Sword Art Online: Sword Art Offline

"Tell me, what do you think is the ultimate fear? I really thought I'd already reached the darkest of the dark, but then, ahead of me, I beheld a darkness even greater still." - Johan Liebert, Monster

As a masochist, I've watched many things that hurt me. Some anime damaged my brain with how absurdly bad they are. Some anime made my heart ache because of how painful they were.
But never before has an anime reached out and stabbed my soul, leaving terror and desolation in its wake.

With its appalling humor, dreadful set of chibis, and its abysmal story of absolute nothingness, this recap is ... dreadful in every manner possible. Not even fans of the SAO series will enjoy this. You know something is wrong when the whole series isn't even subbed yet -since the subbers are probably already dead. I would not recommend this to anyone, not even my worst enemy that I want dead. Because some things are worse than death.

I am scared. I am scared of what lies ahead of me, scared to pick this anime back up and finish it. Never before has something been so frightening as continuing this. God help my soul...

Sword Art Offline is a side show, meant to show and discuss the daily lives of the characters in SAO, because of that, a story is non-existent. The art style also deviates from the normal character designs, turning the characters into "Chibi", but since the entire show is meant as a bonus episode without any important details, the art wasn't very important. The single major flaw about it is the content of the entire show, where it never used this show as a chance to discuss possible scenes and events that required a bit more explanation. In the end, this special can only be considered ... a must watch if you really like Sword art online, and can't get enough of it.

Sword Art Offline didn't seem to add anything; I felt that if you watched it or didn't watch it, you're not missing out on anything (action-wise or information-wise).

For animated chibis, they displayed a very limited range of emotions (most of the time it's just blushing); they're chibis, they're supposed to be over the top in my opinion.

Plus, too much useless fanservice and tsundereness that I find plain annoying.

The attempted humour falls flat, and everything that happens is extremely predictable.

The segment that I did enjoy was the trivia corner because it wasn' something that was necessarily repeated information - usually it was something new ... that you wouldn't get from just watching the series lightly.

first of. there is NO new material in these shorts. secondly, whatever any other reviwers say, this is NOT a recap show. and, imho, you should only watch this if youre a true SAO fan. maybe even a hardcore one. i'm not, but i still enjoyed these short episodes.

the review:

each episode consist of up to five parts of a SAO news station broadcast:
the headlines, sword art offline, trivia, playback corner, slot talk, life counseling and ending

the show starts with "news headlines" by chibi anchor asuna followed by either "sword art trivia" with chibi yui (yeah) or goes straight to "sword art offline". in the sword ... art offline part there is dialog between the chibi host asuna and the chibi commentator kirito. the dialog plot is far from complex. it's buildt on nothing more than; jealousy, mild slapstick and character knowlegde. in the "playback corner" there is one special guest in each epsiode which the playback are supposed to be about. only compromised by the simple dialog plot. there is some character building in this part since the chibi characters are reviewing scenes from SAO and commenting on them. but nothing comes up that you didn't already know. from here it moves on to either a new "sword art trivia" or to chibi "kirito's life counseling". in chibi "kirito's life counseling" the guest is put behind a 'identity concealer' and can ask chibi kirito for any advice. usually falling on the dialog plot or the guests obvious character strengths. in the second episode chibi klein takes over the "life consulling" part and makes an apperance with the host and the commentator ever after. when all this is done it goes to a little summary where they end it in a news station manner. in epsode 6 chibi leafa takes over as host and "life consulling" is replaced with "slot talk".

based on the nine episodes i have seen i rate this show as: "(6/10) Fair"

Sword Art Online was an anime that I did not particularly enjoy. I found many aspects of it either annoying or plain stupid.

Nevertheless, I still watched the Specials. I found that they were much more enjoyable than the anime itself.
Since these are pretty much OVAs, they don't have any particular storyline: instead they are presented under the form of news bulletins.
What I really liked about this is that most of the points that I did not enjoy in the original anime were drawn out and made fun of. Basically, the anime was making fun of itself. It was a little ridiculous, but I really ... enjoyed that it was mocking SAO in essence.

The art was decent, and I can understand that some might not like it, but then again, chibis are really an acquired taste.

Overall, I can say that I enjoyed this more than the original, though it is by no means a noteworthy title.

Yeah, it's ok. The art style was pretty good however, the soundtracks were not that good. There were some facts about Sword Art Online like the reason behind the name "Titania", and many more. The character design was really so cute.
If I talk about the story so it was nothing that special. It was just an ordinary filler or breaktime story.
This extra edition doesn't play any role in the main story so, if you have enough time if you don't wanna finish the anime early so, you can watch it.
Overall the extra edition was good and some seen were so funny.

