I first started watching SAO in my anime club and I quickly got hooked on it from the first five episodes. After that, watching a couple episodes every week until I finally decided to catch up was really enjoyable for me. The problem came when I caught up, as the series had 17 episodes out at that time. I enjoyed the first half of SAO much more. I had no problem with the new characters in the second half, I just really missed Asuna and Kirito’s relationship that they had been developing in the first half, though I didn’t like the perverted villain.
The story of SAO is great. It has one of the best and most creative setups I’ve ever seen and I was really interested to see where they took this show. At first, all of the video game players are entering Sword Art Online, a new virtual reality video game which is the first of its kind. Seems normal enough: everyone’s going around doing normal RPG things, learning the basics, guys are mingling with other guys disguised as girls because it’s a video game and that kind of stuff happens and I love that they include this. Soon, the gamers realize they cannot log out and they are teleported to an arena where a large hologram tells them that they are trapped in the game and must beat the game or die trying. That’s pretty intense, and while it seems like it could be fun for anime fans watching this thinking their life is boring, really that would scary as hell. Kirito, having already been a beta tester for the game, gets a head start on everything soon afterwards and heads onwards with his previously acquired knowledge of the game. The first few episodes after this are just Kirito meeting other people (mostly girls of course, this is an anime) who he has different experiences with in different aspects of the game from fighting murderous guilds to making weapons to joining a guild. Around episode 5 or 6 is where Asuna becomes a main character and the show starts to focus on her and Kirito. This brings in one of my problems with this show. Sword Art Online introduces many characters in the first few episodes, and then just discards them when they’re done with them. There are many characters that you see in the first few episodes that won’ ever be seen again until the last scene of the show and by then and the fact that they don’t look the same, it’s practically impossible to remember a few of them but they act like they’re all best friends with Kirito. I liked all of the characters, but I just wish SAO hadn’t thrown them away so quickly, and I wish they could have at least come back for some of the later boss fights. I’ll stop the story here to avoid spoilers.
Sword Art Online is one of the most visually astounding masterpieces I have ever watched. It may have many faults, but there are almost none when it comes to the beautiful RPG scenery and epic battles that this show has. In fantasy shows, one of the most important things is to set up the world your show is taking place in, and SAO definitely does that perfectly throughout the whole show. The music that goes with everything is brilliant too and the music in the boss fights is different every time (I think, I could be wrong though) and helps to set a different mood for each one, since they really are different. Going back to the story a bit, the boss fight are never just “Let’s kill this beast to get to the next floor” it always has something much bigger to it. The drama they build up around these fights helps to make them one of the highlights of this show, and the music really helps build up that drama even before the fight starts.
I do like the characters a lot in SAO. I’ve heard many people don’t like Kirito, but I do, though it’s not like he’s one of my favorite characters. I loved his relationship with Asuna, because unlike most romance animes, they don’t just screw around the whole time trying to hide their emotions and not kiss until the last half of the last episode. But, as I said before, I didn’t like how they put this on hold in the second half of the show. Asuna is also a great character. Tsunderes aren’t anything new in anime, but Asuna is much more than a generic tsundere (as shown by my last statement that they don’t wait until the last episode). Plus, she’s just as good of a fighter as Kirito. I won’t explain the other characters, because, either they’re dropped after episode 5 only to make one or two reappearances, or they aren’t introduced until the second half which would spoil things.
I do like SAO a lot, though I don’t think it lived up to the hype (though with hype that big what could?). If you’re a gamer, well you probably already have seen this anime, and if not you definitely should see it. I recommend this show to every fan whether you’re a gamer or not. It’s just one of those shows you have to see or at least try.
*sorry this review was so long*
