THE SETTING
Well, first let's talk about the setting of the show. Truth be told, this is where the show shines the most. The show takes place in Sword Art Online, a Virtual Reality MMORPG which is like every gamers wet dream. However, people soon realise that they cant log out. It turns out that Akihiko Kayaba, the game's developer, intentionally did that and the only way to get out of the game was to beat it. But here's the catch, if you die in the game, you die in real life. It's now a high stakes game of life or death.
THE CHARACTERS
Now, you'd think that with a premise like that that this show would be awesome right? Well sadly, aside from the premise and another thing I'll mention later, this show manages to be surprisingly horrible. Let's start with the characters. First off is our male lead Kirito. Kirito is an obsessed male Japanese video gamer who plays video games to escape the real world and plays solo in an MMORPG, a game designed to be played multiplayer. Now, what really bugs me about this guy is how perfect he is. There seems to be no problem that can harm him because he gets all the best weapons, skills and is somehow a higher level than most people despite the fact he plays solo and without a party, something anyone who's ever played an MMO will tell you is impossible. He even manages to do things even the game's creator says should be impossible and throughout the series even develops a surprisingly large group of girls who are in love with him. Yeah I'm talking cat-girls, girls who I swear are 8 years old and even his own cousin. Let me say that again, his own cousin. What makes even less sense is how all these girls fall for the anti-social loner Kirito for no discernible reason what so ever. Overall, his character is too perfect to be interesting or enjoyable. I swear, this guy should be used in writing classes as an example of how NOT to write a character.
Next up is Asuna, Kirito's main love interest in the show. She actually seem starts off as a pretty strong character. She's a new player of SAO but still manages to be a complete badass and even helps Kirito beat the first boss of the game. But after that, her character just goes downhill. She turns out to be just another generic tsundere who can't do anything meaningful or important without the help of her husband (and yes,they do get married in game despite they only being 17 years old). Her romance with Kirito in it's self is also pretty horrible. I could never see their chemistry and it was so forced it felt like it was written by an angsty teenage twilight fanfic writer. The romance itself progressed so fast it was actually painful too watch. Like, Kirito went from friend zone to husband in the span of 2 episodes. In the end, she was nothing more than a plot device. This is made no more apparent than in the second half of the series, where the main story arc is that she's a damsel in distress who needs to be saved by her husband.
THE STORY
Another area Sword Art Online just drops the ball is story. While the ideas are good the way they're told is horrible. For example. the pacing of the story makes no sense. The first few episodes take place over the span of 2 years with several months left in between episodes. Also the focus is just all over the place. The first few episodes established that clearing the game would require a lot of sacrifice and hardship to do and were some of the actual good episodes of the series. Everything after that, however, never manages to expand the tone of the original episodes and instead focus on boring side stories that go nowhere and involve everything from fishing to even adoption (again, YOU'RE BOTH 17 YEARS-OLD!!!). Also, the main conflict of the story is solved with a deus ex machina that's never explained or mentioned ever again. I have to say though, the action scenes in this show are some of the best I've seen in a long time. You can really feel the impact of every hit and it never failed to amaze me. The music is also really great, boosting the urgency and awesomeness of each battle but the soundtrack itself isn't all that great. It only sounds good when theres an action scene going on. Otherwise, it's mostly forgettable.
However, no matter how you put it, the ending of the first half satisfied no one. Here we finally learn that Kayaba forgot his own motives. That's right ladies and gentlemen, our villain went through all that trouble to acomplish something he doesn't even remember. Overall though, I feel like the 1st half of the show was okay and if they ended it there, it would have been remembered as goofy but ultimately harmless. The writing and story were pretty bad but the action made it at least tolerable. The 2nd half however is where the show becomes completely unwatchable. First off, it takes place in another game, so it removes the whole life and death aspect which takes away all the tension that the 1st half had so it feels more like watching a bunch of really intense role-players. Also, since the entire story of the second half is based on a love story which was never really interesting in the first place, it's hard to get invested in this story line. They even introduce a new villain who is even worse than Kayaba. He's a middle aged man with an interest in Asuna. That's it. That's his character. By the way, he's also only beaten by an unexplained deus ex machina.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This show is a prime example of wasted potential. It has good premise and ideas that sadly ultimately fall flat. It's riddled with awful writing and character and deus ex machinas that put the eagles from Lord of The Rings to shame. Despite this, is it really any wonder why this show got popular? Being a badass stuck in a video game with loads of woman in love with you is the not-so-secret fantasies of most gamers out there and Sword Art Online knows how to deliver. However, if you don't have some sort of power fantasy, this shows really not for you. All the bad outweigh the good in this potentially good show. Seriously, what did we see in this show back in 2012?
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