Mod Edit: this review may contain spoilers.
Sword Art Online... You know, I hear alot of fanboys say that the second season is much better than the first, but I say they're dead wrong. When I started watching this season, I told myself that I'm not taking anyone's word for it and will let the show speak for itself. If you ask me, Sword Art Online should've ended after, y'know, Sword Art Online. Even if Aincrad was a terrible arc, it would've ended with at least some dignity. But nope, Fairy Dance just had to drive whatever dignity it had into the ground.
The second season of
...
Sword Art Online is split into three arcs: The first arc is Phantom Bullet (Episodes 1 through 14). One year after the SAO incident, there have been killings of players in real life in a game called Gun Gale Online by someone by the name of "Death Gun". Since it's been proven that it's no longer possible to kill someone through the game technology, Kazuto is brought in to log into GGO, and enter the Battle of Bullets tournament to get to the bottom of Death Gun.
How in the world did anyone say this arc was better than the first two arcs? If anything it's just as bad.
First of all, no matter what anyone tries to say, Kirito is not smart, complex, or badass character. He's a Gary Stu, a wish-fulfillment blank slate meant for basement-dwelling loser teenage males to insert themselves onto and a walking example of the writer's complete and utter laziness. His GGO avatar looking female is absolutely stupid and completely pointless. I mean, I can understand the G.I.R.L. thing because I've done it once before, even though it's stated that it's more of an effeminate looking male appearance. But here's the thing: The show plays it up as if he is a female. I don't need to hear Kirito do a dumb girly voice. And even the process on HOW he gets that avatar is stupid. First of all, no MMO would ever give a player predetermined avatars. Secondly, out of all of them, Kirito just so happens to get one of the rarest ones.
And let's talk about how he's the only one out of how many players to use a lightsaber. (Yeah, I'm calling it a lightsaber because that's exactly what it is. It even makes the same sounds effects.) And yet the show passes that off as "if it can be bought, it can be used." But the deal is no one in GGO ever thought to use it. It's basically there waiting for Kirito alone to use it. In fact, the fact that no one but Kirito can, because he's Kirito, proves the writing is too lazy to make him learn anything. Yeah, fans say he's not a Gary Stu. Everything I've seen out of this show makes me think otherwise.
Now Shino Asada/Sinon, the female lead of the Phantom Bullet arc. Her story is that, at the tender age of 11, she was traumatized by shooting a bank robber out of self-defense, and as a result, gained a phobia of guns and anything shaped like one, such as a gun hand gesture. So she plays GGO as a form of exposure therapy to help her fight her fear of guns.
So what happens to Sinon's character? Take a wild guess. Here's a hint: It's starts with "K" and ends with "irito."
God, I can't stand her. I hate her as much as I do Asuna, and that's a big low considering Asuna's one of the show's worst characters. She started out as a decent character with a decent backstory, but then she turned into an useless crybaby whose only purpose is to shove her pancake butt to the audience. If you're gonna do that, A-1, at least give her a nice one. And it made me discover what's wrong with females in this show, and why they're only meant to inevitably become part of Kirito's harem. This is an rundown on how female characters are "written" here: "Here's a potentially good character. I'll spend an episode or two showing you why you should like her. Now that she has your interest, watch as I completely toss out everything you liked about her and make her dependent on Kirito-kun while I laugh at your face, you goddamn idiot." It happened to Asuna, it happened to Suguha, and it happened to Sinon. Did you expect anything less? Like I said before, there is no point in liking any female character in this show, let alone Sinon, if they're just gonna get their character trampled on by Kirito.
And yeah, I do understand how her idea of exposure therapy works. "I've been traumatized by gun violence and by playing Online First-Person Shooters, where I'm surrounded by guns will help me cope with it in real life." Here's the problem with that: First, even if I can buy the exposure therapy idea, you don't relive into the very thing that caused the trauma. Second, the exposure therapy idea ultimately goes nowhere. Kirito does everything for her and she accomplishes nothing on her own. Likewise, they pretty much retconned Kirito's PTSD from SAO just so he can out-PTSD her to make her weak and useless. Her character becomes so dependent on Kirito that it's sickening. You'd think that Sinon, having experienced the same kinds of things Kirito had, would be the one to help Kirito cope and eventually they help each other cope with their respective fears. But since this is SAO, Sinon's only real worth is her pancake butt. Whatever dialogue she has with Kirito become awkward and pointless when she's essentially riding his D.
And after all is said and done, Both Kirito and Sinon's PTSD magically disappears Heck, their PTSD turns on and off whenever the plot needs it to. If the writers actually knew a thing or two about how PTSD works, then they would've known that no matter how much therapy is taken, PTSD is stuck with you for the rest of your life and all it takes is the trigger to bring it back. I'll go into more detail about how this show and its writing has no respect for this stuff later in the review, but what Sinon really has here is a much different form of PTSD: Plot-Triggered Stupidity Disorder.
Now the villain, Death Gun, or as I like to call him "edgy Darth Vader knockoff", and yes, he basically is. The dude is a walking Lucasfilms lawsuit waiting to happen. I mean, nothing's original, but SAO is so unoriginal that I feel it rips everything off. The guy does not feel threatening at all. He's basically evil for the sake of evil and his attempt at villainy falls flat.
We learn that Death Gun is made of at least three persons: Shouichi Shinkawa/Red-Eyed XaXa, his younger brother Kyouji/Spegiel, and his partner Atsushi Kanemoto/Johnny Black. XaXa is logged into GGO as Death Gun, while Kyouji or Johnny Black breaks into a victim's home and injects a lethal drug, while at the same time watching a livestream to perfectly time it so that it looks like Death Gun killed a person in-game. Kirito figures ALL of this out without any prior knowledge. He doesn't take random guesses; he is 100% on the mark. He can't log out during the GGO tournament (because the developers forgot how much of a safety hazard not being able to log out), and he's not in contact with anyone in the real world outside, so his figuring this out comes off as complete convenience.
