Review of Sword Art Online
OK, to start with, I honestly enjoyed this anime a lot, and don't know why it received so many negative reviews, so I thought I would put my 2 cents here... The first thing I noticed about SOA is its beautiful arts. I have never seen an anime with such taken-care-of arts. Following Kirito, you will explore the Aincrad world, from cozy hotel rooms to busy streets to peaceful flower gardens to menacing dark dungeons. It is easy to immerse into the SOA world once you have watched it. The character design unfortunately isn't so great, but still amazingly done. As an example: Silica, a characterappeared in only one episode, had 3 or 4 different outfits, and they are all gorgeous!
Next comes the story and story telling style, which is probably the most controversal aspect of SOA. SOA adopted a very peculiar story telling strategy: during the first half, we often see Kirito with a / a group of other characters, and after 1 or 2 episodes, these people disappear and never seen again (until the end of the anime). My guess is that this irritates lot of viewers, since it is just... unusual. However, I really like this kind of "development". The point is, after an episode or two, I got to understand the character very well - the anime did a good job in elaborating the character's personalities - and so there's not much point dragging them into later episodes. Besides, it's like "short stories": watching SOA is like watching a collection of short stories. And each of them is actually pretty good, if you don't mind taking them as short stories.
I also really liked the development between Asuna & Kirito (even thought individually they didn't have much development). They ran into each other here and there by chance, and sort of liked each other, but their love truly blossomed only when the real hardship comes. It is really a beautiful love story. On a side note, Kirito wasn't, like the lead male character in many other anime, a fool that ignores other girls' feelings for him and letting them hanging around. He was pretty straight in his attitude, and loyal toward Asuna.
SOA doesn't have much fighting scenes (as opposed to its name) and some are deliberately shortened, or even cut off entirely. I think the intention here is to emphasize on character's development, espcially Kirito, and I think that is a good and a novel point, which gave the anime much more depth and meaning. Having said that, fighting scenes in SOA are purely a-w-e-s-o-m-e, short and sparingly, but awesome (music is a great factor here, whenever I hear that soundtrack, my heart beats faster, and I know some awesome actions are coming! I don't care much about sounds, so no comment on the rest of the sounds).
Actually everything I said above was about "the first half" , since this is where SOA shines the most. The second half is, hmmm, somewhat redundant, and I think most people agree with this. Not much to say here. Maybe the anime would be more perfect if it has finished at episode 13.
Overally I really really enjoyed the anime. However we are all different (and that's what makes our world amazing), so I don't expect everyone to enjoy it, but I definitely recommend it to YOU who are reading this. If you like it, well, congrats! Otherwise, it is just not for you :D. Thanks for reading!