Story:
The premise was a somewhat generic one, and “trapped in a video game” has been done numerous times before, but SAO seemed promising. And then the plot did everything wrong. It utilizes time skips to avoid character development and many important events happen off screen and are never mentioned again or properly explained. Once Kirito was in a seemingly impossible to escape situation, but it just skipped to after he survived without ever explaining how he managed it. Because, I guess, that's not as important as filler episodes about Kirito resurrecting some irrelevant bitch's bird thingy.
It lacks any amount of tension due to the main character having invincible plot armor and LE EPIC DUBBLE SWORDZ. I'm confused by the point of the double swords. Why was that his special thing? No one else was capable of putting another sword in their other hand? I mean, Jesus, if you're going to give the main character an overpowered weapon at least be creative. The funny thing is that although dual wielding was supposed to be Kirito's unique ability and this idea was drilled into our minds time and time again, other characters are shown dual wielding on several occasions. They seriously put no effort into this series.
The worst aspect of the story was how rushed it was. The first half of the series was full of episodic filler episodes which did not develop the plot and mostly featured episodes about random women falling in love with the blank slate of a main and episodes centered on the uninspired romance between the two main characters. Because of this the episodes that were important to the plot were dealt with very quickly and almost glossed over in the grand scheme of things.
Despite the supposed danger of the game, it seems like you would have to be a complete moron to get killed. Towns are safe, there are teleportation crystals, and boss fights were short and boring and easy. Besides, bosses don't respawn anyway. Then all of a sudden the arc came to an anticlimactic finish, illogically and out of nowhere. There was supposed to be 100 boss battles, but we're only shown a couple that are settled easily. But does SAO stop there? Nonono. It's not nearly bad enough yet.
The entire point of the series was an MMO where you couldn’t escape and would die if you lost. While Kirito is, for all practical purposes, invincible anyway, an incident occurs that makes the MMO even less dangerous, effectively killing any kind of promise the original premise had. The second half features even more girls falling for our boring protagonist, a spindly 16 year old gamer inexplicably overpowering a grown man, netorare, kind of-incest, almost-tentacle rape, a world without logic, the degradation of women, and our wonderful protagonist defying all the rules of the game with THE ETERNAL POWER OF LOOOOOVE.
(dude, I don't think that's how the programming works)
Chock full with plot holes, contradictions, deus ex machina, and diaboli ex machina, and devoid of foreshadowing, originality, or subtlety, this is one of the, if not the, worst plots I have ever encountered in any medium. And I've read "120 Days of Sodom."
Art:
Good scenery, but the character design was lacking. The characters were very generic looking and their armor and weapons weren't anything special. There were several atrocities as well.
All of the fairies looked stupid, in my humble opinion. Especially the scary butterfly man. There were a couple instances of obvious mistakes like characters that should be in the background of a fight that disappear then reappear after, but that's nitpicking compared to the real problems with this series.
One weird thing was that Kirito was apparently supposed to look different in the game than he was in real life, based on important un-spoilable plot elements, but he looks exactly the same.
Sound:
Same as the art. It's alright, but that means nothing if the series has no substance. Good sound is just icing on the cake and icing won't make this cake taste any less like shit.
Characters:
Oh, boy. This is the worst part.
Kirito: Kirito is a character who was designed as a blank slate so that losers could insert themselves into his place. He has no personality to speak of. He is the male Kristen Stewart of anime. His only unique trait or real aspect to his character is him being strong. Really. He's so strong people surrender to him without even fighting. He’s pretty much perfect for a shut-in loser who’s addicted to video games. I mean, only a couple times in the series is he actually challenged because he is an all powerful 1337 b34t3r. Seriously, most of his enemies only hate him because they’re jealous.
What is the point of an action series where the protagonist cuts through all of his enemies with the greatest of ease? There was more than one occasion where he died, but did not die because plot armor. Kirito is too cool for the silly rules of (virtual) reality that apply to everyone besides him.
Asuna: She's perfect as well. She's strong, beautiful, and most importantly, good at cooking. She falls in love with Kirito inexplicably and out of nowhere and they just have no chemistry. When you pair a Mary sue up with a blank slate/self-insertion you get a love story on the level of twilight.
I feel like the writers were trying to make her a strong female character at first, but seeing as how well she fits the female gender role, how often she must be the damsel in distress, and all the shameless fanservice, I'd say the portrayal of her character was archetypal to the highest degree and somewhat misogynistic. Ok, very misogynistic. She’s mostly here for Kirito to look cool. What kind of self-insert doesn’t have a Mary sue girlfriend?
Suguha: She's Kirito's sister-cousin thingy. She's clearly very stupid because she did not recognize Kirito even though he looks no different in the game than he does in real life. All I can say about her besides that is this: she was thrown in for extra fanservice, obligatory incest, (Why is this a thing in Japan? Is the birth rate issue that bad?) a half-assed and predictable love triangle, and for another girl to love Kirito because, hey, you can never have too many. She has no personality and she's annoying. She’s pretty much here to emphasize Kirito’s coolness.
Villains: I don't these guys’s names tbh. There was a MMO designer guy who was responsible for a bunch of people's deaths, but for some reason we're supposed to think is good in the end. There's also the butterfly guy. He was my favorite because he was so hilarious, but he was also my least favorite because he was the least threatening villain ever. There were also two purple tentacle guys. I don't really know who they are and I think they were just there to grope Asuna, but they were weird.
