The reason I bring Shakespeare's plays into this review at the very start is to firmly establish where SAO's biggest misstep lies. Romeo and Juliet is a play so influential that it's not only spawned a huge number of productions and adaptations (including one remarkably subversive anime series, which I wholeheartedly recommend), but it's also established the standard that the majority of romantic fiction ultimately aspires to: stories in which infatuated couples remain steadfast in the face of adversity (even if that steadfastness isn't evident in the play itself). It did this while simultaneously challenging the patriarchal zeitgeist of the Elizabethan period, depicting both of the titular protagonists as fully-fleshed out characters instead of the gendered archetypes that had pervaded fiction for millennia even by that point in time. See, now we're getting to it. The Taming of the Shrew is, in contrast, one of Shakespeare's more thematically contentious works, so much so that even its myriad of cinematic adaptations have presented some way to subvert or challenge the subtext that the original play enshrines. In short, it was a frank endorsement of misogyny and domestic abuse in which a fickle and often times rebellious young woman was "tamed" by a man who near-literally beats her independent spirit into submission. Yeah, Shakespeare wrote that.
To reiterate, Sword Art Online does more to advocate the misogynistic qualities of The Taming of the Shrew than it does the idealistic romanticism of Romeo and Juliet. I'm sorry if that sounds more than a little hysterical, but that's how it is, and it's a subtextual issue so glaring that not even the show's few shining moments can serve as an effective disguise.
What really shields Sword Art Online's pre-modern sensibilities more than anything else is the seriously effective setup, which does a stunning job of painting a vivid and creative world that unfortunately ends up amounting to little more than a framework for bad character drama and near-nonsensical plot progression. And I'm not joking when I say that Sword Art Online's setup is SERIOUSLY effective! The context is well thought out and the design features on show are absolutely stunning right from the get-go. It has one of the best second episodes ever, and it follows that up by dealing out inventive and well-directed fight sequences and a few scenes of genuinely moving character drama. The characters all have appealing charisma, and lead female protagonist Asuna is established as being equal parts conscientious, wilful and conflicted. The foundations are there for one of the most compelling shounen anime that combines culturally-relevant context with strong action and dramatic romance, but unfortunately, Sword Art Online's way is to lay strong foundations and then build the rest of its structure up from loosely-packed mud.
Standing at the forefront of this storytelling debacle is the kind of pandering misogynistic characterisation that storytellers were making efforts to move past centuries ago. Our protagonist, Kirigaya Kazuto (know in-game as Kirito), is a mid-teens gamer who begins the titular death game with a slight advantage over anyone else because he took part in the game's beta test. The fact that he's a dedicated gamers makes the intention here clear: this is evidently the character that the audience is meant to relate to, even if those characteristics really only allow for a superficial connection, and his immediate distinction from those around him (which continues as he becomes increasingly overpowered) serves as a portent to the show's attempts to imitate the kind of male-centric power fantasies that have entertained the insecure and done little else for countless years. Attempts are made to make him genuinely sympathetic through the act of establishing an arc focusing on his guilt at the death of close friends and his isolation from other players due to his nature as a "Beater," but it never feels more than an arbitrary attempt to give him a personality that extends beyond just being effortlessly cool. Very little of it carries any real emotional weight, and you certainly won't find yourselves reflecting on the show's interpersonal conflicts once they've been and gone.
Kirito's one thing, but the real horror here rests in the depiction of the fairer sex: the girls. There's a scene in episode 1 of season 2 in which Kirito discusses his plans to pursue a career in the development of VR technology, to which romantic interest Asuna responds simply with the banal statement "I want to stay with you forever." That basically sums it up. No female character has an existence that extends beyond being a romantic interest or secondary backup harem member to Kirito. This is made even worse by the fact that the show knowingly establishes motivations in nearly all of them. Asuna wants to lead the other players to victory. Yui wants to break free of the system and live a happy life with her adopted parents. Season 2's Sinon is given the most creative backstory yet (PTSD following a genuinely brutal personal trauma as a child), but even as I write this the show seems primed to shove those interesting internal conflicts aside in favour of reducing Sinon to another vapid love interest. All because that's just what SAO does. It takes any established personality trait in its female characters and hammers them flat until the characters themselves are fundamentally indistinguishable from one another.
They even have identical faces.
SAO's second big issue is that Kawahara simply has no idea how to tie the events of the story together. That's right, rule-bending contrivances are the name of the game! Any tension that manifests throughout feels inconsequential simply because, no matter what, the writer will find a way to make things work out. This is painfully obvious, and it really reaches some totally ridiculous levels. Need the MC to solo a high-level monster? Have him manifest a unique skill from nowhere. Need the audience (or at least the less intuitive of the audience) to think that the two leads are dead? Add "Power of Will" rules that allow for temporary resurrections. The worst example comes near the end of the Fairy Dance Arc, when a character comes back to life from nowhere simply so that the big showdown can reach some kind of resolution, however blatantly contrived it may be. That's not good writing! Sword Art Online keeps tying its few good ideas together with contrived and often superfluous rubbish that fails to have any kind of dramatic impact. Kawahara-sensei, you can do better than this! I've seen Accel World. Yeah, it wasn't a game-changer, but that was actually a pretty good shounen!
I don't think I need to keep going. Sword Art Online is bad. Not average, but straight-up bad. It enshrines the misogyny of The Taming of the Shrew while simultaneously putting on the face, Hannibal Lecter style, of Romeo and Juliet and a thousand other better action-romances. It's steeped in and derivative of the worst storytelling traditions, and despite being beautifully-framed and staged it does little to disguise the venomous subtext within. If you've not already seen it, continue to avoid it. If you have and you, like many others, genuinely feel that this series represents the epitome of fantasy fiction, I beg you to re-evaluate. We seriously can't let rubbish like this become the most commercially viable thing for producers to unleash upon a world where anime as a medium has the potential to do genuinely great things. Please, don't let it happen.
