Review of Sword Art Online
As a person who likes to play video games, sometimes I dream to live in one mainly because I believed it would be nice to have a health meter so I only die when it's at zero. Behold! The anime that portrays this kind of life style: Sword Art Online. The anime begins with the launch of the titular Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. The game looks beautiful, plays really smoothly, and all ten thousand players are having a good time. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the creator of Sword Art Online, Akihiko Kayaba, has set some rules where the players cannotlog out until they clear the game and if their health reaches zero, they die in real life. Now that's already a tense situation right off the bat.
The main character is Kirito, who was a beta tester of Sword Art Online before the game's release. Using his prior knowledge, Kirito sets out to clear all one hundred floors of Aincrad, the floating castle the game takes place in. Along the way, he joins forces with a fellow top player, Asuna, the female lead and of course, Kirito's love interest, of the series. Their relationship starts off to be somewhat comedic, but over time they come to truly care for each other and believe it or not, there is a marriage system in the game! All it does it combine their inventories so all their belongings are counted towards both of them.
The soundtrack is amazing. Crossing Field and Dream World are both banger opening and ending songs respectively. This is the first anime where I don't ever skip them because that's just how much I enjoy the music. A very intriguing fact about the ending song is that it is sung by Asuna's voice actress Haruka Tomatsu, and I can't imagine anybody else singing it. Dream World may be my first ever favorite ending song. It's too bad you can't have a favorite song list here.
Now while that does sound like the anime is going on a positive streak, there are questionable decisions it took. The anime does not focus on the main plot one hundred percent of the time. I mean, it's okay to have some side stuff, but after making story progress in the first two episodes, the anime decides to have many episodes of Kirito helping other players with their troubles, most of them being female and added to his friends list in the game. Did I say many episodes? I meant half the time! Eventually, the side stuff does come to an end and well, Kirito is the one who defeats the final boss, and all the surviving players are free to go. Before logging out, Kirito and Asuna vowed to meet each other again in the real world, and Sword Art Online comes to an end.
What a great anime. It's not flawless, but it seems to hold up despite the nonsensical moments. It gets 8/10.
Wait... what do you mean there's more? Hold up! That was just the first arc?!
Okay so apparently, my main expectation for Sword Art Online got crushed before I know it. Back when I was just on the first episode, I fully expected the twenty five episodes to be focused on the main plot. The first arc, the Aincrad Arc, went from clearing the first floor, then show off all this side stuff, then back to focusing on Kirito and Asuna, they take a break, and finally they continue the main task and finish it when there are eleven episodes left for Season 1 of the series. These eleven episodes take place in the second arc, the Fairy Dance Arc.
The Fairy Dance Arc reveals that three hundred players have not woken up in the real world, one of them being Asuna. The reason for this is the arc's antagonist Nobuyuki Sugo plans to experiment on them and make Asuna his wife just so he can be the next in charge for her family's company. To that end, he is keeping her trapped in the game Alfheim Online where he is the Game Master, and it's up to Kirito to dive into the game to save her along with the others. Yeah, this is a pretty heartbreaking premise that crushed people's hopes and dreams for Kirito and Asuna. At this point, people ship these two so much that putting the latter in the role of damsel-in-distress for the second arc is just insulting. I should bring up the fact that the Sword Art Online series has this subpar tradition to have a different female lead character for every arc. Now that I brought that up, it's time to talk about the female lead for this arc.
The female lead is Leafa, a veteran player of Alfheim Online. Basically, she teaches Kirito the ropes of Alfheim and serves as his partner on his quest to save Asuna. Of course, she does develop feelings for him over the course of the arc, which is problematic on the account of what her real life identity is and especially when the two of them learn each other's identities.
Honestly, the Fairy Dance Arc is by no means, bad, but I believe it would've been extremely beneficial if it was its own twenty five episode season. The same goes for the Aincrad Arc. Both of them just came and go way too soon; This is the main complaint this season gets. The only positives for the second arc I can think of are the music and it doesn't stray from the main task too much. Let me start with the latter. My main issue with the Aincrad Arc is that it had so many moments where Kirito completely stops getting closer to the end goal from time to time all for the sake of introducing characters who get added to his friends list. They hardly ever have a huge impact on later arcs, save for the fourth one which is a whole different discussion for the future. Here, Kirito does consistently get closer to the final destination in each episode and the arc does end the season on a happy note. There is hardly any moment where his progress just stops dead in its tracks temporarily.
As for the music, the opening and ending songs, Innocence and Overfly respectively, are just as good as the songs used for the Aincrad Arc. Personally, I feel more connected to the first songs, but I won't fault anyone who prefers the second ones. Overall, while the Fairy Dance Arc may be the least popular among the community, it's still an okay arc to me. This arc gets a 6/10. Average it with my score for the Aincrad Arc, so this season gets 7/10.