Why did it happen? It shouldn't have happened? But it did happen.
First, I'm going to come out with it: I HATE SAO. Whew, I'm glad I got that off my chest. Ok, so even though I obviously have some strong feelings about my stance, I'm going to do my best about being as fair and critically accurate in my review as possible.
Now, this show has an amazing premise. New video game technology that lets users explore a new world as if it were real life. So right away, we have video games. That should be enough to bring a big fan base for the show. Next, the players are trapped in the game and are forced to beat the game's 100 floors in order to return to the real world. And death in the game means death in real life. The setting is both simple and brilliant, and it allows a viewer to become encapsulated right from the get go. So with such a start, the show couldn't possibly go wrong, right? Unfortunately, the show does go wrong. There are mistakes made periodically that turn the show for the worse. And the first mistake is *drum roll* the main character, Kirito!
Kirito is perhaps the biggest problem with SAO. I don't want to call him a wish fulfillment character...but that's kind of what he is. Kirito beats the bad guys because he's Kirito. Kirito solves the hard problems because he's Kirito. Kirito gets all the ladies because he's Kirito. And by getting all the ladies, I mean that he's a complete womanizer. There are at least three female characters that show up for one episode, simply to fall in love with Kirito and then be dumped...or die. You would think that Kirito being a loser in real life would translate to being a loser in SAO life, but it's quite the opposite. There are (many) other problems with characters in the show, but I can get back to that later.
The pacing of the show is terrible, and the direction the show went in was atrocious. Remember the whole deal about the conflict being that they were trapped in the video game and needed to beat it to escape to the real world? Well, that changes half way through the series. I won't get too in depth, but basically, Kirito uses his Kirito powers to beat the game without making it to floor 100. And the way he does it is...well, just remember that Kirito is a wish fulfillment character, and he can do anything. Also, the episodes of the show that lead up to that climax are paced terribly, even as much as being months apart (in terms of the timeline in the show). And a lot of those episodes have tons of filler. Our characters would sometimes rather fish and cook and pick flowers instead of fighting for their lives.
Now stop right there!
If the show followed the linear path of Kirito and the gang fighting to floor 100 and beating the final boss, thus saving the thousands of people stuck in the game, that would be perfectly fine with me. Seriously. And I'd rather that whole plot consists of almost twice the episode count of the series as a whole. But instead of getting a well-developed plot, we get two under developed plots. The first plot being SAO, and the second being...Alfheim!!!
Yeah, a new video game called Alfheim is the setting for the latter half of the show. You would think that after the SAO incident, people wouldn't be stupid and stop buying those real world video games. And (almost) nobody is trapped in Alfheim. I lost all engagement in the show almost as soon as I finished the first arc. Note that I still enjoyed the first arc because of my initial liking of the show's premise. What was at stake in the first arc was thousands of lives. What was at stake in the second arc was Kirito's girlfriend, Asuna.
Asuna is the girl our pimped out main character eventually settles on. As a character, she is certainly flawed. She starts off being very mysterious, while also being a total boss in combat. As the plot began to progress some, she became more of a Cinderella in a sense. Still, I had quite a liking for her. For all intents and purposes, Kirito wakes up from his video game sleep while Asuna does not. Somehow, this insanely creepy new antagonist manages to keep her locked up in Alfheim with the intent to brainwash her so that she loves him in real life. And also to enslave humanity with the same technology...somehow. It seemed like Kirito only cared about Asuna anyway. Asuna becomes the proverbial Princess Peach, and all she does is either wait for Kirito to save her, fail at trying to save herself, or get virtually molested by our new bad guy.
Part of what was so engaging about the first arc was how the players adapted to their new life in SAO. It was said early on how at first every day spent in SAO was a day lost in real life. But then, SAO kind of became life. It was the new world where the players lived. Also, when people had to fight monsters and beat dungeons, their lives were on the line, as well as thousands of others. So naturally, if that were the case, why wouldn't the characters act so serious? Well, when the only thing at stake was Kirito's girlfriend, he should have been the only one to take the game Alfheim so super seriously. If all of the players hadn't grown wings and pointy ears, you would still have thought they were all in SAO, fighting for their lives. You would think the people playing Alfheim would treat it like a video game, because, well, it is a video game. But no, they treat it like their lives are actually on the line (or girlfriends in this case). Without the intense life or death conflict of the first half of the show, it's hard to be engaged in the second half.
My final score is a 3/10 instead of a 1/10 for two reasons.
1. Although I finished of the show bored and disappointed, I really found a way to be engaged by the first arc, despite its flaws. Sometimes you can find it in your heart to really enjoy something, even though you know it's not that wonderful.
2. If there is one saving grace to SAO, it is the animation, action sequences, and to a lesser extent the sound. Many bright colors and creative textures help liven up scenes of fast paced and intense fighting. Still, Kirito being as overpowered as he is ruined many of these sequences for me.