And to make matters worse, Kyouji being one part of Death Gun was made so blatantly obvious in the third episode that I was more concerned on what dumb motivation he had for killing. And even worse, we have him attempt to rape Shino. Yeah, because murder-suicide is already bad enough, we gotta pull the rape card. Because it worked SO well the last time. And even if Shino was able to fight off Kyouji for awhile, in the end, once again, it's Kazuto that bails her out. It's a problem when this show constatly uses attempted rape as cheap shock. It's also a problem when people actually and seriously attempt to defend such idiotic, offensive, and effortless excuse of writing, which, if you ask me, only makes them just as bad since they allow this garbage to get away with murder. If this had only happened in Fairy Dance, then I would've thought nothing of it outside that particular moment. But nope! Now that SAO has trivialized sexual assault on two consecutive occasions, I have every reason to assume that any subsequent villains will eventually attempt to rape a girl at some point in their time, because we gotta follow the "all bad guys are rapists" cliche so that big, strong hero Kirito can save the girl. Like I said before, ff you can't write attempted rape without any real meaning or purpose other than "all bad guys are rapists", then don't do it.
Wanna know why SAO does these things and gets away with it? Because you allow it to. Yes, you do.
This entire arc runs on the characters being dumb as a brick and plot convenience. And there are two grating examples: First, we learn that Death Gun is an SAO survivor, just like Kirito, only he was a Player-Killer. However, despite knowing where he came from, Kirito doesn't know who because when Death Gun was about to tell him his name, Kirito basically ignored him because he never thought he would see him again. Nothing works even on a basic level, because it feels like not a single piece of thought or logic was put into it.
Believe it or not, I tried to give this arc a fair chance, despite the fans saying it's the best one (and I never listen to the fans anyway, because I found this arc utter trash), but every single time it convinces me why I should never give Sword Art Online any chances at all. Because when you let your guard down for even one second, it drops to the bottom of the barrel. Honestly, this arc is only better than the last arc because it had none of that incest crap. Other than that, it's the same ol' trash I've come to expect from one of the biggest piles of garbage to plague anime in recent years.
The second arc, titled Calibur, takes up Episodes 15 through 17. It follows Kirito and his harem and Klein going on a sidequest in ALO to find the Holy Sword Excalibur.
What was even the point of this arc? No, seriously, what? Nothing. There was no point to it. It was basically the equivalent to filler. It's not like anything in the Calibur arc matters in the long run. Heck, nothing after Episode 14 matters honestly. It's like the writers just ran out of ideas and instead just show Kirito being awesome so the viewer can throw your money at the screen."It takes an idiot to do cool things. That's why it's cool." Honestly, that's Kirito in a nutshell: An idiot who does cool things, and you love it because Kirito is supposed to be you. That's you doing the cool things, and that's you being an idiot. Like I said before, blank slates like Kirito are not good characters. They're meant to be a medium of wish fulfillment and power fantasties, so that you can project yourself onto him, and his personality is what you make for him.
The only things really worth complaining about in this arc is Sinon, because like Asuna, her extstence is a complete sin to the entire series as a whole, and is only there because catgirl and contribute next to nothing. Also, Kirito's personality shifts between arcs, in which he goes from a shell-shocked warrior to a complete asshole. Even if you can say there's nothing at stake here, him being a jerk to his friends for no reason is really stupid. But it's okay because he's the main character, so no one will bat an eye about him yanking Sinon's tail or kicking Klein in the face.
That said, I'd much rather take boring filler over the two arcs before that... and the next one.
The third and final arc of Season 2, titled Mother's Rosario, takes up Episodes 18 through 24, and while most fans say it's probably one of the best arcs, I disagree. I think it's up there with Fairy Dance as the worst of SAO as a whole, mainly because it promises a probability of SAO actually being somewhat decent only to do a complete 180 and show how low it will go to manipulate the viewer while at the same time laughing at the face for anyone who fell for its trickery. Mother's Rosario is SAO's biggest slap to the audience's faces. Remember when I said I should never give Sword Art Online any chances at all, because when you let your guard down for even one second, it drops to the bottom of the barrel? Well, this arc is the reason why I'm going to hold to that statement for the remainder of the series.
In this arc, Asuna takes center stage. Kirito has a small presence but enough to offer up some plot convenience in the arc, which is a good thing because Heaven forbid we keep making him the one and only star of the show, stealing everybody else's spotlight. She is recruited by Yuuki Konno/Zekken into her guild, the Sleeping Knights. Their goal is to defeat a Floor Boss with only seven players before they have to disband.
Let me just say this: A character whose only goal in life is being Kirito-kun's waifu (which she said in the beginning of the season) is not even a character, let alone a strong one. And guess what? Asuna's character doesn't change beyond being Kirito-kun's waifu. Maybe she might have changed, but in the end, she reverts back to the way she started. Her story is basically dealing with her mother who wants to set Asuna's future. Which is understandable, because children at Asuna's age at this point (18, I believe) are nearing adulthood and have to start planning for their future. On one side, she's right about setting Asuna on the right path, because spending time online with friends won't get you anywhere in life. But on the other side, she's wrong for forcing it all onto Asuna without her say in the matter, which included, if you recall, marrying her off to a middle-aged businessman who kept her comatose and sexually assaulted her.
The problem here is that Asuna doesn't confront these problems head-on. She runs away from them. Whenever her mother calls her out on her spending time online with friends and Kirito, Asuna's first instinct is to walk away and attempt to escape from her harsh reality by running into Kirito's arms. Because she feels at home online with Kirito rather than with her own family in real life. I don't mind escapism so long as it's doesn't try to avoid and/or ignore the characters' issues in reality, which is what SAO does. Secondly, her running away the issue proves how childish and weak Asuna is. The show uses video games skills in place of character strengths, but in reality, these so-called strengths are artificial at most. Eventually, Asuna does decide to own up to her mother (albeit not on her own accord) and manages to reach a middle ground with her mother, but it mainly results in Asuna's mother being portrayed in the 100% wrong, and Asuna herself learns nothing. She still is Kirito-kun's waifu, a character whose ambitions and accomplishments are not her own.
