EPISODES 1-14
Sword Art Online is one of the greatest achievements in anime. This is not because it’s good, it’s because people actually watch this show and think they’re watching something that’s worth their time. Go to any mall and you’ll find that your local Hot Topic and FYE are covered in pictures of Kirito and Asuna. Go to any convention and you’re going to be surrounded by people who think Sword Art Online is something worth cosplaying. Populate any forum and you’re bound to find tons of people defending the shit out of a show that makes no sense, has very little characterization, takes itself way too seriously, and is a goddam trainwreck from beginning to end.
But instead of bitching at people who like it, let’s bitch at the show itself. For those who don’t know, it’s a series surrounding the idea that a bunch of players get trapped inside a virtual reality RPG and the only way to escape is to clear the game. If they die in the game, they die in real life. Okay, that’s a pretty decent set-up for a death game scenario. But then it gets stupid. The game was apparently created by a company where no one said “Hey, this death game thing is kind of fucked up.” Then you get to the death game scenario and all the rules. If the headsets are pulled off in the real world, the person will die. If the headset is disconnected from an outlet, there is a battery that will fry the persons brain if they die. So no one will ever figure out to drain the battery, take the damn helmets off, and save the fucking people early on.
Our main hero is Kirito, a beta tester who’s one of the most wooden characters in any anime. He has the emotional capacity of celery and is as interesting to watch as tennis. After seeing a guild die and being blamed for not helping save people (as he was a beta tester), he decides to go full emo and become a loner. But every episode after this is about him teaming up with some damsel in distress, completely throwing aside the lone wolf persona. Time goes by in between these episodes, sometimes months or even a year, but it would be a good idea to throw in something that shows him working alone to reinforce the idea rather than make him out to be such a “badass” then have him team up over and over.
Kirito is a pussy magnet. He’s picking up girls left and right in a ridiculous manner. At first it’s Silica, the obligatory loli whose episode adds nothing to the series. Then it’s Lisbeth, whose episode adds nothing to the series. Then it’s Asuna. The development between Asuna and Kirito is so fucking fast that you’ll think you’re missing about ten episodes. They go from liking each other, to sharing their first kiss, to marrying, to having a child in the span of two or three episodes. This is how fast the series moves. It doesn’t think to slow down and expand upon anything or build characters, it wants to get over with as much as we want it over with.
Kirito can do no wrong which is my biggest problem with him. He’s overpowered to the point that any action scenes lose all drama. He helps everyone despite any sort of danger. He’s so dull. Even when he’s in emotional situations he’s fucking boring. And to add to that is his awful dialogue. At one point he and Asuna are watching the sunset on a porch. He says, and I am not kidding you, “Don’t fall over the balcony. That would suck.” It’s completely out of place dialogue, doesn’t fit the scene, is really awkward, and pervades his character through the whole series. At one point he fucking says that NPCs are real people. He’s….Jesus he’s terrible.
Then we have Asuna. Asuna starts off pretty badass. She’s hot, she’s powerful, she’s graceful. But then she falls apart. She depends on Kirito to save her, becomes a damsel in distress despite being second in command of the most powerful guild in the game. One minute she’s murdering something, the next discussing marriage in completely awkward dialogues with Kirito. Then she’s the best cook around. Then she wants a leave of absence from the Knights of the Blood Oath and can’t get it unless Kirito battles for her (and of course, she has no say despite being the second in command?). And then she’s all tears and hiding behind Kirito and contributing to the most boring romance in anime history. “I love you.” “I love you.” “I love you.” “We barely know each other, got married inside a game after not even dating, we’re probably two totally different people in the real world, but I fucking love you. Let’s be together forever!”
Then you have Silica and Liz. Both are in love with Kirito, both contribute nothing to the show. They’re fap bait. Are you fapping yet?
One of the problems with this anime is how serious it takes itself despite being so full of stupidity. And that may be what ultimately ruins this series. It’s so fast, it’s so sexualized, and it’s so stupid that it’s hard to watch it with a serious face. Half an episode is dedicated to fishing and the next half is a huge boss fight. It’s so badly paced and inconsistent because of that. It spends whole episodes on pointless characters and subplots instead of focusing on the main thread. And when it does focus on the main story, it goes so fast you barely have time to think about what you watched. I have a theory that if the Aincrad arc was twenty-six episodes, this series would actually be good. It’d give the characters enough room to breathe and develop, give the plot enough time to build, and give the viewer enough time to figure out what the hell they’re watching. Instead, in fourteen episodes we clear up the kind of plot that would take any other series one or two full seasons to finish satisfactorily.
