[TV Series] Sword Art Online

[Rylingo]

Sword Art Online

Type: Anime - 25 episodes.

Genre: Action, Romance, Fantasy.

Plot Synopsis: In the near future virtual reality video games are a possibility. Our hero Kirito enters the new big hate VRMMORPG to battle his way through the games beautiful world. Soon after logging on players begin to realise that logging off is impossible. The games creator, Kayaba Akihiko, tells the players that death in the game results in death in reality. The only way out is to win the game.


Video Review:

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Story: 6/10
Sword Art Online has a decent story. Nothing we haven't seen before but it's a fun premise. The first few episodes of SAO have a blistering pace. I loved the first three episodes. They me hungering for more. SAO settles after this however. Filler episodes combined with a forced romance damage the story. With the second arc the storyline is further damaged.

Characters: 5/10
Patchy. Whilst Kirito is actually fairly likeable, the shows insistence that he become male wish fulfilment is an irritant. Asuna starts off as a really interesting female secondary but the romantic subplot is really bad and it robs her of all that made her interesting to begin with. Laefa is annoying. The rest of the cast (minus the harem characters) seem mildly interesting but get very little screentime. The villains are very disappointing.

Art/animation: 9/10
The animation is very good. Really quite nice. The character designs are pleasant to look at and easy to tell apart. The battles are a feast for the eyes. If we had more battles this could have pushed for a 10.

Voice acting, music rating: 8/10
The soundtrack is really good. It takes awhile for you to start enjoying the tracks but soon you will find yourself absent mindedly humming the themes. The voice acting is solid.

Overall: 7/10

[Kāito]

Well i don't agree only about story rating of yours.The plot have many good points,comparing to other crappy anime i've seen recently it deserves more than 6/10 ... personally i would rate it like 8/10 .Wanted to give more but.... not now,my final rate will be when 3 arc will be released (hope so)
As for the characters i'd would give 7.5 (of course mostly for Kirito and Asuna),personally i don't find Laefa annoying... her appearance makes SAO more dramatic and gives more ways to develop the story.I agree about villains here` second season "boss" just pisses me off :/
Graphics: 10/10 Imo... even without more epic battles anime deserves exactly this rate as i wrote
Music/Voice acting: i can say nothing about voice acting (honnestly dunno what and how to rate it) but soundtracks just fine for me i'll give 8/10

Overall: 8.5/10

[Rylingo]

Everyone is going to have different opinions on shows. On reddit I was criticised for not being harsh enough, would you believe. At the end of the day, my reviews are based off my subjective opinion. I do not pretend and will never pretend what I say is fact.

As long as you enjoyed the show, Kaito, that's what matters. You enjoyed it and you didn't feel like it wasted your time which is good.

[TheDeathGod]

SAO was a great show and Im sad that it stopped.

[Sting]

I liked it very much specially the fiht scenes and that he sacrificed himself with asuna to free everyone of the game

[fnaticnoob]

i think this is one of the better anime releases of last year.
i would give it at least a 8.5

[TadashiED]

IMO, first arc was good, then the second arc grozit the bed. I honestly believe it gets more praise than it deserves. There are even people dubbing this as "best anime in recent years" and such lol.

[KazuYuki]

lol loved the video review and you are absoutely right the second season killed it for me :/ wasn't epic like the first season. the part about it having a romance just as bad as twilight made me laugh xD i was never one of those Kirito x asuna fans at all i somehow didn't like her all that much.. :x

[zilverkakashi]

lemme try and watch this...

[duckz]

Sword art online is good until halfway of the series, its cool to imagine a mmorpg that can actually kill you in real life when you died, afterwards, plot weaken and imo just become another save the princess plot anime.

[Aoi Ragnarok]

I'm in a weird phase where anime doesn't do much for me but I loved this show and watched it as it came out on Crunchyroll religiously. And I disagree about Kirito and Asuna's love. To me, it was the most pure and beautiful thing I've ever had the experience of watching. As for Yui, she's adorable and don't anyone say otherwise.

On another note, I didn't care all that much for the second arc. I only liked that we got to see Kirito and Asuna together finally in the real world.

[Stockgenius]

This show is pure awesomeness! Maybe you might not like it as much, but I give this 9/10 rating!

[iAnime]

lol ya I agree that the first part was good. I like the idea behind this anime because people who play mmo's like myself can relate （　´∀｀）!

[Kisarose]

lol ya I agree that the first part was good. I like the idea behind this anime because people who play mmo's like myself can relate （　´∀｀）!

Haha same here! I loved how they intertwined just about every concept of a basic traditional mmo with beautiful animation. ^^

[_Ai_]

I liked this anime quite a bit. After it stopped at episode 14 (for awhile), I started reading the novels. Deary me I fall in love with this. Cant wait until the 3rd season to get out, so that I can see Sinon.

[TRACEUR237]

agreed that the second boss pissed the hell outta me. but it was a good show. i would give it a 8/10 because kirito was having a little too much fun than saving asuna later on.

[Inactive_Account]

Tons of plot-holes and constantly contradicting itself, throws away lots of potential game/plot mechanics, and terrible abhorrent pacing that forces lots of off-screen happenings that make the entire series superficial. It's horrendously written.

