The story revolves around Kirito, a young boy who is trapped in a virtual game, where gameover equals the highest penalty: the actual death of the player. Many people might wonder why the novel itself received so much attention. Certainly, the story is not really new to the trend nowadays but it was somewhat ahead of the curve when it was first written in 2002. A well-written plot combines with actions and refreshing romance elements, and put altogether into a fantastic MMO world which can only exist in our imagination – these premises alone are enough to melt the soft hearts of many readers, thus
...
raising its popularity. As the story goes by, there are many things to be amazed by creative minds of the author as he successfully portrayed the beautiful world of Aincrad.
So, to the anime part:
--- Story ---
As a novel reader, I always seperate adapted products (including manga, anime, visual/light novel) into 2 type: the ones which have potential to be good, and those that do not (or has a lower chance of success). In most cases, visual/light novel adaptions hardly tend to be as great as its origin. Sadly, same goes for SAO
SAO well started at two first episode, which could hold the potential to be good as many decent light novel adaption. But as the story goes on, it begins to show a lack of comprehensiveness in plot.
For example, "Red nose reindeer" is a side story in volume 2 which contains a lot of developments and touching scene, as well as deep inner thoughts of the main character, was crammed into the length of a single episode. Despite that, the episode was well delivered, the lack of minor details was acceptable, because audiences were able to feel the tragedy that this episode wanted to portray. However, Episode 4 was a huge disappointment - instead of delivering the regrets of Kirito by highlighting on Silica and Pina relationship like in the LN, the episode was half-heartedly written, and Silica was only a mean to be used. Episode 4 technically ignored Kirito's feelings as he seeks for salvation by saving Silica and her trusted partner. Unnecessary fan services, loli stereotypes fed the audience and ruined this episode, even though it was not supposed to be fun to begin with. For example, Silica could have used her time thinking about Pina, instead of worrying about her appearance in front of Kirito.
In the following episodes, the anime felt like an episodic series, when random stories happened, most of which were hardly related to the main plot. "They were only side-stories" is the perfect excuse for poorly written plot up to this moment, but even so they could have done the side-stories better. That said, the anime still has some positive points which attracts audiences, especially new comers. The plot is interesting, the world of Aincrad is animated realistically on-screen, and the sweet romantic moments between Kirito and Asuna are heart-warming to watch.
Score: 7.0/10
--- Characters ---
Kirito is first introduced as a lone wolf, an unsociable young boy with great gaming skills. We can see that his character was well developed from the start, with his turning from a solo player into a cooperative player by joining a guild. He began to familiarize with the guild members and share their experiences, joys, and sadness. Then he met Sachi, a girl with an open heart, and gradually realized how important his existence was to others, and figured out his true purpose in life. It would’ve been good if the anime had continued down that road. But instead, he was then built into a cool "black swordman" character, aimlessly traveled around Aincard with unclear purposes and did whatever he wanted. To sum up, as the story progresses, Kirito seems to have less depth as a character than he once had in the beginning.
Asuna truly is the most easily-favorited female character this season: Possessing tsun characteristics, a good-looking figure, excellent skills as a player and even great cooking skills, she’s a perfect female partner which can hardly be found in most anime nowadays. But what she still lacks is the screen time to show her romantic feelings for Kirito. She has been in relationship with Kirito for a long time, but with the limited length of an anime episode, it feels like their romantic developments were forced and unnatural. Aside from that, she is portrayed as a energetic, lovely and easily embarrassed girl. Her interactions with Kirito are interesting and somewhat entertaining, relaxing to watch in the whole series. (Oh and it could be considered one of the main reasons to keep audiences watching the show).
Other minor characters have made their appearance as well, but they haven’t present any special traits because of inadequate screen time. Nevertheless, there are a few exception:
Sachi is the shy-type girl who was introduced in episode 3. Just looking at her makes everyone wants to hold her dearly in their arms and protect her. She was one of the few characters that I wanted to stay longer, as one single episode was not enough. Lisbeth is also one of my favorite girl in the show. With her lively traits, she gives Kirito a hard time to deal with and also holds the feelings and antics of any normal girl: filled with happiness when she is in love, smile beautifully when she gathers enough courage to confess, and cry silently when she has a broken heart.
Score: 7.0/10
--- Art works/Animations ---
A-1 pictures are doing a good job adapting SAO into an anime. The sceneries are beautifully drawn as they portray the realistic world of Aincrad, and most of its details seem to fit with what I have imagined when I was reading the novel: from the cloudless blue sky over the vast greenness of the grass field that Kirito always lies on, to the sight of the forest stretched to as far as the horizon, or the barren wasteland in some of the dungeons.
The colors are bright, but seems unrealistic like Code Geass, or any similar shows which use a same type of colour for each single part on character's body, except there were some shaders which varied to different colours when the lights reflect on. And another thing I do not like, is that having familiarized with art works from novel, I found the art styles to be a little annoying cause it came from the same character designer with Working! (Shingo Adachi). All the characters are somewhat having the "same face syndrome", the term describes for itself when every character tends to have similarity in faces, just by changing hair styles and colors to make them look different.
The battle animations are not very good either, they put up some good battle scenes at first, with smooth animation and lots of frames in a single scene. But all of that quickly became disappointing in several of the subsequent episodes, as there were no actual action scene at all, except some of what can only be called "slideshow battle sequence". Nevertheless, when it came to important scenes which requires actual action, they showed some high-quality action sequences. So to conclude, the animation was quite hit-and-miss, but some of its problems are understandable as they can be considered typical ways to reduce budget in anime production.
Score: 7.0/10
--- Music/Sound ---
SAO has a dream team of music/sound production, the famous musician Yuki who composed theme song in Kara no Kyoukai, music in Fate/Zero, Pandora Hearts and many more. Just only her name affirms the high quality of music in SAO. But that alone is not enough, Sho Wanatabe ( Madoka theme song composition, F/Z) also joined her forces. And to top all that, they have LiSA, who is well-known for the works in F/Z and AB!, performed the OP for SAO. These prominent musician make SAO one of the best this season in terms of music quality.
Score: 9.0/10
Enjoyment
When I heard they were going to cram 4 volumes into 25 episode, I knew that the potential for SAO adaption to be as flawless as the original was minimal. [As I've experienced, there are always lack of details, poor developments, several plot holes which affect the flow of story, due to the limited length that any adaption has to face with]. Keeping that in mind, without having any expectation, I watch the anime for its own merits, I enjoy what the adaption has to deliver. Sometimes when they failed to do justice to a scene I like, or leave it out of the script completely, I would feel sad, but I understand that each adaption has its own circumstances, and we - the audiences - have to bear with it.
Score: 9.0/10
---Conclusion---
I know my review is long, but I will appreciate if you read it to the end. I want to say for all those who have dropped the show: give it a few more episode cause the story will be much more interesting and touching in the next couple of episode. It's a bit hasty to drop it right now.
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Story: 7/10
Characters: 7/10
Animation: 7/10
Sound/Music: 9/10
Enjoyment: 9/10
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Overall: 8/10
Note: there will be an update when the show is finished.
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Sep 12, 2012
Sword Art Online
(Anime)
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The story revolves around Kirito, a young boy who is trapped in a virtual game, where gameover equals the highest penalty: the actual death of the player. Many people might wonder why the novel itself received so much attention. Certainly, the story is not really new to the trend nowadays but it was somewhat ahead of the curve when it was first written in 2002. A well-written plot combines with actions and refreshing romance elements, and put altogether into a fantastic MMO world which can only exist in our imagination – these premises alone are enough to melt the soft hearts of many readers, thus
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