Review of Sword Art Online
--This review may contain spoilers-- Used to liked this anime a while back when I had utterly no experience in anime and was a full-time gamer. I decided to rewatch it just because I have nothing left to watch. This review is written after I've had a pretty general idea of what a good anime is. Without further ado, let's head to the review. Thanks to the NerveGear and its Full Dive Virtual Reality (FDVR) technology, literally sending your consciousness to a virtual world, gamers all around the world got an absolute new platform to play on. Sword Art Online, the first game ever created for theNerveGear taken the world by storm. Little did everyone knew, the creator of both the device and game, Akihiko Kayaba, removed the "log out" button, utterly trapping everyone's consciousness in Aincrad, SAO's world, without any escape, and made SAO into a death game. A death in the game would mean death in the real world too. An attempt to remove the NerveGear by other people in the real world would fry the user's brain and they would die too. And the only way to get out of this nightmare is by clearing all 100 floors, when beta testers only made it to floors below 10.
Story (6): The biggest flaw in the anime, the first arc started off good in the first couple of episodes. Little we know, it would soon turn out to be utter crap. It all started when Kirito, the main protagoanist, finally was able to get back to SAO after beta testing it a while back. He excitedly went to explore and hunt for some monsters but ran into a newbie, Klein, who wanted Kirito to teach him the fundamentals of the game. Taking up his request, they go hunting for monsters, like in any other MMO. After a few hours of hunting, Klein was hungry and wanted to have his dinner, so he wanted to temporarily log out and come back into the game for more hunting when suddenly, he notices that the log out button was missing. Soon after, Akihiko Kayaba forced teleported all players to the starting point and explained that the disappearance of the log out button is not a bug, but a feature of the game, and from there, turned it into a death game. Kirito vows to clear the game and to let everyone escape from this nightmare. It all started good and all, and you would expect the next episodes to be Kirito grinding the hell out of the game, get stronger and eventually, clear the game. But no, it was separated by big time leaps and random sub-stories. Rather than continuing with what should've been an MMO anime, where our protagonist, Kirito would just grind the hell out of it, you suddenly find that 2 years have passed, the frontliners (including Kirito) are Lv90 and above, and Kirito having hooked up with multiple girls. It was a disaster from then on and just felt that it was too rushed.
Honestly, the second arc is just so bad. The first arc should become a 24 episode anime itself and ending it there would've been so much better than a crappy second arc.
Art (9): The art is great and is what you'd expect from A-1. The fight scenes were cool and precise.
Sound (9): OPs, EDs and OSTs are things to look out for when watching the anime. LiSA never disappoints.
Character (6): Another major flaw in the anime, all characters just seem to be textbook-like, meaning that these characters could be found in almost every other anime. We have Kirito, which is the overly powerful guy who never dies and handles every situation with no problem at all. Asuna, a tsundere. Silica, a loli. Lisbeth, that girl who finds out Kirito is with someone else and cries in a corner. Klein, the single and perverted guy. Suguha, the imouto who has feelings for her brother. And many others. There's just nothing special about any of the characters, and some of them doesn't even need to be in the story or help with the plot.
Concept (10): The extra section. This is where I get in-depth with the anime and point out when it was aired. Many viewers actually fail to see the ingenious behind the concept of SAO. The anime inspired multiple companies, such as Oculus, to create a virtual reality world much like SAO. Although it seemed like total Sci-Fi back then, these companies gradually progressed further and further in virtual reality technology, and an FDVR wouldn't be really far-fetched.
Overall Enjoyment (7): Honestly, a 7 would've been too low given its concept and an 8 would be too high given the story totally destroyed everything, I guess I'll have to give a 7 since plot is the most important thing in an anime. Frankly, they should've invested more in the first arc and third season (Project Alicization) rather than making a crappy second arc and second season.