As for Yuuki Konno: She may very well be considered the closest thing SAO will get to an actually likable female character. I know I say that there is nothing likable about any single female character, but compared to Asuna, Suguha, Sinon, and every other one, being a likable female character in SAO is an extremely low standard, and Yuuki took very little effort to surpass it. She is essentially the opposite of every female in SAO: She doesn't fall in love with Kirito, she doesn't become dependant on him at all, she doesn't end up in his harem, and she actually defeats Kirito in a PvP battle, which is a big achievement since Kirito only loses a fight due to some technicality. One might think that Yuuki's too good of a character for a pile of garbage like SAO.
At this point, I thought the Mother's Rosario arc was surprisingly not half bad. I mean the past few arcs were utterly terrible, and because of the irreparable damage it has done to itself, I couldn't be optimistic that this arc will change my overall opinion of it. Again, the same issues that have been seen in most arcs are still present: The biggest one is Kirito himself. The guy is so Gary Stu that all the flashy sword swings and deflecting magic and what have you, everything he does is all show just to make him look awesome, but it makes me lose interest quickly. It's other biggest problem is its ability to handle emotional drama. Sure, Zekken and the Sleeping Kights are a fresh change of pace from Gary Stu and his harem of waifus, but there's some sense of turmoil from not only the fact that the team has to disband, but from something personal from Zekken herself. The problem is I cannot get invested in these characters alot because they never make their issues known to anyone, and the show is trying (and failing) to make me do so. I actually began to believe that Mother's Rosario is the arc that Sword Art Online should've been, which made me feel that all the previous arcs' past stupidity weren't worth reaching this point...
Or so I thought before a certain point near the end.
As it turns out, Yuuki is terminally ill, and not just with any fictional illness. She has Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS. Not HIV, but full-blown AIDS. In 2011, her mom gave birth to Yuuki and her twin sister via C-section, which caused her to lose a severe amount of blood. The doctors then gave her HIV-infected blood that no one in the hospital knew it was infected until after the transfusion. Eventually, the virus spread across her family and they all died from it, and she's the next to go.
First of all, FUCK YOU! Fuck you, Sword Art Online. There isn't a violin small enough for how sappy and goddamn stupid this is. This is the reason why I will always hate this garbage with every fiber of my being for as long as I live. Because it somehow manages to show itself it can be decent every so often only to jump back to the bottom of the barrel and make me look like a fool for getting my hopes up for nothing.
The fact that Yuuki has AIDS isn't the problem here. It's how she (and her family) got the AIDS, how it's handled here, and how it's only used as a substitute for character development. It's done in the most unrealistic way possible and makes you wonder if either the writers made the hospital staff incompetent on purpose so that this can happen, or they didn't even bother to do the research. I'm no medical expert, but I know enough that hospitals do check blood for any signs of infections before giving it to people. The technology to detect infections in blood exist, even in 2011. Heck, if the blood is infected, it wouldn't even be in the hospital. I'm not gonna ask myself why the Konno family didn't sue the pants off this hospital for medical malpractice because I'd be doing the writer's job. And let's be honest, anyone with a shred of common sense can do a better job at writing SAO than whatever you call this piss-poor excuse of writing. Heck, Captain Planet handled AIDS better, even though that was ridiculously overblown on a comical scale. AIDS is a disease that is usually contracted and spread through bodily fluids. It would be understandable for her dad to get it from her mom, but what about her older twin sister, born mere moments BEFORE Yuuki? How did she get the virus? There's no way. Not one single aspect about this story works, not even on a logical standpoint. There's no excuse for this. No amount of medical research can handwave or excuse, let alone justify what is irresponsible handling of a real-life terminal illness for the sake of artificial feels. This whole "we didn't know the blood was infected until later" story is a middle finger to medical science and to the audience's intelligence, and I'm just gonna give it one right back.
The Mother's Rosario arc is not some "heartbreaking, beautiful, powerfully human tale". It's nothing but a cheap sob story done in the most underhanded, manipulative, unrealistic, and overblown way imaginable. I like Yuuki, I really do; but I'm not going to say her character was developed that much, because she wasn't. Yeah, she's isn't as one-dimensional as all the other characters, but I felt more saddened that she had to be subject to how full of shit this show is, reduced into a vessel for ill-gotten sympathy. You have to let the audience feel the emotion for themselves. Forcing them to by giving a character Super AIDS is basically making your audience look like dumbasses. The one time I thought SAO might have a decent character and she's ruined by the worst possible idiotic melodrama because the writer still has his head too far up his own asshole. Why did I expect anything less? Considering that Kawahara once said that he's incapable of writing female characters that don't fall for Kirito (yeah, he did say that), I can't help but wonder if he decided to screw over Yuuki this way as punishment for not being like every other female character in SAO. Why even do this? Was it because Yuuki didn't become a part of Kirito's harem so Kawahara decided to off her with Super AIDS? I bet it was! Ultimately, the Mother's Rosario arc reflects SAO as a whole: A piece of garbage that takes a big steamy dump on whatever it pleases. Out of all the stupid moments SAO has done between its two seasons, this is the ultimate final nail in a coffin full of final nails. I'm not made of stone, but when shows try to manipulate the viewer into feeling sad, it's basically asking me to hate it.
This is a recurring problem with SAO as a whole, arguably its biggest one and the one that has brought the entire season down. The writers has an insistence on handlng heavy subjects such as sexual assault, post-traumatic stress, terminal illnesses, and what have you, and every time they try, it only shows how immature the writing is as they end up being used as a plot device and done in a completely unrealistic way. If anything, the way such issues are portrayed here could be construed as disrespectful to those who has experienced it themselves. When it comes to things like this, either do it in a respectful manner or don't do it at all; there is no middle ground about it. These kinds of things have absolutely no business being here if it's not going to be handled in the right manner.
