One of the main reasons I feel the need to write the review is because I see a lot of fanboys praising it to oblivion alongside a lot of people who have this incredibly big hate boner for SAO, but I never see that much of the guys in the middle of all of this, guys like me.
With all that said, I guess it's time I move on to the actual review
Sword Art Online (Or SAO for short) was this incredibly popular anime back in 2012. Like, really, really popular. Heck, all of my otaku friends were watching it, it was the shit back then, an anime about a MMORPG? Back then, this was a new thing for us. There was the .hack series, but other than a few series like that, this wasn't a setting that was explored that often in anime. Now, looking back at these past years, it seems that this kind of setting has become very popular due to the hype SAO had back then. Yeah... the hype.
I'll be blunt right away: This show was overhyped. A lot of people, including it myself, were calling it one of the best series ever, something that, looking back it now, SAO isn't even close of being.
Animation and sound wise, it's pretty good. The art style used in this anime is incredibly colorful and captivating which is only further improved by an amazing soundtrack that knows when to stand out and when to blend with the atmosphere. I think that it's pretty safe to say that this is the best part of SAO. Sadly, the story ain't it...
This story has received a lot of criticism for the past few years and, for the most part, it is correct. The main problem with the story comes from the characters themselves and the way they are portrayed. You have Kirito who is your typical shonen protagonist, except that this one is incredibly overpowered to the point of making many Mary Sues out there hide in fear. Yes, he is a really big Mary Sue, he is the kind of guy who has no problem facing most enemies and quickly solves the situation with one lazy swing from his sword. Not only that, he is also that "swaggy" character who gets all the ladies, and that doesn't help him becoming less of a Mary Sue at all....
His personality is ok, even if he needed maybe a tiny bit more of humor to balance out his serious attitude. However, on the scale of shonen protagonists, he's not that different from what we've seen personality-wise, so it's not a really big issue.
The other main character is a girl called Asuna, who Kirito met inside SAO and has teamed up with. In the first few episodes, Asuna is a bit of a badass character, but then her Tsundere senses activate and she quickly becomes a pretty girl who falls in love with the main protagonist. Look, I don't have a problem with she being total Tsundere, I don't have a problem with the romantic subplot (for the most part), I just have a problem how sudden this transformation felt. One second she is kicking ass and the next she is cooking a fucking meal... and trust me, she doesn't get better later on.
Overall, I found the characters in SAO to be poorly written for the most part, which is definitely the worst part about the story and can be a pretty big joykiller for some. However, the characters are the only part about the story that I would consider a joykiller because I found the rest of the story to be fairly decent.
At the end of the day, I don't hate SAO despite my big problem with the characters because, despite all the harsh criticism, I look back at it and find myself to be entertained by it, which at the end of the day is all that matters, and I ask myself why, why did I enjoy this if it had such a big problem?
The answer lies in the other side of the story, which is the story itself .
SAO is the story of a few people trapped inside a MMORPG that they must beat in order to leave. It's a fairly promising premise that always left me hyped for the next episode. I strongly believe that, despite the bad characters, the writing did a fantastic job in capturing the essence of a MMORPG. Stuff like the quests, PVP, crafting, raids, guilds... all those little elements that pretty much became a staple of the genre are there and they are portrayed in a pretty accurate way for the most part. I have been an avid MMORPG player ever since I was 11, so I know how those work and the way it was portrayed in SAO at first made me feel right at home. The story at first had a structure in which Kirito goes on multiple adventures, meeting a lot of people, which for some felt like filler, but for me was perfectly fine because those who have played MMORPGs will know that this is how they work, a lot of them don't have a scripted way of going through the game, you just explore the world and participate in any quests and events you find along the way in order to grind XP and level up (World of Warcraft, Guild Wars...), and since their goal was simply "beating the game", I don't see any problem with the story structure being about Kirito travelling to random places and doing things that are completely unrelated to most of what previously happened. Besides, it actually contributes towards world-building, a really good thing to do in a MMORPG setting since the worlds in those games are so big that the players are always tempted to explore them and see all there is to see.
That said, I can only say this about the first story arc that takes place inside SAO, after that we have yet another story arc taking place inside another MMORPG which is complete and utter shit.
In this second arc, all the mechanics that make up a MMORPG are completely thrown out of the window and they are instead replaced by a boring story about Kirito going from point A to point B in order to rescue Asuna. Yeah, you heard me, she is no longer a badass, now she is a bloody damsel in distress. Not to mention that Kirito remains completely Mary Sue in this arc, maybe even more taking in mind that his swag increases alongside the amount of fanservice (Though I will admit that there was one fight that actually didn't make him look like a Mary Sue since the opponent actually felt worth the time)
In the end, I don't think that SAO is a masterpiece nor do I think that it's utter garbage. It has a lot of problems, but it's still a fairly enjoyable series that is worth at least giving a try if you are interested in the MMORPG setting. Other than the characters, the second story arc is also a big issue, I can safely say that if the anime was just about what happens in SAO, the score I would be giving to it would be much higher, but since I have to take in mind all of it, my overall score from a more analytical point of view is a 6/10
