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If you need something refreshing to watch, this is an absolute chef's kiss of an anime.

First of all, I just think it's wonderful that we have a fat main character but his weight is never a defect. He even goes to a doctor regularly and the doctor does not dwell on him being fat. I know he's a walrus, but like, have you seriously seen anime willing to do that without at least making a joke out of it? The characters are also older (early 40s, compared to 90% of anime being about high schoolers or early 20s at the oldest), and people respond pretty ... well to neurodivergence, so it checks a surprising amount of boxes for diverse and positive representation.

A couple things I don't love: First, while I mentioned that I found characters in their 40s to be a refreshing twist, the female characters are mostly barely legal. At least they aren't helpless, though, and they still get fleshed out stories. My other issue is also related to something I just complimented one paragraph ago: the way they approach mental health/neurodiversity. Eventually some well-intentioned characters try to "fix" one character's condition to make them normal, which is kind of a bummer when you could easily compare their behavior to autism or other things you can't just "fix." However, this does have justification in the show, so it's only a minor detraction from my enjoyment.

Overall the characters are remarkably well-written. It's not just about them having depth and development, although they have plenty of both. These characters undergo individual arcs that are relevant to modern struggles: the desire to go viral, enormous student debt, obsessing over tiny things because you can't control the other things that make you unhappy. No matter who you are, I would be shocked if you don't feel like you've been hit hard by at least one of the stories.

I feel like the ending will be the thing to either love or hate about this anime. I won't say much, but I loved it. For me it was just right. This is a show about a charming but complicated world, where nothing happens without leaving some loose ends that trail into something else. Not quite slice of life, not quite action. In order to understand it, you just have to watch it.

This review is going to be geared towards people who haven't watched a lot of anime. Now that it has been around for a full decade, I have seen Sword Art Online cemented into staple lists of starter anime and stuff. Another phenomenon of the past 10 years is anime becoming super duper Walmart-level mainstream in the west, so there are people going around and watching the popular stuff just to cover their bases. So I'm here to warn the fresh weebs: this is one base you DON'T need to cover. Especially if you are a woman, or someone who sees women as human beings, ... please stay away from this show. It's gonna delete all the progress of feminism from your life with a laser beam.

If you're very new to anime, you might be like, oh, there's a lot of female characters in this, and they're all gamers. That's cool, right? NO. THAT'S NOT COOL. YOU ARE IN THE DOMAIN OF CREEPY MEN. RUN. This hits a lot of the same cringe that anime fans are used to, unfortunately: teenage girls are sexual objects, casual hints of incest, a harem of different female fetish archetypes surrounds a vanilla hero who is a special boy for no reason, etc. But they really stand out, relative to their peers in the 2010s, in terms of sexual assault.

Even if you want to set the problematic content aside...(yikes) it's still not as good as other shounen anime doing similar stuff. I get it fanboys, you like videogames and big swords. Everyone likes those things. If you're a gamer, go watch Arcane or something. Besides the MMORPG element, this doesn't have much to offer. None of the things they do here are memorable except for the things you might enjoy if you haven't played a game like that before. You get to watch Kirito respond to ever-changing challenges, with even the potential of cheating working against him, all while balancing resources and the needs of party members, in order to work towards a main goal. Which is great but...that's what makes MMOs popular in the first place. At this point, you'll even find actual video games that do meta 4th wall breaking stuff. There are so many ways to scratch this particular geek-porn itch. I don't think the excitement of strategizing through a massive game in anime form is worth the shallow characters, thematic emptiness and bewildering pacing problems of SAO.

When I say thematic emptiness, this is where I usually hit a wall when discussing anime with my friends. For some people, anime just isn't something to take all too seriously. Simply by being anime, they won't expect any depth. Either that, or the opposite: I'll meet people who go really hard into the surface level passion of a given anime - the kind of people who like Batman because it's dark or Deadpool because it's irreverent and not much else. SAO really has one idea - What If Video Games Was Actually Not Fun, What If Games Was SERIOUS - and that's all they do with it. There are no additional commentaries intermixed or journeys to challenge and then reaffirm the ideals of the show. It's just Kirito vs the world, over and over. Occasionally I will admit that they try to make some points about cooperation in a system that drives competition, but this is undermined by Kirito basically doing everything on his own unless there is a random game element that requires someone else to help. Not exactly a lesson learned there. If you don't care about anime having quality story, or you're easily drawn into the full force of a simple concept like this, then it won't bother you, but I feel like it does a disservice to how good a show like this could be. Even Spy Kids 3D: Game Over had more points to make with this kind of premise.

(----- Minor spoiler with names left out: -----) I remember getting into a comments debate over this show when it was airing. I said, hey, isn't it weird that characters went from rivals who scarcely knew each other to getting married in the span of a couple days, despite being teenagers? And a guy told me I "couldn't possibly understand the bonds that are forged in war" ... And that is the attitude of an SAO fan that you gotta run away from. (----- end spoiler warning -----)

The best thing I can say about this anime is that it's an easy watch because there's only one character with any amount of agency you need to worry about and a reaaaaaaaally clear objective/direction for him to pursue. You literally get levels and stats to remind you how strong this special boy is, and how strong he's trying to become. And it's not like Kirito is a terrible person either, so I can sort of understand why people root for him - at least early on. He might be a complete Gary Stu, but I'm not going to dump on people who like him. At least he's kinda polite! The way he will confidently respond to the problems thrown his way, without too much of an ego, is almost comforting. I'm being generous with him because I want you to trust me when I say that "boring protagonist" is the least of your worries. A good piece of media can get away with a boring main character sometimes - but this is not that show.

I guess I'll conclude by re-iterating that this show is so unfathomably awful to teenage girls. Oh man. Terrible. It makes Fight Club look like The Feminine Mystique. It artificially offers the idea of competent girl gamers and then manifests them as useless sexy damsels, without giving up the original conceit, because that would require admitting that they are only present to desire the main character. So if you're on the verge of taking the red pill, this show will work wonders in terms of showing you a token female whining about respect and ambition and doing nothing to actually earn it. Like I said, it's practically weaponized against gender equality. The otaku misogyny laser death ray.