Contrary to what some may say, Season 2 of Sword Art Online is in no way any better than the first season. Actually, it's WORSE than the previous season. At least the first season started out good before descending into garbage. This season was hot garbage on a plate from start to finish. At this point, even the most minuscule shred of sympathy I had for SAO and its toxic fanbase is as good as dead. It's nothing but a dumpster fire that can ONLY get worse. Something that has learned from none of its mistakes, which should've made evident when it trivialized sexual asault for the second time in a row. needs to be thrown into the garbage, where it belongs.
Once a pile of garbage, always a pile of garbage.
Aug 19, 2015
Sword Art Online II
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
Mod Edit: this review may contain spoilers.
Sword Art Online... You know, I hear alot of fanboys say that the second season is much better than the first, but I say they're dead wrong. When I started watching this season, I told myself that I'm not taking anyone's word for it and will let the show speak for itself. If you ask me, Sword Art Online should've ended after, y'know, Sword Art Online. Even if Aincrad was a terrible arc, it would've ended with at least some dignity. But nope, Fairy Dance just had to drive whatever dignity it had into the ground. The second season of ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Jan 12, 2014
IS: Infinite Stratos 2
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
I'm gonna start off by saying I've always hated Infinite Stratos. I was unfortunate to be invited in by the concept alone, expecting some good science-fiction action. I was very upset only to find it to be a very poorly written and generic harem with few redeeming qualities. However, I looked forward to the second season with almost no expectations, only to find that it had slaughtered said redeeming qualities from the first season.
In case you didn't know what Infinite Stratos is all about, let me remind you: It's set in the near future where the eponymous weaponized armors are the norm in military warfare. ... The only drawback is that only females can pilot them, and so the Infinite Stratos Academy was founded for the sole purpose of training future pilots. However, the main protagonist, Ichika Orimura, is the only male who can pilot an IS. Throw him inside an all-girls school and harem antics ensue. Dumb, cliche harem antics. That's it. The first season never goes on with that premise because apparently harem is more important. Most harem anime tend to be rather flimsy when it comes to story and plot development, but in Infinite Stratos 2, "story" does not even exist. There's a group of terrorists known as Phantom Task who want to kill Ichika and his older sister, Chifuyu, for unexplained reasons. There's a certain plot point with a member of Phantom Task named Madoka, who is revealed to be Chifuyu's evil twin sister and has a vendetta against her for unexplained reason. That's right, "unexplained reasons" is pretty much how this entire season runs on. Any plot threads concerning this are left completely unfinished. Wouldn't it be a good idea to actually elaborate on who these guys are and why they're doing bad stuff? According to the writing staff, apparently not. They only take action for about less than two and a half episodes total. All other episodes is basically "How much can we pander to the viewers' cocks until their nutbladder explodes? I mean, nobody will care about the lack of character and plot when we can give something for our viewers to fap to every week." A whole season of filler had better writing than this. Now the characters: First, you got Ichika himself who is just your standard harem protagonist whose about as dense as a brick. Then you got his harem; all but only one or two are nothing but generic cookie cutter stereotypes who has about as much personality as a piece of cardboard. But wait, there's more: They're unique from other harem girls in that they're a multinational harem! So you got the Japanese childhood friend/abusive tsundere, the German girl who hides weapons in her locker, the Chinese tsundere, the English chick, and the French reverse trap. All of them have nothing special about them and they only want Ichika because he's the only male in school. You might as well throw the entire student body at his bones, while you're at it. Production values are decent for the most part. The music is forgettable, much like the first season. One thing I actually did like about this was the IS designs and the battle scenes. Even if the harem part was badly written, the fight scenes kept me entertained, even if it isn't the major focus as I hoped it would. Unfortunately, harem comes above all else in Infinite Stratos, so the military warfare part is left high and dry. Infinite Stratos in general is not a good anime, let alone a good harem show. This mistake known as the second season turns it into an unsalvagable, burning wreck. There have been very few good harem anime in this day and age, but this is just another one tossed under the "pathetic" pile. And the second season shoved it into the "worst ever" pile. If 8-bit were smart, they should save themselves even more embarrassment and don't even bother with greenlighting a third season because it won't fix anything. Instead, just do the right thing and leave Infinite Stratos to die in its own filth.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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May 24, 2013
Aku no Hana
(Anime)
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Recommended Preliminary
(7/13 eps)
(THIS IS ONLY A PRELIMINARY REVIEW. THIS WILL BE MORE DETAILED ONCE THE SERIES HAS FINISHED)
Flowers of Evil (Aku no Hana) may very well be one of the most controversial, polarizing anime in a while, mainly due to its unnatural animation. The use of rotoscoping, if you will. From the first episode alone, it was met here with most users either dropping it immediately, rating it at 1/10, wrote first episode reviews claiming it to be the worst anime ever, or all of the above. My question is does the rotoscoping really make this the worst anime in existence? Then again, take a look at ... Sword Art Online's mean score, so that'll pretty much say some things about MAL's credibility. This 13-episode ZEXCS adapation of Shuuzou Oshimi's manga follows Takao Kasuga, a literature enthusiast high school student. One day, he forgets his book at school and goes back to retrieve it. He also sees the gym clothes of his crush, Nanako Saeki, and impulsively steals them. However, he is caught by a friendless, pottymothed girl named Sawa Nakamura, who decides to blackmail Kasuga for her own evil desires. Now let's get to what mostly everyone have been on about: The animation itself: Yes, the rotoscoping isn't the greatest. People here are acting like rotoscoping is the bane of anime, even though you've seen it before. For example, a number of scenes from Kids on the Slope (Sakamichi no Apollon) were done using rotoscoping. Why is it now people are bitching about it? I think it's because in this day and age, most anime-watchers are used to watching plotless, bland moe anime with the girls' eyes taking up about third of their faces. The movements do look janky and the designs themselves look half-done (I'm hoping that they improve on this for the BD/DVD release), but is it really that big of a deal? Does the animation actually tell the story in any way? Honestly, I think the odd animation helps set up the atmosphere, because there are some moments that probably wouldn't have produced the same disturbing effect if it was done in the traditional animation we're used to. Like in one moment, Nakamura forcibly puts Saeki's clothes onto Kasuga. Also, keep in mind I haven't read the manga as of this review's posting, so I can't say if it provokes the same effect. Believe me when I say this: This show is dark and twisted. Kasuga knows what he did was low and appalling and he despises himself for it. Nakamura knows it as well, and plans to make his life more hell than it already is. In one instance, Kasuga finally gets the cojones to ask Saeko out, but during the date, Nakamura makes him wear her gym clothes underneath his clothes. And speaking of Nakamura: This chick I can't even begin to describe. As the series progresses, it becomes clear that Nakamura isn't just blackmailing Kasuga for her own amusement. She seems to want to show that the world is full of perverted shitheads and Kasuga's just her guinea pig. I really don't understand why Flowers of Evil was rated so low here, other than idiots whining about the character designs and the rotoscoping. Personally, I love it. The rotoscoping actually makes it more believable. If you think otherwise, then I apologize that it just wasn't moe enough for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Apr 10, 2013
Accel World
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings
From the uncreative mind that dumped Sword Art Online into your face comes his other famous light novel series, Accel World. I really don't see how people actually think Reki Kawahara's works are good. They're not. They're merely otaku-pandering wish fulfillment that's all style and no real effort put into them. Although Accel World is better than Sword Art Online, only by a little.
