Sword art online is an anime that has been portrayed negatively by many people in the anime community, but after reviewing this anime i think that most opinions are relatively harsh and in this review, I'm planning on hopefully changing your view. SAO was many people's first anime that they watched which generally people enjoyed on their first watching but many seem to have joined in on the bandwagon of hating on this anime. The review is structured like this:
The plot for SAO begins in a very simple and layout universe with the theme of going inside a game, surprisingly this type of plot hasn't been explored much before and it allowed SAO to capture a great audience of gamers who likely at some point thought how it would feel like to be in the game. This story is explored very well through the Aincrad arc which was amazing and underrated in my opinion, the layer system of the tower and climbing each floor is a great and simple concept which felt very realistic to an MMORPG allowing lots of things like bosses and things such with a simple levelling system. The idea's surrounding the safe zones and PvP zones are also a great positive bringing the story more depth and making it seem like this would be possible in the future. On the other hand, the bosses in SAO were negative of the Aincrad arc and seemed very forced and overall more of an annoyance than a story point but it allowed for lots of character development through fights, although it was cool seeing Kirito's abilities like the Starburst stream I think that a lot of these abilities weren't thought through and him obtaining them was kind of a Deus ex machina which isn't too great. Continuing to the second part the Alfheim arc this is when shit gets fucked... In this arc, many people see this as the reason why SAO was bought down and I agree with that because it had many stupid ideas and it was obviously not thought of as much as the original SAO and I think this arc was really bad but many people don't realise how good the first arc of SAO was and often only speak out about the Alfheim arc which was horrible but here I want you to realise that overall I think the creativity and genius of the Aincrad arc were overshadowed by this trash arc and the reason why I think that SAO gets all the hate it does is because of many aspects of the Alfheim arc, not the Aincrad arc.
Our main hero Kirito is overall an 8.5/10. This is for the following reasons:
He gets great character development as he creates strong bonds with other characters like Asuna and Yui. This makes him feel less 2 dimensional as he feels more like a person than a lot of other Isekai Protagonists. This is a very good thing as it made me feel more invested in the story and made each episode seem as if he actually had a purpose to his actions. Also, he is overpowered and it is executed incredibly well at first. In episode 4 when Kirito is attacked by four guys and he just stands there as they don’t damage him whatsoever was jaw-dropping but as the story progressed it seemed as though he just powered up whenever the story required him to. This is shown when he suddenly realises that he can dual-wield swords for no reason other than the fact that he is good at the game, which never made sense. Asuna was a good love interest for Kirito but it seemed as though she followed the same tropes as all other love interests in anime. By that, I mean that she originally didn’t like Kirito and was mean to him but over time she warmed up to him and eventually confessed that she loved him. This seems shallow as its been done a hundred times before and really added no element of surprise to the story as I predicted it as soon as he met her in episode 2. Overall, she was a good character but was slightly too generic.
I think that the side characters in SAO were negative so I don't think they each deserve a full section but this will be a brief section about them:
Yui is an okay character but in reality, she was just bought in as a plot device so I never saw any potential in her character but at least it was better than nothing and it allowed Kirito to develop his relationship with Asuna. Klein was pretty okay because he kind of got forgotten after a couple of episodes and when he would make his appearance I would generally think, "Oh its this dude again..." which isn't a good thing. All the other side characters aren't worth mentioning because they played a very minor part and didn't contribute to the main story too much, except the black dude he was good.
The art by A-1 Pictures was great and allowed many people to have their first anime experience as a very basic and true to anime art style with the classic big eyes and flamboyant hair, overall I think the art doesn't have any problems with it and even though it's not exceptional it's perfect for this kind of series especially when it was adapted from a light novel.
In SAO I think the big positive of this anime is the music which in many places like the intro stands out from much other anime, the first opening Crossing Field by Lisa is recognized everywhere like many other Lisa ops but this one stands out because it really fits the theme of SAO. I'd say that many people who hate the anime probably won't mind the op. The audio overall not just in the music was also great with popular voice actors that starred in shows like No Game No Life and Anohana which is great.
SAO is an Isekai anime which began the now popular trend with much new seasonal anime being Isekai's which SAO contributed greatly towards (This is clear because of how popular the anime was) and many anime like Log Horizon and The Rising of the Shield Hero were bought into the spotlight because of SAO and it shares many aspects like a strong protagonist which people really like and a weaker cast which can be seen as a negative of many of these shows with generally an overabundance of silly and unneeded characters.
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