistent about a lot of episodes, particularly in the first half, is that they never really know how to handle Kirito as a main character. Even outside of how wishy washy he is about companionship and guilds, he seems to be portrayed differently from episode to episode without much of a clear, defining aspect about him outside of how OP he is and will continue to be. He has a character arc but it’s almost entirely handled offscreen, as mentioned earlier. Otherwise, it’s hard to say he even has much of a character thanks to how inconsistent he is until episode 8 squarely lands him as the bland, milquetoast LN lead he’s solely remembered as. The only thing really separating him from most bland LN protagonist dubbed “Kirito clones” is that he’s still capable of experiencing a wild flurry of emotions and concerns from all over the spectrum, making him feel at least somewhat like a person capable of emotion and garnering empathy. Perhaps they should have combined episode 1 Kirito with episode 7’s smug, sassy asshole Kirito so that he’d be a consistent and likable character whose development was still tied to a well-defined core.
The deuteragonist, Asuna, fares little better as while she is a reserved yet competent player in episode 2, the next time we see her in episode 5, she’s just some tsundere who hits and threatens Kirito all the time cuz tropes. Both mellow out of their most aggressive and snappy forms in episode 8, cementing Asuna as a tsundere while Kirito struggles to find something to latch onto in regards to settling down on a personality. They have almost no chemistry before really catching feelings for each other, let alone afterward, so there’s no reason to care about their romance. Keep in mind that this is the emotional core of the show once Kirito’s loneliness and eventual guilt for Sachi’s death are sorted out offscreen 3 episodes in, and that this is meant to be an extension to his character arc. Lisbeth, Asuna’s best friend, has more chemistry with Kirito in their weird pseudoromantic journey against a hideous CG dragon in a frozen hellscape in a one-off episode.
As a matter of fact, Lisbeth’s easily the best character in this whole show despite only really appearing for one episode. She not only deals with the sassiest, douchiest Kirito yet, but despite her falling in love with Kirito is annoying on the basis of her becoming the 2nd accessory to the eventual romance he has with Asuna, her reason is far more interesting than Silica’s. Whereas the episode 4 girl with an S for a name and an “hit” to complete the description and depth of her character just kinda becomes attracted to him, Lisbeth simply wants something genuine in this artificial hellhole. As a result, she uses Kirito as somewhat of an outfit for it when she asks him to hold hands or when the sense of life and death adventure combined with her desperation for romance and something real beyond friendships quickly (and abruptly) makes her fall in love with him. Realizing he might already be taken due to Asuna having an earring and her making the admittedly unfounded in context but reasonable in a better-paced story connection, she tearfully comes to terms with that fact. It could have been better told, especially if this wasn’t the second time a side character became attracted to Kiribro in a one-off episode, but it’s still perhaps the most interesting on-screen bit of character development in this arc for the best character in it. She’s not even all that good thanks to the pacing, but she’s by far the most multi-faceted and interesting character this season that when contrasted with everyone else, she suddenly comes off like a Neon Genesis Evangelion character! At least, that was the case until the end of season 1/the end of the next arc undid the conclusion to her arc, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The last one worth talking about to any extent is Klein. Barring some creepy moments in episode 1 and how he goes full Brock from Pokemon at every girl he meets, he’s also fairly alright. Wow, 2 for like 10 in the worthwhile characters department. He and Kirito have some decent chemistry at times and pops in to check up on Kirito and try to make sure he doesn’t go off the deep end before eventually just being there to have a side character be competent enough to give Kirito and Asuna a hand whilst doing nothing else beyond serving as comedic relief. The latter half of that sentence could also be applied to characters such as Agil, which is why it’s difficult to remember most of the show’s cast, let alone care about them in this badly laid out hellscape named Aincrad.
