Review of Sword Art Online

I really cannot emphasize enough that I tried to enjoy this show. I watched it, I tried not to judge it. I dropped this show four times over the past decade trying to get into it. I failed four times. I finally managed to get through it this time after having exposed myself to a deluge of shitty Isekai and generic fantasy shows. The premise is simple: What if you were trapped in a VRMMO death game? It could be an interesting premise, essentially you have all the story aspects of a (potentially cooperative) death game mixed with video game mechanics. But anyone who watches it formore than a few episodes will come to the following realization:

This show is nothing more than a vapid appeal to aesthetics. There is no substance, and no reason to get invested in the story, beyond the fact that the story allows us to see "cool" action scenes and "heartwarming" romance. The story serves ONLY as a vessel to let the audience know that Kirito is a badass, every girl he meets falls in love with him, and that he is the unique individual in this story capable of feats no other person is capable of.

The story bends over backwards to give Kirito this position. Every woman wants him and every good guy respects him. Why? Because he is arbitrarily powerful for the sake of the story. He is dressed in an edgy black cloak with fingerless gloves because that's the fit that edgelords think is cool. His relationships with Asuna and Yui are unearned, his god-like powers are always clearly plot contrivances, and his struggles are always either reversible or someone else's problem.

The worst part of this show? His sister. I dropped it twice because I go to the episode where it starts to go down that route. I never got far enough to know how bad it is. They go through an Alabaman love TWICE. It's never played for laughs, and it's never treated as a bad thing. It's clear the author fantasizes about it, or thinks the audience would. And that should be telling.

The worst part for a guy like me is the consistent inconsistencies.

The majority of the story takes place in video games, which would have strict rules for how the player can interact with the world. This isn't me talking about the Ark system or whatever they call it, but rather strictly a property of how computers (and the worlds derived therein) are required to be created from discrete packets of information and are limited in their complexity, so impose human-designed rules on interaction. For a simple example, in Elfheim, we are told that you can only fly for 10 minutes at a time, and only up to a certain height. They even take the time to show that on their journey, they have to stop and wait for their flight to return, taking turns logging off and resting while the meter returns. But right after this we see them "rush over to an event" 20 minutes away and they fly non-stop.

Another example that sticks out (primarily because I was so confused about it) was the "learning to fly without the joystick" thing. They make a whole plot point out of Kirito learning to imagine muscles in his back and flex the wings himself to fly without using the standard controls. We see his wings flap when he flies this one time, yet every other time we see any characters fly their wings are still. This may be chalked up to an animation budget issue, but the wings didn't flap when he was using the stick either, and we are led to focus on the fact that he IS USING HIS MUSCLES TO MOVE THEM IN ORDER TO FLY. So the fact that they took the time to draw our attention to the idea that they are moving, and they are never shown moving after that... It makes the show feel even more stupid and frustrating.

The show has many such cases!!! of this kind of backtrack writing. It also has writing issues where it is very apparent early on what the purpose of a character is. Most of the character's purposes are to do a generic RPG task like forge a sword or be in a party. Every woman also has the bonus feature of falling in love with Kirito. Aside from this, every character feels pretty much the same. They rarely differ by anything more than appearance and basic quirks. Everyone is either good or bad, no moral gray ground, no intrigue. If you want a great example of this, consider how they handle the dude whose wife died.

Overall, this show is extremely frustrating to watch. I really struggled to get through the last 8 episodes this time through, and this was the furthest I had ever gotten without wanting to drop the show. Considering I have watched some garbage shows, I think it should speak volumes that this is one of the worst shows I have seen. The only way to enjoy this is if you want to see something "cool". If you want an actual show, this is not it. This show tries to pander to the male gaze aesthetic of what a badass is, but ends up landing closer to the nice guy trope. The only difference is that Kirito has the plot on his side so the women actually do like the nice guy. I mean FFS he wears fingerless gloves. If this kid was born in america he would be a school shooter.

I really can't rate this show any lower than a 3 because I am sure there are objectively worse shows that deserve to be marked lower. But this is probably one of THE WORST shows I have ever seen. I almost never start a show without finishing it, and that goes for second seasons. But I will not be watching the next season, since it will probably just be more of the same. I would get nothing out of it and would lose precious time I could be using, IDK, rewatching MT or something.