Well, where shall I begin with this... I'll just say right now that this series (one which I had really high hopes for) ended up becoming absolutely horrid by the second half; each episode getting progressively worse than the last. But, in any case, let's discuss this shall we?
The story: It's basically just your typical MMO-genre type of series (think .Hack but with actual fighting as opposed to the characters just standing around and talking episode after episode). The first half of the series takes place in the world of Sword Art Online (hence the title) where everyone including the main character, Kirito, becomes trapped and in order to free themselves from their virtual imprisonment, they must clear all of the floors within the world's dungeon.(There's the whole "if you die in this world you'll die in real life" thing, but again, this is really nothing new.) In the second half, Kirito enters another MMO called ALfheim Online where he must now rescue his waifu, Asuna (a girl he met in the first game that ended up being trapped in the virtual world after everyone else in SAO had been freed) who now lies waiting for him at the top of the World Tree, a colossal tree in the centre of this new world. I won't go into too much detail, but the series really goes downhill from this point on. I'll just say that there were a few bad writing choices and leave it at that. *Cough.* A horrible villain, a tentacle scene, and incest (Oh my!). *Cough.*
The Art: Definitely one of the high points of this series (this being one of the only ones). As an artist myself, I can say the characters were drawn fairly well, but I can't help but say that I've seen this art style somewhere before... Oh well, moving on! Though aside from the characters, I must say that the world(s) look absolutely gorgeous and there seems to be quite a few well used colour schemes in certain scenes. Bottom line: It's pretty and colourful. NEXT!
The Sound: The soundtrack was both very intense as well as very peaceful and relaxing when it needed to be during certain scenes. Although, if I had to make one nitpick about it then I'd say that a lot of the tracks sound fairly similar to one another if not almost the same track played differently. (Though I can't say that for certain, it did sound like that to me.)
The Characters: This part was kind of like a roller coaster to me; at one point I'd want to murder them for all of the horrible choices they made, but then they kind of grew on me as the series progressed. However, during the second part when a certain character appeared, I just couldn't take this series seriously (especially near the end where he was literally licking off the heroine's tears and trying to rape her whilst the protagonist could only sit and watch). Just... No... A tip for any writers out there: DON'T MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS ACT LIKE BLOODY CARTOONS! If you want to write a character well, then make them a bit more realistic and even relatable. Even a villain can be a relatable character if written correctly (trust me, I've seen it).
Overall, it wasn't a completely AMAZING series like I was hoping for, but I did get a fair amount of enjoyment from it (not so much the second half, but beggars can't be choosers). If you want to watch it for the sake of wanting to watch something of this genre, then just watch up to episode fourteen and drop it immediately (trust me, the other half is not worth sticking around for). If you're a writer looking for what NOT to do, then I'd recommend watching it all the way through. What are you doing still reading this? Go watch it and see for yourself whether it's good or not. Go on... Shoo...
