Let's talk about Sword Art Online

 

If you were in the Anime community around the year 2012, you will know how big it was. It created a whole new genre of anime and is the 1st of its kind hence the "hype".This anime was pretty good too...till ep 6. Many parodies/spin-off has been made of this show "Sword Art Online" and yes this the anime we are talking about today.

Once in a while, there comes along a title (be it a movie, book, or anime) that takes the audience by storm, sweeping numerous off their feet, leaving several with a bad aftertaste in their mouth and making a few passes the work off as ‘average’ or ‘mediocre’. Online communities, forums, chat rooms, and every other nook and corner of the internet known to man turn into arenas of debates, discussions, fanboyism/fangirlism, and flaming. It’s apparent that when something is popular, it doesn’t always get to bath in praises. With the acclaim, comes a sheer amount of criticisms. Also, it goes without saying that popularity doesn’t necessarily equate to quality.

Sword Art Online, abbreviated as SAO from this point on, is no exception.

SAO, the anime adaptation of a series of light novels of the same name by Kawahara Reki, has been the much talked about show of the Summer and Fall 2012 seasons, and taking into consideration the incredible hype surrounding it with reviews of mixed sorts, it’s likely to stay that way for quite some time. Keeping in mind the vogue of MMORPGs and the demand for something ‘captivating’, the team behind SAO attempts to bring an enticing work to the table by executing the intriguing premise of ‘players trapped in a VRMMORPG where death equates to death in real life and the only way out is to clear the game’. Unfortunately, SAO fails at many levels which is a shame because when the anime kicked off with the highly anticipated first episode, all seemed well and it gave the vibes of something truly worth spending your time on but then it does a flip and from this point, things go awry. And here we have it— one of the most controversial anime of recent years.

Before proceeding with the review, let’s get one thing straight. I have not read the original source material— the light novels, that is. Hence, I’m not going to draw any comparison between that and the anime. With that out of the way, let’s keep the ball rolling.

SYNOPSIS

In the year 2022, virtual reality has progressed by leaps and bounds, and a massive online role-playing game called Sword Art Online (SAO) is launched. With the aid of "NerveGear" technology, players can control their avatars within the game using nothing but their own thoughts.

Kazuto Kirigaya, nicknamed "Kirito," is among the lucky few enthusiasts who get their hands on the first shipment of the game. He logs in to find himself, with ten-thousand others, in the scenic and elaborate world of Aincrad, one full of fantastic medieval weapons and gruesome monsters. However, in a cruel turn of events, the players soon realize they cannot log out; the game's creator has trapped them in his new world until they complete all one hundred levels of the game.

To escape Aincrad, Kirito will now have to interact and cooperate with his fellow players. Some are allies, while others are foes, like Asuna Yuuki, who commands the leading group attempting to escape from the ruthless game. To make matters worse, Sword Art Online is not all fun and games: if they die in Aincrad, they die in real life. Kirito must adapt to his new reality, fight for his survival, and hopefully break free from his virtual hell.

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The Main CHARACTERS

1)Kirito/Kazuto - The main character of the show is the epitome of the current definition of a "Gary Stu". He has no personality whatsoever. He is good at everything he tries for no reason. He's an amazing player, a super sleuth, a ladies man, and a master hacker. You name it, he can do it. There's no reason given for this other than he's just that good. Girls all love him, guys want to be him, and villains are jealous of him. He also solos MMO boss fights...yeh wrap your head around that one. This makes the character a bit boring but it's ok till the first arc. To top it off guess what, he can live after death.

That's pretty much all he is. Even his dialogue ends up pretty bland. There are no witty insights, no clever jokes, no skillful word games. Much of his dialogue consists of saying that the world is a virtual one, explaining game mechanics, wishing to save everyone, or loving someone forever. The sort of stuff you'd expect from a cardboard cutout hero in a situation like this.

It can be a facepalm-worthy experience to witness girl after girl falling for Kirito like nothing, often the same day they met him. The show endlessly drills into the viewer that he is the sexiest man alive... for some reason. I get that rescuing person can give you points in their eyes, but come on now. I can only assume there is a hidden manliness stat and his black jacket comes with a +999 boost.

As far as his invincibility goes, the win streak by itself isn't the biggest problem. The problem is that he always wins through brute strength. That is to say, his character skills and stats. There are no tactics worth mentioning, no psychology, no politics, no thinking whatsoever. He will just go out there and pull off his generic action hero stunts. Sure, developing those skills and stats may have required some tactical thinking. Maybe he has optimized his skill tree or has amazing grinding stats. In theory. We see no hints of it. It all happened offscreen and offscreen doesn't count. I'm sorry, it just doesn't.

