*****
You know, SAO is not the worst thing the anime industry has ever churned out, despite what people out there say. Is it bad? Sure. The characters suck and the plot is full of conveniences and the pacing is pretty crappy and there is no thematic value and blah blah blah.
SAO is such an easy target. It's not just because it's a bad anime; it's because it's a bad anime with massive hype. Compounding matters is the perception that people have of SAO's fanbase - I mean, when terms like "wish-fulfillment" get thrown around on a near-constant basis, it's hard to avoid imagining thousands of lonely and immature otaku hovering behind their laptop screens, ready to jerk it as soon as Asuna appears with a sandwich for Kirito.
If we treat anime as a medium for storytelling, and if we then judge SAO on its storytelling ability, yeah, it sucks. It's not really possible to defend its narrative structure nor its execution. Kirito is one of the most painfully dull characters in existence. I figure that Asuna was only created because the author of the source LNs had a bet to see how quickly he could torpedo a character's development. They even managed to slip in some incest in there - oh, but wait, she's not *really* his sister, so clever. This anime is fraught with a litany of serious issues and it deserves to be called a bad anime.
But you know what? Despite all that, it's still not offensively atrocious. SAO has great production values, and the fights are well-animated. The setting is fleshed out just enough to qualify as immersive, and while the game mechanics are absurd and serve as little more than deus ex machina, a lack of fidelity towards real-life MMORPGs isn't the biggest crime in the world considering that some of the most highly regarded anime out there take massive liberties with their internal logic as well (looking at you, M- nah...probably not a good idea to name names). And, well, I managed to get a laugh out of all the ridiculous plot armor that Kirito stacks himself with, and Asuna's almost surreal transformation from badass heroine to helpless fap bait had me in stitches. So there's that, I guess.
I think SAO gets way too much hate for what it really is. It's a bad anime that got too much hype, but it's really not the worst thing ever. There's much, much worse out there than this. SAO didn't give me a venereal disease, it didn't kill my brain cells (well maybe a few), it didn't make me want to stop watching anime forever, it didn't make me contemplate suicide, and it didn't make me want to write a hate review. It's just an unremarkably bad anime. That's all. 4/10.
