Now onto the review (ranting).
This one of the adaptation with lots of fanboy (me), fangirls, and a lot of ranting in forums. Many screams of happiness when the news of the adaptation was confirmed, and several has already believed SAO's anime will be one of the best anime that season.
Turns out it's not.
SAO is the anime adaptation of a series of light novels of the same name by Reki Kawahara, with an amazing amount of hype (not without reeason for the novel). It is set on 2022, where humanity has finally for the first time able to completely go inside the game world using virtual reality technology.
It's pretty mainstream since real life MMORPG genre has quite lots of works, for example .hack G.U. or Yureka. But this one gave with a tint taste of darkness; Death is real here. Death in the game is equal with death in real life. A promising premise.
It's too bad that A-1 Pictures went retard with their adaptations (as usual). SAO kickstart with a somewhat promising and fulfilling first episodes. But they went idiot for following episodes. I have read the original source material, the light novels. So I'm going with a lot of ranting and comparison between them.
SAO doubtlessy has a promising and quite original premise, like I said, and the light novel fully uses the premise to maximum and gave me a very good reading of a series. The anime, however, totally ruins what the novel has managed to reach. At start we were given a large number of VRMMORPG player who were the first to taste the very first virtual reality game, but they were given a merciless truth about the death factor of a game. The anime managed to adapt the initial sequence for the story rather well. However, A-1 Pictures managed burn the rest of the episodes and the potential of this anime as well.
Here's the list of what made the adaptation an epic failure:.
In the first 7 episodes, what started as a merciless game of death was turned into a get-all-the-girls-you-met story. I mean, goddammit, they turn the starting arc into a freaking harem episodes. Yeas, those girls are cute; yes, we are oh so very thankful for the fanservices. Not. These are the goddamn side stories, why the hell would they put it in the initial start? They are side stories, they are not meant to be a major plot points. And the studio didn't give a good job at it. They reduced (massively) and changed the dialogue and event sequence, making it felt awkward and felt like a damn cheesy soap opera.
When the arc finally back on the death game aspect, it fell into the pit of doom further by putting the cheesy romance aspect as the main focus. Some people love romance, hell, I love romance, but only when they are given naturally and within reason. The studio throws away the world building aspect, it throws away the dungeon exploration, and they gave off the main couples in ultimate lovey-dovey mode. The light novel gave the readers a healthy portion of each aspect with the right and natural course of event, while the anime just do a copy pasta, throw away an amount of important ones and focusing on to the romance instead. And they didnt even do a good job at it! Once again, they totally reduced the important sequence of event and cutting lots of plot, making them a rushed and forced storytelling.
The second arc is as much of a disappointment, if not more.
The second arc was done in ALfheim Online (ALO), a second generation major VRMMORPG after SAO. In here, A-1 Pictures gave us not only a cut down and reduced version of an adaptation but also adding several stuffs that once again was done poorly. They completely ruins the supposedly touching events in the light novel considering the new character in ALO: the little sister.
This is where my hatred reached its peak. (Bit of spoiler ahead). The reduced and cut down adaptation was executed very poorly, they skip and skip and skip events that tie down the major plot together and ruins it as a whole. 'Oh, since we need to appease our customers further, why dont we add lots and lots of unnatural fanservice? And let's not give a damn about the storytelling!' Screw them. They made what is a story about reaching the impossible into a forced and unnatural story. And what's up with the eye candies!? God, just what the hell were the studios thinking? You want to make this into a low-budget ecchi anime?
The event considering the little sister is an event of of despairing, heartbreaking moment of revelation in the light novel. But, noooooo, the studio just had to make it damn predictable and shallow kind of event. The light novel made me feel what and how the little sister felt, how their problem and misunderstanding almost destroy the siblings' relationship. The anime made me feel like watching a dirt.
Next is the total ruination of the characters. Focusing too the romance aspect in the first half making the focus of the character is only at our main couple making the side charas even more sidelined. And that's it. The studio is practically saying "Screw the other charas, let's not pay much attention on them. Let's instead give a full throttle screen time on the main couple!!" All the heart-wrenching moment between characters was made into a superficial relationship into a big amount of cheesy lines.
Let's rant about the animation now.
In terms of background visual, they did an admittedly wonderful job. The background was a sight to behold, and they made a change to the ALO game focus, the Yggdrasil, which I like. The action animation part, on the other hand, is a disappointment. They made a lot of important action a still picture animation, with only adding sound effects and vibrating effects. All the actually moving animation is pretty average. They didnt give their all at all in the animation.
The music is one that's done in a very fulfilling result, IMO, considering the one who compose them is Kajiura Yuki. But when it comes to it, there's actually only one BGM that's memorable, the battle BGM 'Swordland'. The OP and ED was not bad, especially the first OP and the second ED.
To conclude this review in a sentence: Screw you, A-1 Pictures. You destroyed what big potential SAO light novel has in the poorly executed dirtbag you made and called it adaptation. This adaptation is a major failure and disappointment for most of the LN fans. Not only it crushes our anticipation, it also gave a bad mindset to those who have yet to read the original light novel, and in some casesit even made some of those who actually read them the anime impression when they read the novel, making them dropped the series. With all of my subjectivity, I gave the anime 3/10. And that was being kind. This is not an adaptation, this is a cutdown copypasta of the LN. They could've made this a movie adaptation for the first volume, a series of OVAs for the second volume, and another movie adaptations for each following arc of the light novel. They could've pour a lot more budget it it's a movie adaptation, and gained a comeback from amounts of BD sales, buuyed by satisfied costumers and fans. Instead thay made this dirtbag.
If a second season was made, I can only hope a different studio handle it, one that was less retard then A-1 Pictures.
