Sword Art Online Episode 25 Discussion

What did you think of this episode?

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Jan 24, 4:31 AM

#1451

Alvie48xi

Offline

Oct 2021

1341

Last episode I thought everything ended well but who could've known that Dio would appear in the parking lot with a knife in this episode lol, seeing kirito beating him even in real life was satisfying, if it weren't for the in game pain tolerance system that mentally damaged sugou, kirito would stand no chance to win against a proper adult in real life.

Can't imagine how depressed asuna's father is not only his company RECT face the same fate as ARGUS, he planned to let his daughter marry the guy who keep her locked inside the game with 300 more players.

Kirito and asuna first meeting in real life as well as their first kiss on the same day, they're really romantic. On the other hand suguha probably wouldn't give up on her brother if he keep treating her like that.....the last scene where they having a dance under the moon light even surpassed your average couple activities lol ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

"The seed" is basically an open source of this VRMMO game concept now everyone throughout the world can have their own homebuilt SAO but the best thing about this is that your same account can be used for logging in multiple game as long as they use "the seed" for their game. Seeing Aincrad appearing again give me goosebumps, considering kayaba's conscious literally exist in this VR seed world, I bet he probably is happy because of the way kirito used "the seed"

Sugou was a shitty antagonist but kayaba remain a good antagonist, heathcliff was the best villain.

I like kirito as a protagonist even tho there're moment when he acted quite edgy but its not a problem for me, asuna was also a cute heroine but personally I kinda prefer suguha over her probably because she's incredibly thicc(lol). The harem wasn't so bad and the fan service was okayish except suguha fan service, they were top notch. The animation of this series was really great and the soundtrack was a pure work of masterclass, every time they played the main theme I got an eargasm. ＼(^o^)／

Sword art online is an incredible series. The first season of this anime can be described as a proper masterpiece, the unique concept and its great setting is a prof of this franchise popularity, and I myself understand it throughly after finishing it. Aincrad arc is without a doubt a solid masterpiece and the alfheim arc was also great. Personally I have a blast watching this anime and my enjoyment is over the chart. 10/10 (＾▽＾)

Feb 17, 11:49 PM

#1452

ElDoRado1239

Offline

Oct 2014

Just finished.

Well, what can I say. The best way to describe the feeling I have right now is roughly "incompetent writer somehow managed to get a great production team to turn his half-baked vaguely-connected fanfics into an anime". I've heard people mention this anime is based on some sort of competition entry, so maybe that's actually what happened?

It really had no idea what it wants to do. Even worse, at many points it felt like the author(s) had a rough idea of what they want to do, but were afraid to actually complete it. There were plenty of "story crumbs", and also character outlines, which had a lot of potential, but many interesting parts were just skipped. Fights, travels, months, years, skip skip skip. Imagine something cool happened.

The story also manages to recycle ideas within a single season, that's kinda remarkable. Why did it have to involve two MMORPGs is beyond me, the name "Sword Art Online" feels like a compelte misnomer since the ALO part was way better, way more fleshed out, and felt way more important. It really felt like the anime is about ALO, and SAO was just some sort of prelude.

Another glaring issue was the fact that the first part was about dying for real, while the second part was all over the place - sometimes their emotions and reactions matched what you would expect in SAO, fear of real death, other times they took death lightly because it's just a game, and yet other times they introduced random "horrible death penalties" which were never explained in any way. Also, did they feel pain in ALO or not? This also seemed extremely inconsistent.

I also believed the anime promises a lot of great battles and deep gameplay mechanics, but this just wasn't the focus of the show at all. The anime could have easily been re-themed into anything else, I don't understand why would anyone praise this for this premise, since the premise was the weakest point. Especially the "reasoning" for the second half to happen, which was completely idiotic, that's sadly the most fitting word. Wedding with a 17 yo comatose girl in a hospital and then being adopted as a son, while also moving the comatose girl into a different game the public can access, which is also the place where you stored 300 patients you stole just in time before SAO was deleted for an extremely weird reason... bah, the feeble attempt at gluing the first and second half was just sad. And for what... for doing the same again, just in a different game, while dropping the very interesting idea of dying in game? Again, this just makes me feel the author didn't know how to flesh out SAO, so they made a new thing, because they feel more confident creating new things and throwing them at the viewer in hopes the viewer won't notice that the author cannot do anything else than starting new things.

The actual focus and strengths of this anime were character interactions and audiovisuals. If they removed all those one-off characters and focused on Kirito, Asuna and Suguha, it could have been a lot better. No "crime solving", no sleeping in dragon holes, ideally just one MMORPG for the first season, and most definitely no time skips... that would be my recommendation. Or, go the other way - make the entire season about first few floors, people learning how SAO works, all that stuff I was actually expecting, conquering level 100 at the end of the final episode of the entire show.

The anime is very well produced, there's no denying that. But, and I don't know if it's the fault of the adaptation or the source, it felt like an empty shell of an anime, and the script felt like a fanfic from some amateur writer at several important points.

I'm not sure whether I'll continue watching the other seasons, just to see where can this go (I have absolutely no idea why would this continue at this point), but this first season was... a prettified nothing.

First half: 3/10
Second half: 7/10
Overall: 5/10

I wouldn't recommend anyone to watch it, unless they already happen to love the LNs. There's nothing much to see here.

P.S.:
To be perfectly fair though, production-wise it's definitely 8/10 and reaches 9/10 at points. Visuals and audio were both great, characters well designed (visually) and those few battles that were actually shown were mostly pretty good. It's really a shame all of this effort couldn't be used for a project that deserved it, something with actual substance.

ElDoRado1239Feb 18, 12:28 AM

Mar 4, 3:31 PM

#1453

kochamtosty

Offline

Jan 2021

a lot of action and good plot

Mar 13, 5:02 PM

#1454

DavidMahomes2014

Offline

Aug 2024

rewatched SAO, its kind of similar to Sword Art Online

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