And, I feel, if the anime had spent more time focusing on the Aincrad arc I could forgive the stupid parts more. I could forgive the fact Kirito and Asuna saw a fucking ghost inside a video game. I could forgive the “DONT LOOK AT MY PANTIES KIRITO” Silica scene. I could forgive the “DONT LOOK AT MY PANTIES EVEN THOUGH WE’RE IN LOVE BAKA” Asuna scene. I could forgive more because it wouldn’t be such concentrated stupidity. But, it is what it is, and what it is is stupid.
Like, I can’t even express all of the problems I had with it because there were so many. From beginning to end it’s full of dumb scenes, bad writing, terrible directing. We have a depressing scene about a dead friend and we focus on the girls ass as the dramatic music plays. Running from a powerful boss, Kirito and Asuna run toward the camera as the camera spins like a record. There is an introduction to dismemberment when Kirito loses his hand and then he grows it back and dismemberment is never used again. Where’s the explanation of the special skills like dual-wielding other than they are convenient plot devices? All kinds of small, silly things that compound to make this such an unappealing package.
And then there’s the end.
Asuna and Kirito are married. They adopt a girl named Yui. Of course, she turns out to be super powerful and some sort of psychological counseling service for the game. What the fuck? Since when have RPGs had psychologist AI to take care of the suicidal people sick and tired of having to grind? She winds up disappearing and Kirito uses a console to save her data to his headset and turn her heart into a pendant. Because he magically knows how to use a command console…what?
The series doesn’t end on level one hundred, the final level of the game, it ends on level seventy-five. Kirito defeats the final boss on this level. It’s a complete tease, ending things super early and nonsensically. Asuna dies, Kirito dies, the guy who created the game dies. But they all meet together and watch the world fall apart. And then they ask why the guy built the game and wanted to kill people and he says “Eh, I don’t remember.”
Amazing.
And despite dying, Asuna and Kirito still survive. Like…what the fuck happened? Episode fourteen is bullshit. It makes no sense.
You want to like Sword Art Online. It’s got cute girls, it’s got excellent animation, it’s got good music. But it’s so fucking bad. It’s a broken pile of garbage with very few redeeming qualities. There are a few episodes that are pretty decent, but it’s overall so plagued with stupid that those glimmers of hope are stomped out. There are ways to fix it too. Make the Aincrad arc longer, don’t prematurely ejaculate your story on episode fourteen, make Kirito likeable, don’t take yourself seriously. This is not a recommended show. In fourteen episodes it’s proven itself juvenile and weak in nearly every creative process. I didn’t even mention half the problems with the Aincrad arc for brevity’s sake, so you can only imagine what else is wrong here. Just watch .Hack.I promise it’s better.
And….I still have eleven episodes left of this season. And then a whole second season that started airing a few days ago.
God save my soul.
PART TWO
EPISODES 15-25
Many people pan the second half of Sword Art Online more than the first and, truthfully, I don’t get it. Compared to the first arc this second arc is so much better paced, with a lot more emotional attachment to the plot and characters. That’s not to say that it isn’t stupid, because from the outset it’s really dumb. But it manages to make me care about the series and want to see it come to a satisfying conclusion. Much like the first arc, though, it prematurely ejaculates its’ story, leaving a protracted epilogue, and it also throws in another few vaginas for Kirito to plunder. But aside from that…I’m really not that disgusted with this arc.
Asuna is stuck inside of virtual reality after her consciousness has been transferred to a different game built on the same engine as Sword Art Online, this one called Alfheim Online. Kirito finds out about it after pictures leak of Asuna’s avatar stuck inside a bird cage. He also learns that she is to be married off to an up-and-coming member of Asuna’s father’s company, a total creep who sniffs her hair and touches her all over with a perpetual rape face. Now our hero must enter a new virtual reality, battle his way to the top, and save the love of his life.
There are a number of problems with this scenario, the main one being the fact that a game was developed while players were trapped in Sword Art Online based on Sword Art Online’s engine and servers. That’s just plain stupid. On top of that is the arranged marriage between Asuna and Sugou. Asuna hates him so he’s created some sort of mind control/mind changing system by using the NerveGears to manipulate her and other players to his control. That’s dumb. Really dumb.
