STORY:
SAO does not have a well developed story, and it is not the kind of anime that can survive on near episodic content and filler. Continuity and consequence are pretty much ignored because of the way time jumps around "someone dies, oh well they might as well have never existed as of the next episode" and "I'm forced into a situation I don't want to be in, good thing time can jump forward and just give a vague reason why this is no longer the case." That aside SAO's biggest problem in my opinion would be that the story seems like it was written by several people and none of them talked to each other. The story starts off as a bit of a dark action story but you can tell by the way the plot is set-up (climb to the top of the tower) that it will become an action-adventure story and it does, very briefly, before it transcends into what every person watching an anime based in an action-MMO wants: A slice of life romance, because that's what we all wanted... right? Although there is a clear goal to the series, there does not appear to be much in the way of direction, at least that we actually get to see. Other than the occasional downing of a boss we mainly get to see the lives of Kirito and Asuna as they fall in love and eat sandwiches. The lack of an antagonist is annoying, even more-so because it's somewhat predictable as to what is going to happen. (NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS SPECULATION but it's probably true) the game creator is an obvious choice but since there'd be no way to defeat him outside of finishing the game and getting him in person, the creator is likely playing the game and just for the M Night Shamalan twist he is probably a character we've already met disguised as a good guy (I'm confident in all of that but the last bit but that is basically an example of how generic this is.) Which brings us to characters.
CHARACTERS:
They're bad, they're soo soo bad. I don't mind an OP character, in fact I prefer them, I don't want to watch 100 different anime all about some guy who is kind of emo and not very good at anything and then watch him grow and overcome his hardships to finally become a pokemon master, or whatever. I love watching badass main characters just be amazing and overcome incredibly difficult challenges in a creative way instead of struggling through it over 5 episodes. I don't mind that Kirito is strong, I'm not a big fan of the super secret trump card, especially when it's as lame as his is (to be honest pretty bad game design that his secret ability wasn't available to everyone.) Kirito starts off as a smart calculated loner (overdone but hey at leasts he's not emo) he quickly turns emo (damn!) and drops about 10-20 points in IQ, now at this point in watching he becomes a happy-go-lucky love bird with a sense of justice also an optimist. Next up is Asuna, a shy antisocial girl who has never played an MMO also pretty and smart. Jump to the future, she's one of the most powerful characters, talks to everyone, and is a high-ranked outgoing member of a guild also a tsundere. Jump again to the lovey-dovey girl completely overshadowed by her boyfriend and is entirely too emotional and cooks of course. I'd talk about some of the side characters but they're pretty much all dead. Other than Klein and the girls who will likely make an appearance as love rivals because there isn't enough generic romance in the series, there aren't many returning characters so far.
ART:
It's great, their is a great use of colours and even the UI looks sleek and nice. Backgrounds are drawn well and tend to reflect the mood very well. The animation for the action sequences is actually quite nice though the action is a bit sparse.
SOUND:
I would not at all be surprised if someone told me this anime existed to show off the music, it's implemented quite well and overall there's a high quality pick. The voice acting is fairly good for most characters.
ENJOYMENT AND OVERALL:
I wouldn't call it enjoyable, actually, I'd say you could basically just skip through the episode and watch about a total of 7-10 minutes and get the entire idea, there's a lot of unnecessary dialogue and if you don't care for the romance then there's a lot of nothing going on for the most part. Basically this anime is just teenagers playing house, eating sandwiches, having the occasional battle, and faffing about. The unfortunate part is that the action bits are done really well for the most part.
