STORY:
Our story begins with the release of the brand new VRMMORPG, Sword Art Online. Players are able to control their in game avatar with their bodies while wearing something called Nerve Gear. On its launch day everything seems to be running smoothly until the creator, Akihiko Kayaba, announces to everyone that they are trapped in SAO until someone clears all 100 floors of it. Oh and if you die in the game, you die for real. PEOPLE DIE IF THEY ARE KILLED! So the story is setup like it will be an epic action adventure quest to survive, which is a really great idea for a story. Sadly the writers didn't focus very much on this at all, instead they focus on the romance between the two main characters, which I'll get to later. The problem I have with the story is it doesn't focus on the main issue enough, the issue of you know being trapped in a comma and forced to play a life-or-death survival game! The time skips that are in SAO doesn't help the story either, the writers condensed around two years of time into the first three or so episodes. I was left wonder, what happened in that amount of time? Why can't I see that? Many questions were left unanswered until the end (also I'll get to later) In short, the story was a mess, it was promising but it failed.
CHARACTERS:
Our main protagonist is Kirito, a solo player that likes to play a Massively Multiplayer Game by himself... yea so he is the anti-social lone-wolf cardboard cutout. I didn't like him at the beginning of SAO. He just felt like another generic quietly overpowered character that we've seen about one billion times before; however, over the course of the series I grew to like him a little bit more. Mainly seeing the affects of being trapped in a video game for over two years. This little ounce of character development made him seem more real. Next we have Princess Peach, woops, I mean Asuna. She was introduced as a badass female lead who didn't take anything from anybody, but she turns into a generic tsundere, because OMG Kirito! The romance between Kirito and Asuna is so forced, and so generic I'm fairly sure that a five year old could write a better love story than this. Kirito and Asuna didn't get along all that well at the beginning, but all of a sudden they get "married" wut. The last character is Suguha who is introduced later on an gets plenty of development by which I mean she is a walking piece of fan service and is completely useless without Kirito. Every female character that Kirito runs into seems to become completely reliant on him for no good reason. The supporting cast is... kinda meh. Honestly the supporting characters didn't do a whole lot for me.
ART:
WOW, just WOW. The art and animation in Sword Art Online is something to behold. It is simply gorgeous. The world they are trapped in looks stunning and the action scenes are amazing to look at. The art and animation definitely shines its brightest when you see the epic boss battles. The character designs are also very good as well. If you the opportunity to watch this in High Definition, FREAKING DO IT! SAO looks amazing.
SOUND:
At this point I should just have to say Yuki Kajiura and that's all. The openings for SAO were great sounding and the OST was a great thing to listen too. She really is one of the best out there. The music always seemed to make everything better so thank you Yuki Kajiura for being awesome. The dub of SAO is also very well done. In the beginning I wish Todd Haberkorn was Kirito instead, but Bryce Papenbrook did a very nice job giving Kirito a shy and quiet personality, and he was also made the transition to very pissed off Kirito very smooth. I'm glad that Bryce got Kirito over Todd because well... Todd is in everything else anyway (included SAO) but also Bryce did a very good job with the screaming. Chermai Leigh did a good job as Asuna too, but there wasn't a whole lot she did that stood out as amazing.
ENDING: (No spoilers)
If you've read any of my reviews you know my opinion about endings, THERE ARE PARAMOUNT! A good show can be ruined by a bad ending, and a mediocre show can be made great by a great ending. SAO sits around the middle in that regard. The ending is very much a Deus Ex style ending, it was similar I believe to that of .hack//Sign, but at least SAO offered closure. It wasn't a bad ending just a little bit fast.
OVERALL:
To wrap it all up Sword Art Online is a great looking and great sounding show, but is let down by a messy story and characters that are hard to relate to. I do believe it gets better at the end, but I am still disappointed at the wasted potential that was left out of the story. I still recommend SAO to anyone, but don't listen to the hype about it being the best anime ever. It is an enjoyable watch.
