Review of Sword Art Online

I've been hearing good things about this anime and since it was super high on the Popularity list, I decided to give this a shot. The result was...very poor to say the least. This anime suffers from so many thing while getting some things right. Let's do a quick rundown: Story: 4/10 One of the two great flaws this show suffers from. I thought that this anime would touch subjects like human survival, treason, alliances, human emotions in the face of impossible odds. I WAS GRAVELY MISTAKEN. The first two episodes start out great and I was thrilled to see more of this virtual world where anyone coulddie for real. Then we get episode upon episode of filler stuff not even relevant to the plot. Not to mention several time skips over the course of the anime, destroying what little story was left.
Instead of people trying to survive this virtual deathtrap, we get people that have given up on trying to clear the game 3-4 episodes into the anime. What the actual fuck? The anime rapidly degenerated into a slice of life romance anime with the ever so slightly occasional MMO element.

Art: 8/10
The strong point of this anime. The animations are great and the occasional action scenes are fluid. The character design is pretty good, with interesting choices. Apart from some not that good CGI usage for some action scenes, the art is great and on point.

Sound: 8/10
I decided to give a good rating on the sound because the soundtrack is pretty great. Although Yuki Kajiura's work in this anime is similar to her other works in animes like Fate/Zero or Kara no Kyokai, I like this kind of music so that's not a problem for me. The only issue for me is that the music is trying to sell a crappy anime and hearing some epic music with a mediocre character fighting is not that awesome, but we'll get to the characters in a moment.
The openings and endings are awesome and do a great job of hyping you for the episode, again getting destroyed by the anime itself.

Characters: 3/10
Easily the worst thing about this show. The characters are bland, one-dimensional and do not go through any character development whatsoever during the whole anime.
The main character, Kirito, is the poster boy for the guy who can do absolutely anything. He's unbeatable, he's popular with the ladies (and I mean all the ladies), he's smarter than everyone else and even when he tries out new things, he's miles better than everyone else. He's a literal God in this anime and I'm not even kidding. To top if all off he has absolutely no interesting personality trait. The epitome of a bad main character.
The second "main" character is Asuna. During her first introduction, she seemed great. She was strong and seemed to hold her own in this world. That quickly disappeared and she became the token "waifu" for the MC. The creators of this show, even went so far as to make the couple adopt a virtual child and treat her as their own child and start calling themselves "Papa" and "Mama". Again...what the actual fuck?
The rest of the cast is mainly the rest of MC's harem that are ready to do anything to get MC to lower their panties.
The anime tries desperately to include a little shock value by adding MC's first cousin into the mix. She has incestuous feelings towards MC and we are supposed to pass this off as the anime trying to touch mature subjects. No, just...no.

Enjoyment: 5/10
Overall, if it wasn't for the MMO thing and the great animation and soundtracks of this anime, I would have dropped it a long time ago. It managed to get me somewhat entertained at times and absolutely bored to death and cringy as hell other times.
If you're looking into an anime with an MMO subject, I suggest you stay away from this, unless you enjoy mindless harem stuff and ignoring the main plot during the most part of the anime.