If you're very new to anime, you might be like, oh, there's a lot of female characters in this, and they're all gamers. That's cool, right? NO. THAT'S NOT COOL. YOU ARE IN THE DOMAIN OF CREEPY MEN. RUN. This hits a lot of the same cringe that anime fans are used to, unfortunately: teenage girls are sexual objects, casual hints of incest, a harem of different female fetish archetypes surrounds a vanilla hero who is a special boy for no reason, etc. But they really stand out, relative to their peers in the 2010s, in terms of sexual assault.
Even if you want to set the problematic content aside...(yikes) it's still not as good as other shounen anime doing similar stuff. I get it fanboys, you like videogames and big swords. Everyone likes those things. If you're a gamer, go watch Arcane or something. Besides the MMORPG element, this doesn't have much to offer. None of the things they do here are memorable except for the things you might enjoy if you haven't played a game like that before. You get to watch Kirito respond to ever-changing challenges, with even the potential of cheating working against him, all while balancing resources and the needs of party members, in order to work towards a main goal. Which is great but...that's what makes MMOs popular in the first place. At this point, you'll even find actual video games that do meta 4th wall breaking stuff. There are so many ways to scratch this particular geek-porn itch. I don't think the excitement of strategizing through a massive game in anime form is worth the shallow characters, thematic emptiness and bewildering pacing problems of SAO.
When I say thematic emptiness, this is where I usually hit a wall when discussing anime with my friends. For some people, anime just isn't something to take all too seriously. Simply by being anime, they won't expect any depth. Either that, or the opposite: I'll meet people who go really hard into the surface level passion of a given anime - the kind of people who like Batman because it's dark or Deadpool because it's irreverent and not much else. SAO really has one idea - What If Video Games Was Actually Not Fun, What If Games Was SERIOUS - and that's all they do with it. There are no additional commentaries intermixed or journeys to challenge and then reaffirm the ideals of the show. It's just Kirito vs the world, over and over. Occasionally I will admit that they try to make some points about cooperation in a system that drives competition, but this is undermined by Kirito basically doing everything on his own unless there is a random game element that requires someone else to help. Not exactly a lesson learned there. If you don't care about anime having quality story, or you're easily drawn into the full force of a simple concept like this, then it won't bother you, but I feel like it does a disservice to how good a show like this could be. Even Spy Kids 3D: Game Over had more points to make with this kind of premise.
(----- Minor spoiler with names left out: -----) I remember getting into a comments debate over this show when it was airing. I said, hey, isn't it weird that characters went from rivals who scarcely knew each other to getting married in the span of a couple days, despite being teenagers? And a guy told me I "couldn't possibly understand the bonds that are forged in war" ... And that is the attitude of an SAO fan that you gotta run away from. (----- end spoiler warning -----)
The best thing I can say about this anime is that it's an easy watch because there's only one character with any amount of agency you need to worry about and a reaaaaaaaally clear objective/direction for him to pursue. You literally get levels and stats to remind you how strong this special boy is, and how strong he's trying to become. And it's not like Kirito is a terrible person either, so I can sort of understand why people root for him - at least early on. He might be a complete Gary Stu, but I'm not going to dump on people who like him. At least he's kinda polite! The way he will confidently respond to the problems thrown his way, without too much of an ego, is almost comforting. I'm being generous with him because I want you to trust me when I say that "boring protagonist" is the least of your worries. A good piece of media can get away with a boring main character sometimes - but this is not that show.
I guess I'll conclude by re-iterating that this show is so unfathomably awful to teenage girls. Oh man. Terrible. It makes Fight Club look like The Feminine Mystique. It artificially offers the idea of competent girl gamers and then manifests them as useless sexy damsels, without giving up the original conceit, because that would require admitting that they are only present to desire the main character. So if you're on the verge of taking the red pill, this show will work wonders in terms of showing you a token female whining about respect and ambition and doing nothing to actually earn it. Like I said, it's practically weaponized against gender equality. The otaku misogyny laser death ray.
