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I want to make a disclaimer first. I don't think Shangari-la is a bad anime because the author need those unrealistic setting to bring audience enough stimulus/ excitement to keep on watching the show, but I do have to say Shangari-la is a very shitty MMO that has very ancient design and unrealistic premises, especially for a MMO that's said to be God tier game taken place in future with 30 million player-base.

For someone that played MMO for more than 25 years since the early 2000s up until now (with more than 50000+ hrs play time), I can confidently tell you that a MMO ... like Shangari-la cannot work / exist in real life.

I want to ask you guys a question first. What do you think is the most important aspect for a successful/ sustainable MMO?
insanely difficult raid bosses? Free Open World? Lots of class variety and skills?
Those are all nice and all, however, the most crucial aspect for the survival of a MMO game is REPLAYABILITY and ACCESSIBILITY, which Shangari-la sorely lacks.

I'm going to talk about all those baffling design from raid standpoint and game design standpoint:
1. Infinite rev item allowed in raid (and an expensive p2w item even)
2. P2W item up to 100mil in game currency during raid (per encounter)
3. Boss design relying on ultra rare stat boost items with some insane drawback like dropping 30 levels.
4. Permanent destructible gears inside raid (hello really? Boss has moves that break your gears and when they break it's perma gone)
5. Shit community that after 2 years of in game release time, 30 million players cant even beat one ultra boss. (it's almost like those ancient old MMO from 2000s with ultra bosses wondering in the world map that requires insane gear check/manpower)
6. MMO community that's so ancient, as if youtubers / content creators don't exist (players don't know about most of the secret areas, which is baffling)
7. Hiding Vipor Bunny town for 2 years that no-one outside of mc triggered it before (what kind of MMO dev hide their own contents this long?)
8. We now know that the in-game story only progress 12% within 2 years. Locking major story progression of the game behind ONE CLEAR ONLY Super Bosses , on top of locking any future attempt of the boss if anyone cleared it. What kind of of MMO can survive for 2 years while hiding/locking 90% of the contents in the game?

Some light players that watch Shangari-la said the game is like Elden Ring, however , Elden Ring is a single player game with some coop feature so the premise is completely different. Everyone get to challenge all the super bosses in Elden Ring, there's no restriction nor is it hidden. Furthermore, in Elden Ring, almost all hidden areas are discovered/ all bosses beaten in less than a week or two due to active player-base and online community, so none of Shangari-la baffling design on top of incompetent clueless player base applies to Elden Ring.

The whole premise of Shangari-la is so unrealistic for a modern MMO/ modern game, as if the show is taken place pre 2000s , but they have this futuristic VR tech that's way beyond our current tech.
People who find Shangari-la setting realistic probably never play MMO, or haven't play MMO for decades.

We live in an information explosion era with players digging thousands of hours into gaming, so mc and his friends being the only competent players in the game that trigger top secret contents and beat super bosses for the past 2 years in a 30 million player-base MMO makes no sense no matter how you look at it.
The author seems like he's using his ancient gaming experience from two decades ago (when info transection is limited, few gaming media/ content creators exist), then try to apply it to a futuristic setting MMO. (In fact from the all the game setting/ design, I'd argue the author probably don't play MMO at all, he probably only play single player action rpg. There's a statistic showing that only 12% of Japanese players play MMO genre, very minority)

I can confidently tell you any sane game developers who try to adapt this game and release it later on (oh trust me, they'd do it), would have WAYYYYY different system/ design from the show's setting , otherwise people would drop this shit game so fast. This would be yet another generic jrpg adapted from an anime like SAO games.

SAO is no stranger to heavy plot armour , cheap characterization, one-note evil villains, irrational plot, and this season 3 pretty much sums up everything bad about SAO and put it into one whole season. Somehow episode 6 is the embodiment of all the worst elements of SAO.

Let's ignore the appalling and totally out of place tentacle rape from the very first episode and move on just to the story element of SAO S3.

SAO takes the route of typical shonen powerup system, aka. power of friendship/ power of love, but executes them in the most generic , uncreative, boring, cliche, unbearable way possible.
The problem is ... the pacing overall is just very bad and it just doesn't get the point of why these powerup is significant, especially with those comedic villains that just happens to have infinite hp as long as the killing blow is not done by Kirito.

When 50k enemy trope invaded UW, instead of coming up strategies to fight back, instead of retreat, instead of doing anything meaningful, instead of discuss with the Knights and the soldiers about what to do, all stupid Kirito's harem do is praying for Kirito to fight off 50k tropes for them. Like wth? Why do they assume Kirito can fight 50k tropes at once, w/o knowing how the incarnation works in UW world?

So basically everyone just worship him as god, and assume that as soon as he wake up, 50k tropes will be a cake to deal with and everything will be fine. And then Kirito ofc woke up and able to do exactly what everyone expected him to do and become Jesus.
This is terrible writing and characterization.

Also don't get me started how pointless that trauma part and wake up part is.
You can put this wake up sequence on the first episode of season 2 and it'd make absolutely no difference because all of those things done in S2/ S3 are unrelated to what makes Kirito wakes up, and unrelated to Kirito's trauma.
The fact that they never mention/ showcase any sign of trauma throughout the entirety of Alicization story during Kirito's time in UW world before he went into coma further proves how pointless the whole trauma scene is.