The worldbuilding in this arc isn’t that much better. 10K players is a low player base for even the first day of a game that had a premiere press launch and huge lines outside of stores. The idea that players have to touch themselves everywhere to calibrate the Nervgear gaming VR headset system and how it scans your IRL face even before that sounds like such a breach of privacy that it should have been a major scandal and a series of lawsuits that forced either the thing to be shut down or altered. The same goes for the idea that there’s a safety switch for the tech’s brain-frying microwaves that can be turned off! Already, as soon as episode 1, there’s quite a bit of suspension of disbelief to get over, and that’s when the narrative and character writing isn’t utterly nonsensical yet! Dungeon raids and boss meetings seem to only house like 30-50 people at most in a game where clearing all the floors is essential to escaping with your life. Kayaba forces everyone to play as their IRL selves, revoking their avatars, but apparently some characters like Lisbeth essentially dye their hair and effectively only barely resemble their real-life selves, anyway. Perhaps the most galling fact is that Kirito is the only character who can dual-wield in a sword-based video game because dual-wielding is a random unique skill instead of a feature relegated to certain playstyles. Nevermind how someone actually dual-wielded axes when fighting Kirito in episode 4, not that most people would notice. Why is this...a thing?! How could it possibly make any sense given what we know about the game? What kind of design is this?!
There are several other little inconsistencies and jarring details to go over but it’s honestly just not worth it.
There are other nuggets of lore and game mechanics sprinkled in that only matter to the episodes they come up in, like the idea that bad deeds turn the crystal hud above your head from green to orange and red. Currency is one such detail cuz it literally only comes up once in episode 8. However, that doesn’t really matter when as a game, this thing is a mess. It’s not even the kind people acknowledge is a shitty, broken game, and instead is just an extension of how bad this show is regarding its setting details.
Part 3: Everyone already knows why Alphein was a mistake so let’s try to make this quick compared to each part of the Aincrad discussion, oh god, what do you mean it’s 3 pages long?!
If nothing else, the Aincrad arc is certainly the more memorable of the 2 halves of this show. Despite its glaring issues, there’s so much to really dive deep into regarding the criticism of the show, which was why I felt like there were several aspects left barely touched by those who harp on the show. By contrast, the Alphein arc is a lot more forgettable, way less eventful, and a lot more well-covered in terms of its flaws. Part of why that is might be due to how despite having less awful pacing than Aincrad, this arc was downright ill-conceived, not even attempting to capitalize on any of the drama one would expect from watching characters recover from being trapped in digital hell.
Very quickly, the arc sidelines one of the most beloved female characters in the industry, turning her into a damsel in distress thrown in several unnecessary erotic and explicit scenarios. The infamous molestation scene in episode 24 goes way too far to make an already unlikable and uninteresting douchebag antagonist as evil as possible. Said scene is also the worst Berserk reference known to man as the Black Swordsman Kirito with a big sword is pinned down as forced to watch the elvish, long-haired bastard assault Kribro’s lover sexually. The new characters it introduces are somehow even less engaging than Kirito’s friends and sidepieces from Aincrad who don’t have jackshit to do here outside of Agil letting Kiribrony know where to go. The final confrontation between Kirito and resident douchebag villain, Sugou, is downright laughable. Any PTSD or trauma from being trapped in Aincrad for about 2 years is reserved for one dream sequence in episode 15 before being relegated to season 2 in favor of an ill-conceived “rescue the damsel in distress” plot. You’d think that after seeing Kirito pick up habits from what his cousin/”sister” can only assume is the 2-year coma game, they’d at least talk about it. Nope.They’ve only had 2 months and the only thing she knows about his experiences is that he got a gf that’s stuck in the hospital for reasons neither of them know at the start.
The actual plot of this second arc is set in another VRMMO, this time run by the Nervgear's successor: the Amusphere. It takes place a couple months after Kirito had just escaped a game that kills you if someone removes the Nervgear headset or if you find yourself receiving an in-game death. Why would Kirito willingly agree to head into another one of these, let alone this soon and with no hesitations or trauma? Why are these games or a successor to the certified brain cooker allowed to be made, especially this soon? Rescuing Asuna isn’t valid enough as an excuse to completely ignore all of this when this could have been about exploring his current traumas, what made him become reclusive in the first place, and how he and Asuna have to adapt to having their relationship be in the real world while both dealing with the post-SAO trauma. Episode 4 even has Kirito expounding about how his grandfather beat him for quitting kendo as a kid and how his sister worked extra hard on it for the two of them ever since. Perhaps that could have something to do with his initial disposition, but we’ll never know as what we’re left with might just be the worst way to follow up the events of Aincrad.