[Fake Black Swordmen]

To add insult to injury, some of Kirito's abilities are completely forgotten later on. I'm sure that the health recovery thing would have come in handy any number of times. And when even his skills and stats aren't enough, he is saved by plot armor at the last second.

It's also a mockery of MMOs in the sense that Kirito can solo raid bosses. And he can attain a level higher than anyone despite playing solo, supposedly because he doesn't have to split the exp. His most unique ability is revealed to be... [Spoiler Alert]*drumroll* dual-wielding, which nobody else is allowed to do in this game. This doesn't sound like any MMO I know of, or was the idea to portray a player with god-mode cheats on?

I'm seriously thinking that the show would have been a lot more tolerable if Kirito alone had been replaced by one of the side characters. It still wouldn't have been a masterpiece or anything, but at least the Gary Stu accusations could have been avoided.

2)Asuna - The main female lead/most blatant waifu character ever. Asuna is introduced as a strong player who can stand on her own with Kirito, which is for the first couple of episodes. Once she reappears she barely does anything other than cook for Kirito (Not trying to sound misogynistic, just telling the truth). That's right, her ass stays in the kitchen, while Kirito does all the important stuff. In part 2 she does absolutely nothing...seriously. She again has no original personality...textbook Tsundere.

..Well, that was fast. Moving on.

Side-Characters

1)Sugoho - This is Kirito's sister. She honestly has layers and was a plus to the show in my opinion. I don't know why she's in this show, she doesn't belong in it. Her main role is providing fanservice and a tacked-on incest subplot. It's simply another element thrown into the plot for cheap shock value if anyone is still shocked by incest in anime nowadays.

Villain #1: Kaayaba Akihiko

The first villain barely appears, and his motivation for trapping the players is vague, to say the least. He basically did it out of personal interest. He wanted to create a virtual world where death has a meaning like in the real one, but as for why he was interested in the idea, he forgot. Err, alright then. Moving on.

Klien: The best character who did not get enough love/screentime. He is a genuinely good guy who plays the game earnestly and is a guild thingy. He also does not use hacks like are Main Character Kirito. All in all my favorite character of the series.

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SAO on the surface has a fairly interesting premise, no doubt, and it’s executed well to some extent or so did it initially seems. The very idea of a large number of people logged into a VRMMORPG to embark on a virtual reality adventure but only to be struck with utter horror as they’re faced with the shocking truth of the game has been put into effect quite satisfactorily in the first episode. It’s pretty much what I’d call an excellent start. However, SAO effortlessly manages to send all my expectations and enthusiasm down the drain for it takes the show only an episode or two to reveal its true colors followed by the disappointment it has in store.

So, what goes wrong? Well, many things.

Following the Great Beginning, the first arc decides to take a detour and invests in a few episodes dealing with side stories in which our protagonist Kirito gets acquainted with one girl per episode and ends up rescuing her from a jam. This is precisely why I like referring to this bunch of side stories as ‘episodic harem’ wherein the primary heroine of the story and Kirito’s love interest Asuna is assumed to be constant and the other girls are variables. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, these side stories have very little to nothing to contribute to the series as a whole. Admittedly, they equip the viewers with some clever, little details here and there regarding how the game world works but they hardly have any bearing on the overall plot. The primary goal of these filter-like episodes appears to be that of giving our hero clad in black an opportunity to flaunt how much of a chick magnet he is and how he has it all that takes to be the coolest dude in this world made up of zillions of pixels. To boot, the characters (read: cute chicks) that appear in these episodes have absolutely no substantial role to play in the story later on. ‘Side’ characters indeed. And SAO knows how to effectively sideline them.

When the arc finally gets itself back on track, it’s only natural to hope that the show will now have something worthwhile to deliver. However, that isn’t the case. If anything, some severe cracks begin to appear as very soon the focus of SAO is the romance between the two leads which is, in one word, cheesy. At this point, opinions are divided. The romance aspect, for some, can be appealing while for others, it can be a major turn off especially if they don’t like the characters involved. It all comes down to personal preference. However, personal preferences aren’t a convincing excuse by any means to overlook the fact that the story, world-building, and everything else takes a backseat for the sake of allowing the two leads to be lovey-dovey in the backdrop of gorgeous sceneries. When the arc does manage to divert its focus on to some ‘serious business’, things look good for a while but with a rather unimpressive ending, the first arc concludes on a pretty bad note in my book.

And then begins the second arc which, to be blunt, is a letdown again.

