You already know the plot. The first episode seemed promising. The plot was interesting enough. The second episode however, skipped forward a month. (I can't remember how far it skipped ahead, let's just say a month.) We do not see the bland, generic main guy "Kirito" progress in skills, instead we see that he is already a "supa cool awesome" fighter that is better than everyone else playing the game. At this point, do we feel any connection to him whatsoever? Nope. We can't relate to his struggles, simply because he doesn't seem to have any.
In the second episode, the apparent main heroine Asuna appears. She and Kirito face off against the first boss and, surprise surprise, kill it with their "awesum powers". After that, we see Kirito go through a short change in personality, where he becomes more egotistical and brags about his ability. However, this change lasts all of 30 seconds, and he quickly reverts to his bland self, probably because any kind of personality whatsoever would make him less of a generic anime protagonist.
Following this episode, we see some episodes that dont develop the plot any further. The basic premises of these episodes is "Kirito meets girl, helps her, girl develops feelings 4 kirito". That's basically it. One of the episodes, which I guess was supposed to make us sad, contains Kirito befriending a group of players, who ultimately, all die. This would of been a sad side story, if it had lasted for more than 1 episode. Had we of known these characters for more than 10 minutes, maybe we could of felt a connection to them. Once again, we fail to be able to relate to Kirito, seeing as none of us have made friends for like a day and then watch them all die.
The rest of the first season basically consists of Kirito and Asuna forming a bland, generic relationship, despite having zero chemistry, and having hardly any screentime together. We have no idea what they see in eachother, or why they like eachother at all. They barely spend time together until they kiss for some reason. One episode after that, they have sex and decide to get married.
The series ends rather abruptly in my opinion, with a terrible ending. Both of the two main characters die, but for some reason Kirito comes back to life with no explanation whatsoever and kills the final boss. We then see him awake in a hospital room, where he immediantly gets up from the bed and goes to find Asuna.
The series could of been semi-decent if they had ended there. But no, there's more.
The second season revolves around Kirito and his bland, uninteresting sister playing THE EXACT SAME GAME as sword art online, but with fairies. Apparently, Asuna has not woken up from playing sword art online, and tearfully, Kirito plays the dumbass fairy game to find his beloved waifu. He then meets the extremely busty and bland "Leafa", who teaches him how to fly. UNSURPRISINGLY, Kirito quickly masters the game. Leafa quickly develops romantic feelings towards Kirito, despite only knowing him for like 3 days.
Overall, Sword Art Online was an overall dreadful experience.
Story: 3/10
I liked the premise, but it was not executed very well.
Art: 5/10
The art was ok, albeit quite bland and uninteresting
Sound: 6/10
Although decent, the music was not memorable in any way
Character: 1/10
Enjoyment: 4/10
Although I disliked the series greatly, It was relatively entertaining
Overall: 2/10