Outside of Kirito’s IRL time with Sugu, Asuna, and info-broker Agil, the first half of the arc is barely even worth mentioning as it features a conflict between different in-game races that gets resolved in about 6 episodes, featuring boring planks of wood that are barely, if at all, relevant afterwards. They barely explore this far less interesting setting after the first 6 episodes because then we have a plot with actual character arcs and things happening to contend with. The 2nd half is about Asuna’s fruitless escape attempts because they don’t wanna completely downgrade her, just mostly. It also features Kigitalboy’s cousin, Suguha, and how she struggles with catching feelings for who she doesn’t know is his in-game persona. We’ll get back to this subplot and why it sucks. Then, he climbs a big tower, loses to a seemingly infinite armada of high-level NPC soldiers, then wins cuz his sister and her friends showed up in the next episode. I guess it’s the first time he has a genuine loss and not just losing in a recreational duel against the main antagonist of the first arc who was literally invincible. Then, the awful stuff with creepy rapey Sugou happens and everyone lives happily ever after until the sequels upon sequels flood in because the hype train ran over the cash cow and dead horse a long time ago but they’re still attached to the front of the locomotive that refuses to crash.
There are also some general issues that I feel should be covered about now as they pertain to this arc, as there are still a few major issues left to cover, believe it or not. The first thing is the comedy. Sword Art Online can tell a funny joke once in a while when the gag is predicated on the 2 character dynamics that have any chemistry whatsoever. However, a lot of the jokes are either dull or just flat-out shit like “the best friend is kind of a creeper” and “MC accidentally grabs girl’s boobs and gets fucked up”. This also leads into another issue, which is that SAO is actually kinda dull and whatever once you look past all the broken bullshit and particularly upsetting moments. There’s not much character chemistry, there’s not a lot of compelling drama since it’s all either rushed or placed on ill-conceived ideas, the jokes are a wash, and there’s not much in the way of stakes past the initial episodes. The show is very emotionally manipulative, but it isn’t very expressive or even that good as a title to watch for the spectacle --more on that later--. SAO isn’t the most laborious thing on the planet, but it’s not fun to watch or very interesting of a trainwreck cast beyond the complex web of world-building and structuring issues. There aren’t too many decisions in the writing that come off as so absurd that they become a reason to watch the show or even serve as compelling vent material. As discussed earlier, the show’s characters are nothing to write home about beyond the inconsistent handling of the MC and how many are abandoned. There’s the absolute mistake that was Yui, but all she did was make the show a little more cloying and narratively broken.
The two big problems for this arc beyond the idea of it in context of what came before are as follows: Suguha and sexualization. Suguha is in love with her cousin/”brother”, Kirito, and feels hurt about him distancing himself from her several years ago. The significance of these two things is in the order listed. Every single episode of this arc prior to the last two have her constantly angsting about her suppressed romantic feelings for Pretty Colors Kigibro, usually complete with several fanservice shots because the show has decided that sexualizing her in every other scene just wasn’t enough. I mean, it’s been pretty adamant about executing fanservice shots and scenes for almost every single female character, regardless of if it made sense for any given scene, so why not? It’s not like the repetition of these two things is absolutely exhausting and that there are more interesting things to be focusing on, like how she’s still wounded about Kigi shutting himself off. While we were told about him doing this in the past several times throughout the show, we only learn of how that affected her when the arc comes to a head in episode 22. It’s interesting to learn of this from her perspective, but it should have been a much bigger focus, as should Kirito’s home life prior to and post-SAO incident. Instead, here’s this problematic arc that gets dragged out for 9 episodes before a small duel ends the thing with the two of them hugging out, surprisingly without the camera ogling her in her G-cup Leafa form.
That said, the camera’s still not as perverted as Sugou or his guards. Yeah, it’s time for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The most defining albatross around Sword Art Online’s neck is its rape attempt and molestation scenes. They often feel so forced and over the top that you either have to take them seriously and be disgusted, or not take them seriously cuz you’re laughing at how juvenile the presentation is. Rape is a rather delicate tool for media to use, as it marks the point of no return for a character that enacts it, and requires a lot of tact and purpose. It can’t feel like it’s just an excuse to fetishize a female character while making an already horrible person turn irredeemable because the writers didn’t think they were awful enough. Sugou’s slimy guards tentacle groping Asuna’s entire body in episode 21 is very much a case of the former, and Sugou himself doing it to her in front of a pinned down Kirito is an example of both problems. It’s even worse as these are the only particularly significant scenes involving Asuna barring her being comatose and her reuniting with/kissing Kiri-nee. That said, perhaps more offensive than the scene itself is how it’s resolved by a Deus ex Kayaba giving Kirito admin privileges and the SAO source code to upload from beyond the grave in order to beat the shit out of Sugou and edge ever closer to that coveted Gary Stu title.