The second arc or the ALO arc is set within ALfheim Online, a VRMMORPG successor to SAO. Kirito logs in with a mission to rescue his wife (Asuna, duh) from the clutches of an archetypical antagonist who is a disgrace to all the villains in fiction we have come across so far. This arc showcases some really eye-candy visuals but that’s pretty much its only redeeming point. It doesn’t have anything much going on except for a few climactic action sequences now and then with intense battle music playing in the background that last only for a while. Not to mention, there’s another girl added to Kirito’s harem.

And then the hilarity ensues.

How ALO is brought to a close is appalling, to say the least, and at the same laughable because it doesn’t hesitate to use them much notorious plot device dues ex Machina, ruining whatever hopes there were for the final confrontation with the villain. The poor conclusion could be excused if it was handled more cleverly and convincingly but a blatant ass pull is by no means satisfactory. If anything, it only proves that the writer faced a dead end and was unable to think of anything better and creative, and expected the audience to swallow down whatever he could come up with, no matter how downright stupid it is.

Among all the other things, the most easily noticeable flaw without a doubt is the execution of the plot itself which is all over the place. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out after a couple of episodes that SAO suffers from poor pacing and inconsistency. It appears to be highly indecisive as to what exactly it wants to do and how to get it done. This is most evident in the first arc which is incredibly rushed at many parts. There’re time skips and the next thing you realize is that the characters have already cleared quite a lot of floors while keeping us, the viewers, in the dark. This makes the plot disjointed, prevents any sort of correlation to the win-or-die situation that the characters have been put into, and gives everything the feel of it being nothing more than a piece of cake. The struggle for survival and a sense of urgency are hardly felt even though the lives of the characters have been said to be literally at stake. The episodes dealing exclusively with the lead couple taking some time off for a ‘vacation’ and subsequently ending up building a virtual family can further make one wonder: Why are they so carefree when they’re supposed to chalk out plans to beat the game and make a quick escape? To put it in other words, the arc has a tendency to go off track. It lays down for itself one thing but ends up doing something else altogether. It’s uncertain as to whether to make itself come across as a story of survival set within a VRMMORPG or as a fluffy love story. In due course, it decides to juggle with both but doesn’t get either of them rightly done. Not to mention, when the situation demands it and the writer goes out of any creative ideas to move the story forward, the characters’ actions are made to contradict the established game mechanics and the only reasoning that’s provided for such miracles is ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way, and there’re times when true love and determination can overcome any obstacle in the game’.

 Onto the technical aspects now.

In the department of visuals, A-1 Pictures does a pretty good job. Within the game, the vast tracts of greenery, the beautiful cities during the night, the castles… they’re all a pleasure to behold. The animation is also well-handled for the most part. I loved all the characters from the start. I personally find a few characters like Asuna, Heathcliff, and Lisbeth to be very well designed. According to me if it wasn't for the animation it would not get the hype because it obviously did not deserve it. To show how beautiful the animation is, here are some pictures.

The music is composed by one of the most renowned composers in the anime industry, Yuki Kajiura. While the soundtracks aren’t bad by any means, none of them stand out much except the one that plays during combat/intense scenes. In fact, that’s the only track that can be heard playing most of the time in the entire show. A few other tracks, though they aptly fit the scenes they’re played in, are easily forgettable. The same applies to the opening and ending themes. Nothing groundbreaking there. I’m a fan of almost all of Kajiura’s works and if compared to her previous works, SAO’s music is lackluster, to say the least, and so much so that it’s hard to believe Kajiura is the composer, to begin with.

To wrap up the review, SAO had the potential to be something good but that potential go down the drain due to poorly executed plot and bland characterization. It starts off satisfactorily but goes downhill thereafter. Nevertheless, it can be an entertaining ride if one keeps their expectations low and swallows down whatever it has to offer without questioning anything. One of the reasons why SAO has been a letdown is the anticipation the majority had for it before its airing but that’s justified since the light novel series from which the anime is adapted is one of the most popular ones out there.

FINAL THOUGHTS 

I did thoroughly enjoy this anime's first arc and I can't take that away from it. Though this video was pretty much trashing SAO, it was from a critic's point of view. I would recommend you to watch this SAO and this only not S2 and 3 just don't watch them. This is a good entry point for for gaming anime for such and there are many other such animes with the same premise who actually do justice it the story like "No gun No life", "Akagama Kill la kill" etc.

Recommendation Level: Highly recommended as its a good experience

SCORE

Animation: 10/10

 Music: 8.23/10

Characters: 6/10

Plot: 10/10

Story: 6/10

OVERALL: 7.5/10