The biggest things this show does well is the art and the sound effects/music. They are extremely good at all times, including the OP, the battle music, and the rest just sets up the atmosphere perfectly. The fight scenes are cool. The MC is written well and constantly developing in later seasons. The concept of a "death game" is cool without making it into a BR. If you're looking for a good series with a lot of cool fight scenes, check this one out, it's definitely worth it.
In defense of arguments against SAO that I've seen in forums:
1. Kirito is definitely not a normal isekai protagonist. He may look like one, but that's because most isekai anime try to copy the look and popularity that the show has. Kirito may not have a ton of personality at first, he has a lot of character development across the series and especially this season. His love for Asuna, his fear of death, and his sarcasm puts him way better than most protagonists in anime today. Also dealing with Asuna still stuck in the game made him a better character in episode 15-23, since he showed many weak sides to him. It really did show the pain that he went through and that he isn't such a 1 dimensional character. Which honestly, if you're open minded, you can actually understand that he is written well in certain aspects. That's why the ALO arc stood out to me.
2. "Kirito is too OP." Most protagonists in anime are OP, for instance: Itadori (JJK), Ash (Banana Fish), Yuu (Charlotte), Shinra (Fire Force), and many others that I could name. They always win at the end because they are the main characters. Many of the monsters that Kirito fights almost kill him. Plus he actually worked for his levels in SAO since he was a solo player. He had access to many spawns by himself, of course he was going to be such a high level, he didn't have to share the XP with his clan. It's not like he was born with magical powers that were OP with no work whatsoever. Also he was one of the few beta testers in the game, he already knew good loot/XP farming spots in the early stages of the game, having him access higher level dungeons/quests earlier than anyone else.
3. "SAO is just a harem." First of all, it's not. You can argue that a lot of the female characters may not be written the best, but a lot of them are. He might have a lot of pretty female friends, but that doesn't mean he has a harem. There were only 3 girls that have ever liked Kirito: Rika, Asuna, and Sugu. The rest either liked being his friend or was close to him and confided in him, like normal friends do. Even if it was a harem, many people like harems and reverse harems, so why is it a bad thing for this anime
4. "The thing with his sister was weird." I get it, it was a little weird, but you cannot just say, "oh this is an incest anime." First of all they were not related, second of all the only reason why Sugu actually liked Kirito was because of the emotional trauma she was going through having him being stuck in SAO with any second of the chance of him dying. Even their relationship was strained before then, so there was even more of pain that they were not even that close at the time of SAO.
5. "Episode 24/Sexual Assault." I can't really defend this episode since I thought that the sexual assault was a little too much. I don't think a show should really use SA as of means to try to make the show "edgy." But the only argument that I can make is that people will like shows like "Banana Fish" or "Perfect Blue" which has the same themes but apparently since the show is "deeper" that makes it morally ok and the story written well? Well, that's a terrible argument first of all, because reusing the same plot of sexual assault, even for a "deeper" meaning, doesn't make it good media or better than any other media. I understood both shows well and I can say that both use that plot point very poorly, especially Banana Fish. It's just that people defend their own shows because they are biased. So since they don't like SAO, they can trash on that aspect of the show when their favorite show does the same thing. What I will say is that the author of SAO apologized for the graphic scenes of sexual assault in the series and he said that many LN's back in his day had the same plot points, so he accidentally followed. He swore to do better in his further writings.
6. "ALO sucks." I don't think it's as good as part 1, but I think the concept was still fun. The biggest parts that were good was definitely Kirito's own character progression dealing with loss and loss of love for the first time in his life.
7. "Kirito is too OP, he can even hack." The argument against Kirito in this aspect is the certain episode where he computed Yui's AI program into an item that could be stored in the memory of the NerveGear using the admin computer. But you have to understand that Kirito is pretty smart when it comes to coding/computers. When he was six years old he built his own computer. After finding out about his family situation, he closed himself off to the outside world and focused on his computer and other games. Similar to how Futaba is written in "Persona 5." He doesn't randomly have hacking skills, he was already accustomed to how codes/computers worked. He also heavily studied upon NerveGear, Kayaba, and VRMMO's before the game launched.
In no way am I saying that this anime is the best anime ever to exist, but it is loved by many and hated by many. I mainly wrote this review since it's popular to hate it, even after it aired it has a score of 8.50. It only got trendy to hate it and, for the most part, I just see crappy arguments. Please enjoy the show.