Let’s actually end this entire discussion with Sugou himself. He’s a maniacal rapist bastard who digitally kidnaps 300 players for psychological torture experiments so he can find a way to enslave people’s souls and conquer everything. He has a god complex and wears it on his sleeves. He’s already so evil that making him a rapist seems like overkill. It’s rather difficult to take this clown seriously whenever he slips into that side of himself or whenever he’s on screen for the last two episodes. There’s nothing really interesting about him, and he’s not even hammy or otherwise entertaining as an evil for evil’s sake kind of villain. He’s just boringly, putridly bad in a show that’s every bit as awful as him.
Part 4: This show isn’t even that good from an audiovisual perspective, oh also epilogue. Jesus tapdancing Christ, this thing is over 6K words long! How the literal and metaphorical fuck did this happen?! Why? WHY?! W W W W H H H Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y ? ! ? ! ? ! ? !
Sword Art Online --both this season’s production and that of all subsequent installments barring the GGO Alternative spinoff at the time of writing-- was spearheaded by A-1 Pictures. A-1 isn’t exactly a studio people herald for their visual prowess, and this show isn’t exactly one of their best on that front, either. There are some explosive bits of sakuga here and there, as well as a few shots that look fairly decent. The art direction in some locations in Aincrad is also neat, with fairly abstract-looking dungeon and boss room designs and particularly nice sunset views on occasion. That being said, a lot of the fight scenes are mediocre to terrible, with episode 2 being the absolute worst of it. Spark effects often stutter, animation fluidity during fight scenes is absurdly inconsistent, and the choreography is so weak that there’s almost no sense of weight or physicality to attacks. That’s one of the main reasons the fight scenes are almost never entertaining, the other reason being the generally 7th grader fanfic tier quality of writing on display. SAO is just a very inconsistent-looking show with lopsided animation and artwork quality, and the decent amount of god awful CGI, reused animation, and awful shots don’t exactly help.
On a more positive note, the show does have some solid music. Yuki Kajiura was the composer for the show, and while this isn’t her best OST --not even close-- it still contains several solid tracks. “A Narrow Escape” is the most exciting and tense theme in the show, while tracks such as “Swordland” and “we have to defeat it” serve as similarly compelling pieces for the show’s action scenes. Other tracks such as “at our parting” and “she is still sleeping” are also effective emotional pieces. The show does tend to reveal more of its best tracks after the first ⅓ of the series, although there are some gripes. Towards the end, some of the tracks feel misused in the scenes they’re in, and the 2nd arc spams “with my friend”, the piece used for the bulk of the show’s comedy scenes, to an absurd degree. Still, the OST is fairly solid, and so are the show’s OPs. “Crossing Field” by Lisa is a solid Jpop song that is deserving of its iconic status, especially thanks to the lovely beginning passage it has. “Innocence” by Aoi Eri is another solid OP, though it’s slightly weaker than the first one. The EDs are ok sad girl pieces, but nothing worth noting either.
Huh, you’d think there’d be more to talk about given how monolithic the talk of the show’s writing was.
I can't hate SAO, but I also cannot enjoy it. It's not the worst mainstream anime out there, not even for A-1 Pictures nowadays, but at best, it’s prime rewrite material with the endless amount of missed potential on display. It’s so absurdly broken in several different and complex ways depending on the arc that it’s no wonder the series has endured as the community’s resident punching bag for almost a decade. I just wish people would look a little deeper to see what the show could have been and what was actually right in front of them before blindly tearing the show to pieces and giving a pass to other shows with a lot of this series’ problems.
So, essentially, this is just another negative SAO review to add to the pile while you watch SAO Abridged or pray for the Progressive anime to be any good. Fuck Painting Blade of the Interwebs.