As a whole the villains either have unrealistic motives or no motives at all. With the original programmer guy they try to make a morally grey villain, but fail entirely. He is also there to make Kirito look cool, but for reasons that I cannot describe in a spoiler-free review. With butterfly man they make him too pathetic and unrealistically evil. He was made like this to contrast with Kirito and so, like everybody else in the series, he’s just there to make Kirito look cool. And I don't know wtf to say about the purple tentacle guys. They were probably the best villains though. The desire to tentacle rape is certainly the most believable motive I encountered in this anime, especially seeing as most characters never even offered one. Although that is like saying that they are the undisputed champions of the Special Olympics, congrats to them anyways.
Honestly there were a lot more antagonists, but these ones are the only ones that matter enough to me to write about. The others weren't memorable enough to criticize. They were all bad, let's just say that.
Everybody else: Because nobody else matters. Hell, I just put in Suguha to be nice and it's not like the villains actually matter because Kirito is pretty much invincible. Shit, Asuna only matters because she pleases Kirito. If Asuna didn't make such boss sandwiches, she wouldn't even be relevant to the story.
There are a couple recurring characters with no personality and no development, but they show up rarely and only to make Kirito look cool and/or fall in love with him.
There are several incidents where Kirito inexplicably befriends or makes acquaintance of characters devoid of personality who do nothing, but get killed. And then we're supposed to care about the death of these random characters. You can't just introduce random characters, kill them, and say "ohhhh dey died isnt dat saaaad." You need development.
Even worse is the thousands of unidentified characters that die early on in SAO. We're supposed to feel emotion about this, but any writer knows that reducing characters to mere numbers dehumanizes them thus removing all emotion from the equation. They probably skipped these scenes because they were incapable of making sympathetic and realistic character. This laziness and lack of ability foreshadowed the fate of the rest of the show's characters.
Did they even try? Of course they didn't. They don't have to and people will love it anyway. ALL ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN.
Enjoyment:
I'm going to be honest: The most enjoyment I got out of this anime was laughing at the "serious" scenes. When Kirito introduced Asuna, in real life, as "lightning flash Asuna" and talked about her guild and power level, I seriously cried from laughter. Actually every time Kirito cried so did I. Just not in the way I think I was supposed to. I spat out my iced tea when the butterfly guy was licking agirlwhowillnnotbenamedforthesakeofnospoilers's face. That was too much. Seriously, it stained my shirt. Did anybody actually enjoy that scene? Did anybody actually take that seriously? The answer: no. Or, at least, I really hope that’s the answer. My God, I hope that’s the answer.
As for the action aspect, I'm not sure how anybody would enjoy the action scenes, and I certainly did not. They were all too easy. There were a couple times when it tried to make it look like he was in trouble, but lo and behold, some miracle happened every time. Knowing how the fight will end is an unfortunate situation in plenty of anime, but those anime at least have more creative fight scenes and abilities or they are character oriented anyway. Even runescape has better and more interesting fights than this MMO.
Besides the quality, there were quantity issues as well. This isn't really an action anime. The majority of the episodes were focused on Kirito saving Asuna from something, women falling in love with Kirito, or about Kirito and Asuna's boring relationship. I don't think there's a single episode that's "action-packed." Seeing as we were supposed to get 100 boss fights, this is a problem and it would be a letdown, but after a hundred of those dreary fights I believe I would likely die of boredom.
The romance was just bad. There's much better romance out there and the characters had no chemistry. I'd prefer a romance with characters that are actually intriguing. Also, most anime focus on the build-up of the relationship a lot, but here it happens right away and there's no time to enjoy anything. This wouldn't be that bad if their relationship was interesting, but they don't have any serious arguments and are essentially the perfect couple. The only enjoyable developments in their relationship were the ones where Asuna was in danger. And by "enjoyable developments" I mean "developments that made Kirito cry like a little girl." Those moments were still awful, but comparatively speaking, they were rather enjoyable.
This is not an anime that I would recommend to anyone. I would not even recommend it to my worst enemy. That is cruelty of which I am not capable. It was atrocious, infuriating, corny, cliché, contrived, horrid, purple tentacled, pseudo-incestuous, borderline-misogynistic, vaguely misogynistic, completely misogynistic, plebeian, an affront to mankind, unintelligent, crafted by the devil, a war on art, used to torture terrorists, bourgeois, anti-intellectual, inbred, languid, shallow, self-insertionly, corny, the antithesis of Shakespeare, the apotheosis of awful fiction, blank, infantile, pathetic, vacuous, vapid, salacious, inane, imbecilic, an abortion, Stygian, sub-par, bland, poorly thought out, corny, loathsome, vomit-inducing, virulent, bile, poorly executed, infernal, eviscerating, flippant, an insult to its audience, cadaverific, philistine, lame, sad in all the wrong ways, funny in all the wrong ways, painful, paint-drying, boner-killing, wretched, impotent, generic, unemotional, repetitive, redundant, boring, and corny. I really really wish I hadn’t watched it. If you’re one of the people who told me it was a “must watch” then fuck you. Not even funny.