This 24-episode adaptation by Sunrise is set in the year 2046, where people have wireless access to the internet using NeuroLink, which is basically a computer built into your body. The story follows a junior high school student named Haruyuki Arita, who ... has very low self-esteem due to being bullied for his short, chubby, unnatural appearance. He spends his time in playing online games, but one day, he finds that someone beat his high score in a game that only he plays because no one else does. That someone is the student council vice-president named Kuroyuki-hime, and she offers Haruyuki an opportunity to "break his own reality" and enter a fighting video game where the winner rules the online world and losers get kicked out. It also give him the power to move at a thousand times normal speed. Interesting premise, I'd say, but there's a problem here: If you've read my Sword Art Online review, then most of the problems there apply here: Good ideas, bad execution. Every single episode left me utterly bored because the characters would rather explain how stuff in the show works rather than actually show it. The only time where I'm paying attention is during the fighting scenes. Speaking of which, the presentation is good. If the art and sound is passable, then there's nothing much I can say. The fighting scenes are pretty cool, despite them feeling a bit too similar to Pokemon battles. The avatar design accompanying the fighting are also well-designed, too. Aside from Haruyuki's, the character designs are fine, nothing special about them. The characters themselves are just as flat and boring as the execution itself. I'm beginning to think Kawahara has a knack for writing awful characters... And holy crap, these are bad characters. Haruyuki is damn annoying. First of all, he's a big, fat crybaby who whines about everything and stuffs his face with food. It doesn't help that he's voiced by Yuuki Kaji. If you've entered this after watching Guilty Crown like I have, Haruyuki comes off as a whinier, chubby, buttugly Shu Ouma, right down to sharing the same seiyuu. Nothing againt him; I like him but there are very few roles I can think of where he doesn't voice a character that whines alot. At least Shu gets it together even though it took him longer than it should. At the end of Accel World, I don't think he ever got it together. None of his character improved, if there was any to begin with. Now Kuroyuki-hime I have more to type about because I hate her the most. She's supposedly one of the strongest players, but she makes Haruyuki do her dirty work because she's too lazy to do it herself, which she can. In one scenario, a player whose levels are less than half of her's attempts to blackmail her and even try to kill her in the real world. She does nothing but make Haruyuki deal with him instead of crusing the guy herself. What's really odd is that none of her motivations are really explained. She chose Haruyuki of all peoplem, falls in love with him. Why? ...He's good at video games, I guess. That's pretty much it. She started out interesting but later just became a boring character whose main purpose is to be the series' sex object. Honestly, try to find one piece of Accel World merchandise where she isn't at least half-naked. Speaking of which, in the second half, she's away on a class vacation. We get two episodes of what she's up to, which consists of mostly her in a skimpy black bikini, probably to cater to the horny fanboys. We also have Haruyuki's childhood friend Chiyuri. She's the nice, sweet, innocent girl who is in love with Haru that she's dating his best friend. Likely out of jealousy, but never really elaborated, like most things in this series. She was okay at first, but then her feelings tend to contradict each other alot. She's furious at Haru because Kuroyuki-hime's interested in him. If she's so upset about it, then why did she choose to date his friend instead of him. And for some reason, whenever she and Haruyuki have an argument, it usually ends with her getting undressed. Whatever drama that was building up is killed due to unneccesary fanservice and the chick's inability to keep her clothes on. Like I mentioned, in the second half, Kuroyuki-hime is away, leaving Haruyuki to deal with a schoolmate named Seiji Noumi. Ugh, this little asshole made me drop the series at one point. He is a carbon copy of Sword Art Online's Nobuyuki Sugou in that he has no motivation to his actions and the stuff he does is so stupid, he might as well be wearing a sign saying "I am the villain." He talks big, but doesn't do anything to make him look like a serious threat. He just makes Haruyuki and anyone close to him his own whipping boy. Those are just the worst characters. I don't mention the rest of the main cast because they're decent for the most part, like Takumu (Haruyuki's friend and Chiyuri's boyfriend). It's just that when you have bad main characters, the rest of the story falls with them. There really is nothing good, let alone special about Accel World. It's just a big ball of unused ideas, cliches, poor execution, and bad characters, which leads to a bad series with wasted potential. I don't know what message Kawahara is trying to portray here... "You'll succeed at life if you're good at video games?" Uh... no! Video games can be a means to escape reality, but that doesn't eliminate whatever issues in reality that are present. That's not how life works, and anyone who thinks so definitely needs a reality check.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jan 16, 2013
Hidan no Aria
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
Why does J.C. Staff think their idea of comedy is funny when it really isn't? This is why no one likes them anymore. And Aria the Scarlet Ammo (Hidan no Aria) is yet another piece of awful on their ever-piling list of mediocrity.