You can skip the whole war thing, whole Alice with Kirito thing, whole everyone talking to Kirito thing and the whole wakeup sequence would be unaffected whatsoever. Apparently all you need to do is let the outside ppl connect 4 of his harems' memories.
Screw all the development, screw every other characters that try to help Kirito, screw the whole war, they're completely unrelated. Even w/o the war Kirito will wake up anyway.

Also not just Kirito, the characterization and asspull of all the villains are even worse.
PoH being the worst villain so far with all the bullshit and infinite life.
As if he's the only guy out of all the 80000 players that have sad/ hateful memory , what gives him right to do all those asspull?
Apparently out of all the 80000 otakus, there're only 2 guys with infinite will power and imagination to do whatever they want in UW world, which is Kirito and PoH, all the rest are bunch of idiots that can't do shit with no past , no memory, and no will of their own. Yeah, it's just heavy plot armours for the the convenience of story.

Overall, good animation and soundtrack can no longer save this dumpster fire plot and characters for SAO: Alicization.
Back in day when I watched the first half of SAO: Alicization season 1, I once thought SAO has the potential for being something good, but this season has proven me wrong in the most disheartening fashion.

Disclaimer: my viewpoint is not base on my childhood nostalgia for Digimon, but as someone who rewatched Digimon Adventure as an adult a few years back, as well as someone who finished most of the recent great series like Digimon Universe App Monster. So my viewpoint is base on the actual quality of story-telling and characterization for this Digimon reboot.

Unlike most people, I can actually easily get pass all of the "childish element" of Digimon series (which would bother a lot of teenagers/ adolescent audience and they'd rate it down because of that ) and go straight into the core theme, the storytelling, and ... the characterization of Digimon series. What it means is the childish element will not diminish my value and viewpoint toward a Digimon serie.

First off, the pacing of this reboot is way too fast for us to get any emotional investment out of the characters. Compare to the original which the children spend a lot of time going through different scenario of adventure, be it joy, be it sorrow, or even fight and get mad at each other, the bond between the new children seem very weak/ shallow/ forced. The only bond done right so far is the bond between Taichi and Koshirou, which they spent 3 full episodes developing friendship.

Secondly , which is my biggest gripe for the serie so far, the catalyst for the digimon partner to shinka is way too weak compare to the old serie, especially for the important iconic shinka of Complete form on the 2 main mcs for the lastest 2 episodes.
The complete form shinka is a representation of chosen children's mental development throughout the serie, so without enough emotional investment , the shinka itself feels soulless. In the past serie the children went through way more serie of event, as well as revealing more of their mental growth to achieve all those complete form shinka.

However, this reboot just feel like they're giving out shinka like candy, like every episode need to have 1 shinka so you don't get bored. However, all I get from this is a soulless shinka on top of cheap character development.

These whole issus all come back to super rushed pacing and plot , which failed to give characters enough screen time to highlight their development. Especially considering how Yamato's crest is about "friendship", they didn't give him enough screen time to justify his friendship shinka.

As someone who's a big fan of the buildup done by the original Digimon serie and Digimon Universe App monster, can't say I wasn't disappointed by this Digimon adventure reboot.

What a masterpiece of Digimon serie which the spotlight got overtaken by Digimon Tri. (Tri is a complete dumpster fire)
If I have to use one sentence to describe this serie, it'd be this is a show on surface level catered and aiming toward kids, however have enough insight and theme for adults to fully enjoy and appreciate the show.

It's such a controversy approach because it may end up driving away both side of audience if they didn't give enough patience to sit through the whole show and digest the theme and characters. The show try to go through a deep and dark theme with flamboyant ... kid-vibe presentation. It never tries to be overly dark and edgy, yet it doesn't shy away from discuss about dark and serious topic.

Not to mention this is the first Digimon serie to feature REAL gay relationship (It's not just fanfic or implied gayness like other Digimon series. It has dialogues and interaction demonstrating real affection of 2 boys).

The 5 main protagonists of this series all went through amazing development and chemistry , Each of the casts have amazing backstory and character arcs to flash out their ideal, personality, goal, and affection, and none of them are really left out. You'd end up liking all of them despite the initial controversy.

The pacing of this serie is great too. The only episodes I feel unnecessary / boring/ filler-ish is ep1~4 , before the side characters showed up. The weak start of the serie probably give a bad first impression, thus drive away many audience because most people only have enough patience for as little as 3 episodes for an anime. However the pacing and story, as well as characterization really start to pick up after episode 7, thus becomes a wild ride ever since.

The biggest cons of this show is probably the usage of CGI and OST choice. There are some CG model of later evolution that looks cool, but many of them looks jarring, and color usage / design is out of place compare to the 2D art. However, the action scene is done relatively well despite sometimes the 3D model looks jarring. This CG model mostly look much worse than the hand drawn Digimon in the same show.

The OST choice is strange too. Most of them are forgettable at best, and some of them even sounds annoying. There's only a few good OST near the end of the show.
The OP and ED are both nice though. Compare to any of the previous Digimon series, this has probably the weakest OST soundtrack, especially the evolution OST.

This show is criminally underrated and underwatched because it is bound by the IP "Digimon", and bound of the entitlement of being a "kid show" with its presentation , despite go through intensive and meaningful character arcs for all the main characters, as well as discussing theme better than most 13 episode seasonal anime (13 episodes is just not enough to fully flash out theme most of the time), as well as portraying a better love story than many of those 2 hrs anime movies about a boy meets a girl.

This serie rivals the original Digimon adventure 01 , which none of the later in between series come close to giving me such lasting impact.