Since many of the reviews for these shorts bring a railing judgment against them, I thought I'd offer a modest defense for them and why they aren't (completely) terrible.

Ultimately, I evaluate any anime series, including chibi short spinoffs like this one, based on how well it meets the objective that it sets for itself. The main Sword Art series attempts to tell a sweeping story about how players hold on to their humanity in a virtual world, and while we can debate the efficacy of its attempt to meet that objective, Sword Art Offline sets no such lofty standard for itself and thus shouldn't ... be held to the same kind of standard.

This series is, in every sense, bonus material: it's meant simply to offer a few laughs and smiles to fans of the series who have already watched all there is to see, but want to see more of their favorite characters. So, painting with broad brush strokes, this miniseries gives us just that: a series of comedy sketches featuring most of the prominent SAO cast members, the humor of which is primarily slapstick, but for what it is, that sort of approach *works*. Is it high-quality entertainment? Perhaps not, but it's certainly good for a few laughs, and some of the visual gags are indeed pretty funny. The show maintains a decent sense of comedic timing, and for what it may lack in subtlety, it delivers in exuberance.

If you enjoy hearing seiyuu clowning around a bit, you'll probably enjoy this series. It's the kind of show you probably have to be in the right mood to enjoy, and for better or for worse, I found myself laughing my head off at it, even though I knew that the humor wasn't particularly well-developed. The humor may get a bit stale if you watch everything in one sitting, so perhaps try breaking it up and watching an episode or two during a lunch break when you need a quick anime pick-me-up. Overall, if you come in without too many expectations, I think you'll find this eager-to-please miniseries entertaining. If you find it's not your thing, well, that's what the "dropped" category is for on our lists.

Oh, and the episode in which Heathcliff is a guest contains some foreshadowing for the Ordinal Scale movie. That combined with the trivia sections is probably the only plot-relevant reason to watch this series. Most of it is just for fun.

Sometimes, you gotta take something for as it is. This isn't meant to be serious, it's meant for that teeny bit of extra entertainment after having watched the two episodes on the BD, or just if you're bored or just finished the anime. It's a special with nothing special, and even though they could have tried to make an OVA or something, you never really know what's going on behind the scenes, and perhaps this is the best they could do with the time and budget they had.

Basically, the Specials included on the SAO BD/DVDs are recapping the episodes on said BD/DVD, but with some ... added humor. In each special, they invite a character/player to the show and look at the recap together, and give comments. There's also an extra bit (Life Counseling) which always seems to go differently as planned, and here and there some "mistakes".
Now I can completely understand if this kind of humor doesn't appeal to you. It wouldn't for me either if I didn't love the (chibi) characters. It's all very joyful and nice, and a bit of a change from the fighting and such in the actual anime. And I gotta say, it does get better after the first episode, so I do recommend trying to sit through at least the others (at this point there are only 4 subbed).

If you've got time to spare, are bored or just curious, give it a shot. It doesn't hurt to try.

I guess every popular show has got to have filler content included in the Blu-ray / DVD releases. The Sword Art Offline special shorts are just that to SAO in general, from this one it picks up the trend of the simulcast Chibi commentary trying to hide the fact that it's just another cheap trick to force you into watching a recap.

It goes through the entirety of Aincrad and ALfheim arcs, I liked the trivia section. The jokes were lazy and trying too hard at times, thank God for the short length of the episodes (11 minutes) or else it would have been a nightmare ... to good through.

The art style is very barebones, a mix between Chibi a,d picture drama, it doesn't try too hard and pulls off what it wants just decently.

Sword art offline is a chibi animation styled in the format of a newsshow. It consists of 5 elements that repeat every episode namely the news headline, trivia, playback corner, life counseling and slot talk.

The news headline and slot talk are generally boring. The playback corner and life counseling involve Asuna, Kirito and Klein talking with a character that was invited to the newsshow on that day with a very heavy focus on romance. Trivia is the only good part of the animation but even that isn't great in some episodes.

The animation is a bit about recap but mostly about comedy. The humor ... however is almost completely based around romance and the harem aspect of the anime and simply not funny.

The main characters are Kirito, Asuna and Klein supported by other SAO characters voiced by their original voice actors. The animation is chibi and bad overall with the scenes they watch in the playback corner in the original anime.

Overall this is a bad animation and not worth your time. The news format gets boring real quick and the humor is stale and based on the harem aspect of SAO.