The premise seems interesting enough. You have this school where students are trained to become mercenaries and law enforcement and such. The main character, Kinji Tohyama, attends this school and he has this strange power that makes him more badass, but it's only triggered when he gets sexually aroused. No idea how that exactly is supposed to work. Anyway, he's relunctant to become ... a Butei and wants out. One day, he's attacked by a remote-controlled armed segway and he's saved by the titular character. Now here's where it gets bad. Let's start with the main reason why this series is awful: Ms. Aria H. Kanzaki herself Aria is supposedly an S-Rank Butei, which is the highest rank a Butei can achieve. Can you tell? I can't, because she does absolutely nothing worthwhile throughout the whole run of 12 episodes. To make matters worse, she's nothing more than an awful carbon copy of that other tsundere. Extremely tsun, Has a flat chest and complains about it, physically abuses whatever poor unfortunate guy has to put up with her, Voiced by Rie Kugumiya. I don't care about her trying to clear her mother's name for a crime she didn't commit, because she acts like a childish, annoying, unlikable brat; I just wish someone would just smack her in the face, already. The other females aren't good either, but at least they don't threaten to pump you full of lead every time. Believe me, as much as Aria alone can kill anyone's enjoyment of this series, that's the least of the issues here. Some major characters are revealed to be descendants of various fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, Joan of Arc, etc. Aria is Holmes' descendant, hence the H in her name. Does she perform any interesting deductions? Nope. Is Joan of Arc's descendant vulnerable to fire? Kinda, sorta. In fact, none of that goes anywhere. It's just tacked on for no good reason. Since this is adapted from a light novel, you'd expect it to cover as much story as possible in 12 to 13 episodes. But while most light novel adaptations have a sense of closure and sometimes leave you wanting more, this one does none of that. It ends with the same unfunny antic that makes you think if J.C. Staff had given up on it. If this show doesn't convince you that abusive tsundere characters like Aria are flat characters (chests notwithstanding), I don't know what will. If it weren't for her, this would've been at least an average series with interesting premises that goes nowhere.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Oct 28, 2012
Sword Art Online
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
Sword Art Online... You know, at one point, I was actually really excited about watching this show to the point that it was THE show I was looking forward to that season and all the other shows were just fodder, but as the show went on, and its problems became more and more apparent, I grew a burning hatred for everything about it that it began to define me at one point. Word of advice: Just because something is popular does NOT mean it's good (Just look at Justin Bieber, Twilight, and Call of Duty), as you will learn the hard way with this.
First of ... all, let me start with that it's about. Sword Art Online is separated into two story arcs. Episodes 1 through 14 is the Aincrad arc. The story is set in the year 2022, the latest VR technology known as NerveGear was released alongside the titular MMORPG. The main character, 14-year old Kazuto Kirigaya (also known as Kirito) is one of the game's 10,000 owners after having beta-tested the game prior. What kind of company produces only 10,000 copies of a game? That's not good business, if you ask me. Anyway, upon starting the game, Kirito learns that there's no logout function. This wasn't a design flaw, but intentionally done by the creator, Akihiko Kayaba. He also explains that the players will die for real if they try to have their NerveGears removed or shut down, or if they die in the game. The only way to escape is by completing the game. What could've been an enjoyable VR experience becomes nothing but a struggle of life and death. Meanwhile, what could've been an actually good show became a godawful show. What's wrong with this show, you ask? Plenty of reasons. Let's talk about the characters, mainly the protagonists: For starters, these are not characters. These are bland, unoriginal, one-dimensional cardboard cutouts. Kazuto/Kirito is basically your standard Gary Stu wish fullfillment protagonist. He has the highest stats in the game, gets all the best skills and items, always wears black clothing to show that he's this dark and emo anti-hero, bends the rules to his advantage to win every battle, and is desired by almost every single female. In other words, being this guy is basically every single socially awkward hardcore gamer's wet dream. He's the main character so everyone that isn't him matters none. Nobody wants to watch an overpowered self-insert bending the rules of the game to his liking. In any real MMO, no single player would see anything Kirito does an impressive, nor will anyone idolize him for doing what is essentially cheating. They would see him as a pathetic loser who has no real skill of his own. And that's what Kirito is: a loser. No matter what anyone tries to say, he's not smart, complex, or badass, let alone a character. He's a walking example of the writinf's complete and utter laziness. Asuna Yuuki is probably the worst of the two. She's so stupid, she ends up making Bella Swan from Twilight seem not as stupid in comparison. At first, she seems fine, but as the series progresses and she become a full-time main character, she comes off as your typical tsundere and contributes absolutely nothing at all other than make Kirito do stuff for her and drag him into being a even worse character than usual. Oh and guess what? She's supposedly one of the top players in SAO, but all of her skill points is maxed out only to her cooking stat. That's right, no focusing on any particular stats that would be helpful to progress through the game like strength, vitality, defense, agility, or what have you. The only worthwhile use Asuna has is in the kitchen. To this day, I still laugh at the fact people actually refer to Asuna as a strong female character. In fact, anyone who thinks Asuna is "a strong female character" makes me assume that they actually don't know what that even means. I've seen a good amount of actual strong female characters to know full well that Asuna is most definitely not one. About a fifth into the series run, the story becomes less about surviving in a game of life and death and more about giving Kirito a harem. Like I mentioned before, it's a given rule for any female that cross paths with Kirito to instantly fall for him. Why the chick falls for him is never explained. It sums down to "I love Kirito-kun because" and that's it. No reason at all. And when you put Kirito and Asuna together, then it gets really bad. It's bad enough these two are bland characters. But when their romance (For lack of a more suitable word) starts, it's just as bland. They pretty much do nothing that implies romance between the two: She hangs out with him for awhile, shares sandwiches with him, whacks him whenever he accidentally gropes her. An episode or two later, they're in love and they're married. Uh, what? There's no buildup to it that it comes out of nowhere, and what's worse is that romance completely overshadows everything. I