March 20th, 2013
Sword Art Online
Anime Relations: Sword Art Online
So I watched Sword Art Online recently and, while I'm not going to write a review (hence why this is on my blog and not a review), I wanted to just scrawl down some thoughts about it. SAO seems to be a very polarizing anime. It was extremely hyped and it based a highly rated light novel (I believe it's rank 18 on the manga list on this site). Though it's average rating over all the tens of thousands of users who rated it was something 8.36, the polarization of opinion about it is quite evident from the reviews, many of which have scores that are 5 or lower just from the couple of pages that I skimmed. I can definitely understand where this is coming from because I'm not completely sure how to rate this anime myself.
*Spoiler Alert*
On my list I have SAO rated at 9, which is a really high score, and higher than the average rating of 8.36 (okay it might actually be an average - I think this website has a weighting system for ratings which I was too lazy to read). Why did I give it this rating. Well, there were some pretty seriously obvious flaws, but I just really enjoyed SAO, enough so that I gave it a really high rating (Also I think I may be guilty of some rating inflation for most things I watch). I watched SAO in the course of two days, and I just really enjoyed it. Some people have criticized it for being mediocre in terms of plot and characters, and, while I can see where they're coming from, I think SAO was just right up my alley so I liked it a lot. Also, the music and art were both nice.
One major criticism of SAO is that the characters are just too plain. The supporting characters are nothing special, and the heroes are just too good. Here's my take on the characters. I thought the supporting characters... were okay. Yeah, they were a little plain. There's not really a well defined villain in part 1, but Sugou, from part 2, is one of the slimiest villains I've seen. You really have to hate the guy. His character is not terribly well developed, but I really hated that guy so that was good.
People say Kirito is just too good - he's the best player in the whole game, he never loses, he pretty much does not encounter much adversity at all, he has a heart of gold, and he's great with girls. Well, it makes sense that he's the best player since he is the hero of the anime. It'd make less sense if he were just some average guy in stuck in SAO. He does lose. He loses to Heathcliff and Kuradeel poisons him. He also encounters some adversity, though it is usually resolved within one episode. I could overlook this though based on my interpretation of the anime, which I'll expand on later. His attitude is pretty typical of the loner hero, which I think is okay. And he might be a little bit too good with girls.
Asuna. I really liked Asuna. She gets a lot of the same criticisms as Kirito. She's too good. She's beautiful, popular, really strong, and has max cooking?!?! She's also from an extremely rich family and just falls in love with Kirito. I don't have any issues with her being pretty. Did they miss an opportunity to triumph over shallowness and make a physically unattractive heroine? Uh... I don't know and I don't really care. Obviously, she's going to be popular since she's both strong and pretty. I suppose they could have made her attitude toward people a bit colder if she needed to be less popular, but once again I don't really have issue with this since the heroine should probably be a successful player. Max cooking!?!? Okay, she might be a little bit too perfect.
The plot I definitely found to be lacking (yet I still couldn't stop watching). The second half in Alfheim just was not necessary. They also took Asuna, who in my opinion was a pretty good strong female lead (which can be rare), and just made her the standard damsel in distress. Pretty much killed her character for most of the second half. The first half went by too quickly. So here's how I wish the anime had gone:
First of all, I interpreted the anime as being mainly about Kirito and Asuna's relationship, as well as some of Kirito's other relationships. This is why I can overlook the fact that Kirito is a very OP character, since the actual fighting of monsters is secondary to his relationships. That being said, they could have used the setting more to create more instances of adversity in Kirito's relationships. They did this a bit, but it could have been done more. I think it would have been great if the second half were just gone and they took the Sword Art Online portion and made it all 25 episodes. Then they could have taken more time to develop both Kirito and Asuna's characters from the early stages (when they were less OP). They also could have taken more time developing their relationship and working in some hardships and whatever, rather than Kirito just finding Asuna, who is just magically like the 3rd strongest player in the game now, and them just falling in love pretty quickly. I think that just focusing on the first half like this could have made Sword Art Online really awesome.
Eh, I still liked it though.
*Edit 8/21/13 - I have hence dropped SAO to a 7. Second arc was just way too bad.
*Spoiler Alert*
On my list I have SAO rated at 9, which is a really high score, and higher than the average rating of 8.36 (okay it might actually be an average - I think this website has a weighting system for ratings which I was too lazy to read). Why did I give it this rating. Well, there were some pretty seriously obvious flaws, but I just really enjoyed SAO, enough so that I gave it a really high rating (Also I think I may be guilty of some rating inflation for most things I watch). I watched SAO in the course of two days, and I just really enjoyed it. Some people have criticized it for being mediocre in terms of plot and characters, and, while I can see where they're coming from, I think SAO was just right up my alley so I liked it a lot. Also, the music and art were both nice.
One major criticism of SAO is that the characters are just too plain. The supporting characters are nothing special, and the heroes are just too good. Here's my take on the characters. I thought the supporting characters... were okay. Yeah, they were a little plain. There's not really a well defined villain in part 1, but Sugou, from part 2, is one of the slimiest villains I've seen. You really have to hate the guy. His character is not terribly well developed, but I really hated that guy so that was good.
People say Kirito is just too good - he's the best player in the whole game, he never loses, he pretty much does not encounter much adversity at all, he has a heart of gold, and he's great with girls. Well, it makes sense that he's the best player since he is the hero of the anime. It'd make less sense if he were just some average guy in stuck in SAO. He does lose. He loses to Heathcliff and Kuradeel poisons him. He also encounters some adversity, though it is usually resolved within one episode. I could overlook this though based on my interpretation of the anime, which I'll expand on later. His attitude is pretty typical of the loner hero, which I think is okay. And he might be a little bit too good with girls.
Asuna. I really liked Asuna. She gets a lot of the same criticisms as Kirito. She's too good. She's beautiful, popular, really strong, and has max cooking?!?! She's also from an extremely rich family and just falls in love with Kirito. I don't have any issues with her being pretty. Did they miss an opportunity to triumph over shallowness and make a physically unattractive heroine? Uh... I don't know and I don't really care. Obviously, she's going to be popular since she's both strong and pretty. I suppose they could have made her attitude toward people a bit colder if she needed to be less popular, but once again I don't really have issue with this since the heroine should probably be a successful player. Max cooking!?!? Okay, she might be a little bit too perfect.
The plot I definitely found to be lacking (yet I still couldn't stop watching). The second half in Alfheim just was not necessary. They also took Asuna, who in my opinion was a pretty good strong female lead (which can be rare), and just made her the standard damsel in distress. Pretty much killed her character for most of the second half. The first half went by too quickly. So here's how I wish the anime had gone:
First of all, I interpreted the anime as being mainly about Kirito and Asuna's relationship, as well as some of Kirito's other relationships. This is why I can overlook the fact that Kirito is a very OP character, since the actual fighting of monsters is secondary to his relationships. That being said, they could have used the setting more to create more instances of adversity in Kirito's relationships. They did this a bit, but it could have been done more. I think it would have been great if the second half were just gone and they took the Sword Art Online portion and made it all 25 episodes. Then they could have taken more time to develop both Kirito and Asuna's characters from the early stages (when they were less OP). They also could have taken more time developing their relationship and working in some hardships and whatever, rather than Kirito just finding Asuna, who is just magically like the 3rd strongest player in the game now, and them just falling in love pretty quickly. I think that just focusing on the first half like this could have made Sword Art Online really awesome.
Eh, I still liked it though.
*Edit 8/21/13 - I have hence dropped SAO to a 7. Second arc was just way too bad.
Posted by xjoint | Mar 20, 2013 2:49 AM | 0 comments