Your overview of the characters belies your score, sounds like 5 is too high for it and I think it is as well. Kirito is a generic Gary Stu solely for the sake of self-insertion as you said, him and all of the other characters lack development and they even bring in characters just to make Kirito look awesome and then throw them away (basically just harem members as you said). Kayaba's motivation was completely ignored and him and Sugou weren't fleshed out at all. The characters can hardly even be called characters.

Character designs were cool in the first part but terrible in the second. Trying to make a butterfly man intimidating, seriously?

Music was decent but lackluster for Yuki Kajiura, it all sounds like lower quality re-hashes of her old work. This is by far her worst score for an anime.

2/10 at the most for the me and it would be 1/10 if it weren't for the music and animation. This is one of the most terribly written stories and some of the worst characters i've seen, it does very very little right.

[zxccxxc]

Tons of plot-holes and constantly contradicting itself, throws away lots of potential game/plot mechanics, and terrible abhorrent pacing that forces lots of off-screen happenings that make the entire series superficial. It's horrendously written.

Your overview of the characters belies your score, sounds like 5 is too high for it and I think it is as well. Kirito is a generic Gary Stu solely for the sake of self-insertion as you said, him and all of the other characters lack development and they even bring in characters just to make Kirito look awesome and then throw them away (basically just harem members as you said). Kayaba's motivation was completely ignored and him and Sugou weren't fleshed out at all. The characters can hardly even be called characters.

Character designs were cool in the first part but terrible in the second. Trying to make a butterfly man intimidating, seriously?

Music was decent but lackluster for Yuki Kajiura, it all sounds like lower quality re-hashes of her old work. This is by far her worst score for an anime.

2/10 at the most for the me and it would be 1/10 if it weren't for the music and animation. This is one of the most terribly written stories and some of the worst characters i've seen, it does very very little right.

just get lost already.

[Inactive_Account]

just get lost already.

Well excuse me for expressing an opposing opinion and actually explaining myself. >___>

[zxccxxc]

Well excuse me for expressing an opposing opinion and actually explaining myself. >___>

It's fine if you post some opposing opinion, but isn't it better if you showed a little respect to everyone who made the anime, and the fans ?
Can you use a bit more "friendly" words ?
I know you are being honest, but my apologize, it's a bit painful to see this post of yours.
Hating/Dislike is fine. but don't go far smashing other taste.

[Inactive_Account]

It's fine if you post some opposing opinion, but isn't it better if you showed a little respect to everyone who made the anime, and the fans ?
Can you use a bit more "friendly" words ?
I know you are being honest, but my apologize, it's a bit painful to see this post of yours.
Hating/Dislike is fine. but don't go far smashing other taste.

No, im not going to respect those who made it. The writing in it is bad enough that it seems like they're treating the viewers like idiots.

I was stating my reasoning for thinking it's bad and hating it, I don't understand why people would blindly love something and ignore it's faults. I see Madoka Magica get trashed all the time, but I still recognize it's faults and like it. If you think points someone made about something are wrong then dispute them, that's what I like to do and that shouldn't be a problem on an anime forum. If you think they are right about a bunch of negative points on a show you like, then recognize it's faults and move on, I never went as far as to insult it's fans.

I shouldn't have to say that something is just my opinion because that is obvious, i'm just critically evaluating it a bit more than most people seemingly do. It's better to explain it's faults when saying something is terrible rather than just saying "it's awful" or something.

I was being friendly in the sense that I was lenient with it and didn't even point out 1/5th of the flaws I saw in it.

[daosan]

I thought that SAO was good but nothing amazing, the characters was a major weakness of the show. However the music and animation was great.
Overall i'd give it a 7.8

i did a review of it on my blog, check it out if you want
[-snip-]

[YunoGasai]

SAO Was actually pretty good, until everyone started to put it down because it was to "Mainstream" so people who watched it weren't *Real* Anime fans.

[Lonely Fujoshin-chan]

@Matas -
Try reading the novels. I hope that it'll greatly improve your opinion and find out that it isn't the original works fault.

@Aoi Ragnarok -
I totally agree, it was really a pure and sweet relationship but if you read the books, you'll see a bit of ecchi here and there.

Also, BIG FAN of SAO, at least of the first arc. Lets hope that when they do make the third arc of the anime that it'll be as awesome as the first.

---------- Post added at 01:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:10 PM ----------

@YunoGasai -
I hate when people start spouting that nonsense. Everyone's taste is different. That's the reason why there's so many different genres of anime. There is no such thing as "real" or "fake" anime fans, I wish people would just understand that. I mean we're all here, discussing this anime bc we love anime...so why can't people get that?

[Stockgenius]

It wasn't as bad as what people thought it would be.

I give this anime a 7/10.

The main character is badass in terms of fighting skills but have 0 IQ in romance though. I mean come one, he got to choose women to his like of various breast sizes and still cannot romance them if his life depended on it.

I just wished the girls in the show had more skills. Unfortunately, they are just there for fan service.

Anyways, I would recommend Btooom! and Accel World if you like Sword Art Online.

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