mean, THAT is the plot that Sword Art Online focuses around: Not about 10,000 people fighting for their lives in a virtual world, it's about teenage romance that's so undeveloped that it makes you wonder if the writers looked at Atatck of the Clones for inspiration. They selfishly waste two and a half episodes on their honeymoon while everyone else is off progressing through the game. Our protagonists, everyone. Who cares about escaping the game? The script is pretty much godawful, the worst offender being episode 13, where Asuna spews out stuff about how meeting Kirito changed her life and how she believes meeting him was the very reason she put the NerveGear on. It's completely unbelievable and comes off as nothing but BS. Later on, they adopt this AI girl as their daughter. Her name is Yui and she's arguably competing with Asuna as the worst female. She has absolutely no character and serves no purpose other than desperately try too hard to act cute and be the moeblob that panders to whatever otaku audience. In fact, her introductory episodes was the point where the series quality declined. Also, nothing agains her voice actors. I'm sure they do a good jo bportraying the character but mother of God, Yui sounds horrible. It's like that extremely high-pitched mousey moeblob voice, only alot more grating. She's easily unbearable when she's talking. Like, please stop talking. Now Akihiko Kayaba, the evil mastermind that is responsible for the deaths of around a third of the game's population: When Kirito finally confronts him and asks what was his motivation for doing this, his answer sums up to "I forgot." He even states that he probably had none at all. In the end. SAO's purpose is completely negated and makes you feel like so much time was wasted and so many people lost their lives for absolutely nothing. If that wasn't the most trollish slap-in-the-face since the last few episodes of Blood-C, I don't know what is. There are only a few characters I like, but they are barely seen at all, let alone given any character development because the story follows only Kirito and considers no one else important. Klein (The guy with the red headband) is the first friend Kirito makes once he enters SAO. You would expect him to be Kirito's wingman or something of the sort, but he's only seen for 5, maybe 6 episodes total. Silica (the loli with the dragon) is one of the more popular characters and she only has a screentime total of one episode and a few cameos here and there. In fact, her only notable scene is walking into the same room with Kirito in her undies. Why even bother introducing these characters if you're not ever going to develop them? Matter of fact, I don't even know why Silica is popular. Because she's a loli. That's basically her only appeal. Same goes for Lisbeth, a blacksmith player, who's, uh... Yeah, what's her appeal? None that I can think of. There's no point in liking any of these females at all. They offer nothing to anything. There's nothing to their character other than she's in love with Kirito-kun. And I think at some point, the author even mentioned that it was hard for him to write a female that doesn't fall for Kirito. The plot: I've already described the plot. That's it. The rest of the show doesn't ever expand on that premise save for a few minuscule mentions of how many players are still alive. Aside from that, the premise is mostly ignored to the point that it's nonexistant. In fact, through the course of the series, we see the characters with their items and equipment changed only in between episodes. You'd think that a show based in an MMORPG would be focused around character customization, equipment upgrading, skill sets, etc., but it's never elaborated upon. For example, Kirito somehow pulls a dual-wielding skill out of nowhere. How and when he acquired it is never elaborated. He even says it randomly appeared out of nowhere in his skill list. In fact, that's a constant problem: We're only told about this number of played died, but it's never shown. Like the writers just wants us to take their word for it. Obviously, when we're dealing with a show where anyone can die so you'd expect there'd be some suspense and drama. Nope. Everytime someone dies, the drama falls flat because we haven't known the character long enough to care enough for him or her. A half of an episode isn't enough to for me to know one character! The only "tragic" death, according to this series, is Yui's. When she "dies", the protagonists bawls their eyes out. They only knew her for less than a few days in-universe, two episodes overall. And it's instantly negated because they manage to salvage her data and convert her into an in-game item. Yui's character arc was one of the worst episodes of the series because of its contrived, weak, forced, sorry excuse for drama. In fact, any sense of suspense is gone when you realize that Kirito will win the fight by pulling straight out of the ass some brand new skill that was never seen before. The second arc (Episodes 15 through 25) titled Fairy Dance (although you don't really see any fairies dancing until like the last episode), is much, much worse as the many faults are present at a much grander scale. The setting here is ALfheim Online, which was developed using SAO as its base. When Kirito first logs into ALO, he finds that all his items and stats from SAO are carried over. So instead of starting over from Level 1, he becomes overpowered at start. It shows nothing but laziness in terms of game development in-universe and writing out-of. The story switches from "struggle for survival" to "save the princess," but there's no real sense of emergency as ALO has a working logout function and no one dies for real if they die in-game. Also, Kirito does mostly everything except his self-stated objective, like it's the last thing on his to-do list. And just when you couldn't get enough of Yui, she comes back. That's right, she's going Turbo! I mentioned that his items carried over to ALO, but all but Yui can't be read by the game system. She acts as a guide fairy to Kirito, kinda like Navi from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, only even more annoying because she knows about stuff that she shouldn't and it only works whenever the plot demands it. The Big Bad of Fairy Dance, Nobuyuki Sugou, is way worse than Kayaba in terms of being an effective villain. First of all, this guy is more of a psychotic, pedophilic manchild than a real villain. The first thing he does when we're introduced to him is outright inform Kazuto, "Hi, I'm the villain." No subtlety or ambiguity for Mr. Sugou. Also, the fanbase clearly does not hate him for his villainy. His plan basically involves manipulating the memories of the few hundred, Asuna included, that didn't escape SAO. But that's not the reason why the fans want this guy's head on a stick. The most heinous, evil, dastardly, utterly descipable crime against humanity that makes this guy lower than scum is molesting Asuna every chance he gets. To the fanbase, Sugou is Hitler compared to Kayaba. Speaking of which, the show also portrays Kayaba as the lesser of two evils compared to Sugou, even though the former imprisoned and killed people and is pretty much indirectly responsible for the latter's actions, as well as every other antagonist that follows. While it is true that Sugou's plans are bad, Kayaba's are far worse, yet the show's idea of morality is completely backwards about it. Let's