But despite all that the journey to save Asuna is decently paced, much better than the first arc. There’s one episode where Kirito and his companion, Leafa, backtrack for some internal politics that don’t matter and only serve as a reason to create an ass-saving scenario later in the story, but otherwise I was impressed that it stayed on track and kept me interested.
That said, there is the niggling problem of Suguha. I have a love/hate relationship with her character. She’s Kirito’s sister in the real world who’s madly in love with him because they’re not really related and blah-blah-blah. That’s stupid. Even stupider is how coincidental it is that Leafa, her in-game avatar, and Kirito end up meeting up inside a game with thousands of players, befriend each other, she falls in love with the Kirito avatar to try to take her mind off her brother, and then the avatar winds up being her brother. That is so contrived and stupid and adds a drama level that is completely unneeded. And the worst part is, Suguha is the best female character in the entire fucking show. She’s the one female lead who’s…kind of strong. Sure she’s madly in love with her brother, sure she’s looking for love and cries about it; but she doesn’t get kidnapped or become the damsel-in-distress (like Asuna, Liz, Silica). She doesn’t need to be saved except for that one little introduction to Leafa. If the brother love hadn’t been there, I feel she would have been an excellent character. As she is, she’s still pretty good.
Kirito, to his credit, gets to be a lot more bearable toward the end of the show, mostly due to the drama of the plot and tensions between the characters. The second-to-last episode and the first few minutes of the final episode, he’s really fucking cool. I mean, he goes back to being boring as hell in the end, but I can commend that the writers were able to make the lamest character ever really awesome for a few minutes.
I mention a lot of things that shouldn’t be associated with this anime such as drama and good characters. Let me explain here why this half of the show works better than the first.
The bad guy.
Plain and simple. A lot of people I’ve talked to about the show give Sugou a lot of shit because he’s the guy who licks Asuna’s tears and sniffs her hair. But, the question is, doesn’t that make you hate him? He’s the kind of villain you want to see get his ass kicked. He’s got a retarded, diabolical James Bond villain plan, he’s feeling up the hero’s girl like a sex doll, he’s got a great evil laugh, he cries like a bitch when he gets hurt. He’s fantastic. In the first half of the series there is a villain but we don’t know him. He shows up at the beginning and at the end but nowhere in there do we see characterization. Nowhere can we say “Damn, that guy is diabolical.” He’s just there to be the catalyst for a story. Hell, he even tells Kirito and Asuna he doesn’t know why he did what he did, which is really weak story telling. But with Sugou, you understand why he’s doing what he’s doing; he wants the company president’s daughter. He’s batshit insane and he’ll get what he wants no matter what.
And this is why I enjoyed the second arc. I was invested in seeing this guy get his ass whooped (and boy, that was a good ass-whooping). I wasn’t really invested in Asuna and Kirito getting back together, though the romance between them during this period was kind of sweet (then when they get back together it’s as dull as ever). I was invested in the journey and the destination. The Aincrad arc didn’t do that. It was too scatterbrained, didn’t really have a concrete destination. That’s why this arc worked so much better.
It was still stupid though. I can admit that. The random girls falling in love with Kirito, the game master from Sword Art Online giving Kirito control of the entire game, the exceptionally overlong epilogue that made the romance between Asuna and Kirito go from the emotional focal point of the plot to the emotional focal point of why I wanted to stop watching. The tentacle rape scene. The directorship, where the camera is focusing on girl’s asses during emotional scenes rather than…I don’t know, the faces that show emotions?
So what can I say about Sword Art Online overall? It’s bad on so many levels. The characters are (for the most part) bad, the plot is stupid, and it’s full of idiotic moments and bad pacing. But, for all that, it’s still entertaining on a dumb, popcorn-movie level. It has enough easily entertaining fight scenes, enough accessible characters, enough of a semblance of a plot, that it manages to keep you watching. The first arc is barely worth watching, to tell the truth, but it’s still mildly entertaining. Alfheim Online is so much better though and picks the series off the ground, allowing it to at least crawl somewhere. It never stands up and walks or even runs, but at least there is some progress for nine episodes. Then it’s back on it’s ass going nowhere and wondering where it’s at.
Is the Alfheim arc worth watching? I think it’s decent enough to give a watch. Is the series as a whole worth your time? I don’t think so. If you’re looking for dumb fun, you’ve found it, but if you’re looking for cohesion or any sort of finesse, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
