STORY:
Everyone gets trapped in the new VMMO and if you die in the game you die in real life and the only way out is to clear floors of the game's tower to escape.
At the first episode, the anime has already built a strong premise as it created tension, suspense and chaos through death. Unfortunately the next episodes couldn't keep up the momentum and the series degraded into something like this:
Enemy appears and attacks the girl ----> MC comes in, defeats the enemy effortlessly and saves the girl -----> Girl falls in love for MC for no other reason than being saved.
Rinse and repeat that every other episode.
Even the anime fails at melodrama when at one time MC joins a guild but for some reason he was struggling to kill the monsters and fails to save his guild members. Those guild members were only shown 1 episode so how can you make me feel something for those guys when I barely knew who they are.
Moving on to the ending/climax of show of the first season, we are shown MC finally confronts the main villain who caused all this trouble and after a flashy melodramatic battle, MC wins because of plot armor and finally everyone is free.
The main villain finally defeated is confronted by MC and now we will finally learn why the villain did it in the first place and all he can say is: "I forgot." Are you fcking kidding me? That's one of the worst cop outs ever by whoever made this shit.
I wouldn't go into detail about the second season as it is the same as the first one but with more fan service, lamer characters, tentacle rape, no more dying in real life and having one of the lamest villains ever.
ART:
This is where SAO excels, flashy colors and fluid battle movements. No problem here but nothing amazing either.
SOUND:
No problem either. Everything is fair from the sounds of swords clashing to opening and ending songs but nothing amazing either.
CHARACTER:
The worst part of the anime. The whole anime basically focuses on Gary Stu MC Kirito and his Mary Sue waifu Asuna having a honey moon vacation in SAO as first priority instead of beating the game and finally go home.
Kirito is basically a wish fulfillment character that he always wins much like the logic that "batman wins because he is batman".Nothing is shown about who he really is other than he is a guy who plays video games his entire life, a chick magnet for no reason and always wins. It's really very hard to connect to a character like this as he has no realistic traits other than he is good at video games.
Asuna at first is presented as the strong and silent type during the first few episodes. Later on she degrades into a tsundere Mary Sue and personal waifu of Kirito for no reason other than he is Kirito and he gets all the girls.
Then we have Kayaba the main villain who pretended to be a player and guild master of the strongest guild in the game without an explaination. Nothing is shown about him through the entire series even in his death where he just says he "Forgot" why he did it in the first place. Basically he is just a Troll who did everything for the "lulz".
Lastly we have the token side characters that gets 1 episode screen time then thrown to the garbage bin after their episode ends and are never again seen until the end of the anime.
Oh yeah there are also 2nd season characters where the villain is a jailbait rapist but I won't waste time as they are clearly bad without an explanation.
ENJOYMENT:
To be honest, I was guilty of liking it back then when I didn't care about quality at all just like when I was watching DBZ. Most people would probably enjoy this as their gateway to anime.
OVERALL:
Clearly overrated. If you want something well written and doesn't make you cringe, stay away from this. If you are new to anime and want something easy to like then yes, you can easily enjoy this anime.