compare: Sugou's crimes only consisted of imprisonment and brainwashing of a few hundred, and sexual assault of one. Kayaba's crimes consist of imprisonment of 10,000 and murder of roughly a third of that number. Meanwhile, Asuna is reduced to nothing more than the worst kind of damsel-in-distress. She does more of nothing other than be Sugou's sex toy. She doesn't even try to defend herself or even attempt to push him away, she just sits there and let him have his way with her body. She tries to escape on one ocassion, but ends up getting tentacle raped (Oh, you heard me right) and recaptured just as quickly. Which brings me to my next point. This show is utterly misogynistic to the point that it's outright offensive. The first arc is bad about it, but the second arc is where it is almost blatantly shown in your face. At some point in the climax of the arc, Sugou attempts to rape Asuna in the game right in front of Kirito. This whole scene turns a revenge fantasy and it only serves to make the viewer hate the villain even more, which is not how to even write a villain. And don't even use the excuse "Well, he's a villain so you're supposed to hate him." There are other ways to make the viewer hate the villain. Not only that, but when Kirito manages to put a stop to Sugou's actions, he brutally tortures him without any sense of remorse and even commits physical pain to him. While Sugou did basically do the same thing to him, Kirito does it back in an even worse scale and no one, not even Asuna, bats an eye. In fact, she's not the least bit traumatized over that she was sexually assaulted because Kirito saved her so all is good. This is obviously trivialized as a plot device and shows that the author clearly had no business in even toying with such a thing. If you can't write attempted rape without a serious meaning or purpose other than "all bad guys are rapists", then don't do it. As Asuna plays damsel-in-distress, her role as a main character is given to Kazuto's younger sister (actually cousin), Suguha/Leafa. Aside from her huge boobies, she is a somewhat better character than Asuna in that her chemistry with Kazuto/Kirito is actually believable. But her character falls apart because of one fatal flaw: She falls victim to the pitfall of being a female character in SAO, and therefore fall in love with Kirito for no reason (That's right, we're approaching incest territory), only here it's different. She's in love with both Kazuto and Kirito, but she's unaware that they're one and the same. Same goes for Kazuto/Kirito, who's unaware that Leafa is Suguha. So it becomes more of a guessing game as to when they're going to find out, and when they do, the damage is already done and you don't really care anymore. And before anyone says that romantic relations between cousins are acceptable in Japan, let me point out that while that is indeed true, Kazuto and Suguha are not written as siblings and not cousins, which actually makes her falling in love with him all the more pointless and stupid. Animation: Well, the scenery is nice. That's the only good thing I can say. Character designs, not so much. In case you've figures out, Kazuto/Kirito is an emo antihero, so he dons clothing that is as black as his soul. Black hair, black eyes, Hell, even all but one of his weapons are colored black. Talk about uninspired. Most characters are drawn with only one facial structure. For example, Take Kirito's design, add light-brown waist-length hair, light-brown eyes, and average-size breasts and you've got Asuna. In fact, the moeblob looks like she was recycled from a previous character's design. The action scenes aren't compelling at all, but made cheaply and lazily with single still-frames in almost every fight. There are a few exceptions, but it only means that the animation staff felt like wasting their effort and budget on facepalm-worthy humor instead of quality fighting scenes. There's only little I can say about the music. I've heard good things about Yuki Kajiura's score and her music here is pretty much the only thing about Sword Art Online worth mentioning. Although it gets very repetitive most of the time. Only one track has stuck to my mind and it only plays whenever Kirito is about to win a fight. It's a shame that it's sadly wasted on something so awful. Now the very worst fault that Sword Art Online has is its very fanbase itself. Usually, I won't talk about a series' fanbase when judging a series, but this is a special case because of their' foolish blindness to blatantly obvious flaws that even the brain-dead can find. You will find lots of users and their so-called reviews here that praise this show. Those guys are the suckers who was unfortunate to be sold only by its premise, which is interesting but has been done before (Hello, .hack franchise), and ignore everything else. The premise can only go so far, but how it is executed is what really matters. This show has the stupidest fanbase ever since they probably like anything that looks like a terribly written fanfic written by a teenager. And from what I've heard, Kawahara wrote the first novel (or maybe the preliminary story) when he was a teen. It definitely shows. There is absolutely no effort put into this story and characters whatsoever. And once again, he admits that he basically wrote the story without even applying any form of logic. I'm beginning to think that he didn't write SAO just to tell a story, but so that it can become popular for all the wrong reasons, sell tens and thousands of volumes, and leave quality works underappreciated and selling poorly. Basically, a cheap cash-in. In other words, it's no better than moe junk. Thank you, Reki Kawahara. Modern anime has gone down the toilet because of your actions. Here's why I hate this show's fanboys: They said that it would be great. I took their word for it. I enjoyed the first few episodes. But as time went on, my enjoyment decreased as I became aware of flaws, and fans get angry because I didn't enjoy it like they wanted me to. SAO fanboys hate it when someone points out what's wrong with it because SAO is the perfect wish-fulfillment fantasy, and when the "haters" question said fantasy by pointing out the issues, fanboys get hostile because they feel offended on a personal level. They can't accept reality because the truth is just too harsh for them. Sword Art Online is basically a textbook example of how to make an awful anime by relying on wish fullfillment and asspulls to tell the story. It is a power fantasy: Its message is basically telling you to reject your own reality in favor for their fantasy. I think that message is a load of bollocks and shows that some people who falls for this is in need of a reality check. Want an actual MMO anime that does everything that Sword Art Online fails at in that it actually develops its characters, doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator, and doesn't insult your intelligence right in your face? I recommend watching .hack//SIGN for its psychological aspects and meaningfully-written characters and Log Horizon for its world-building aspects and actually thought-out MMO functionality. It's hard for me to actually fathom how this show is so highly rated because it does EVERYTHING wrong on so many levels. The only thing it does right is make itself, and Kawahara, into a complete joke.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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