Other thing is the romance, it which fails because it is not natural, and the involved two are pretty bad characters.
Over, the series doesn't know what it wants to be, if an anime of action where the characters have to fight for survival, or a slice-of-life harem within a video game with a bit of action, getting whole chapters of Kirito and Asuna talking and doing things.
Already by the chapter ten and something the series already is a disaster, and when it reaches the second arc is going to shit.
Ironically, the first chapters were a very good thing, explaining things about the mechanism of the game and trying to be something, but then it deflates in a brutal way by the aforementioned problems, the characters and the story are in general poorly developed by focusing on the main characters, causing a lot of problems and plot holes.
In general, the story is poorly written and poorly developed, 3/10.
In the characters, is wost, the protagonist is one of the worst protagonists ever seen, focused both make a God forgot to give a definite personality, so his personality changes as needed by the script, it goes from being an antisocial a very social being in a second, emo to happy, from unsafe to completely decided, etc..
The rest of the characters can be defined in one sentence of a pair of words:
Asuna is the love interest of the main character and is a useless tsundere.
Suguha is the cousin/sister/whatever of Kirito and loves it.
Yui is a loli and loves Kirito.
Klein is the best friend of the protagonist and secretly loves him.
Sugou has something with Asuna and hates Kirito, that it is a f**ing butterfly. do you see it?
The cast is very forgettable and have no personality any more than the book of cliches of LN says, 1/10.
The animation is very good when A-1 give you the desire to do something and makes a decent animation, there is moment where what stands out are the lighting effects, and the majority of the battles or are pseudo-animated or are pure frozen images, but when A-1 gets you desire to get something good, but the horrible designs the second arc going down too many points 2/10.
The music is composed by Yuki Kajiura, which is pure quality, and did a very good job, I must admit, 8/10.
I have enjoyed several battles and moments, yet there was a very boring parts which occupied a large part of the series, 5/10.
In overall it could have been better series if it had taken advantage of the potential that he showed in the first chapters, but fell like a House of cards and term being something bad enough and not recommended, 1/10.
