Review of Sword Art Online

To keep this review fair, let me first say that I completed the first season of this anime and tried to watch the second. I greatly enjoyed the first half of season one of this anime. There are some awesome battle scenes and the animation is pretty great. However, the thing that pissed me off so much as I continued to watch was the obvious harem surrounding the main male character. Overall, I'd say the main character is pretty cliche. He has the basic anime face and hair and while his fighting skills are pretty great, I found it bothersome how every single female characterthey brought in, despite age and biological relations (he almost hooks up with his cousin), fell for him immediately. Despite him having a canon relationship with one of the female characters, which gets pretty serious, the other female characters continue to swoon over him. The writers try to keep an atmosphere of "who will he chose?" despite him already being in a stable relationship. I feel like all the female characters were streamlined and refused any development to allow for that large harem. I eventually got fed up and finished the season begrudgingly just so I knew how it ended.

Overall, if you don't mind the harem and total lack of female character development and watch it for the action, you won't be disappointed. But if you're hoping for a better, deeper plot, I would keep looking.