Anime & Manga Sword Art Online: Good or Bad?

[Kylesar1]

SAO, whose first season concluded in 2013 has been the topic of HEAVY discussion in the Anime world. People either love it or hate it. Some have called it one of the best anime. Some have called it the worst. I'll not post my opinion right now to prevent bias, but what is your take on Sword Art Online? Do you love it? Hate it? Mix?

More importantly, WHY do you love/hate it? What do you love/hate about it?
What good did SAO do to the Anime World? What harm?
What lessons can be learned from SAO (in future anime)? If you want to post moral lessons, then sure.


As always, let's keep this thing civilized

 

[Dak]

I absolutely love SAO. I whole heartedly love this series for so many reasons. One because of the story. I found that the story was so well put together. the character development was amazing. And I just love Kritio and Asuna's relationship. It's kind of like Life goals right there.

 

[Count Gensokyo]

7/10 overall. I skipped filler in the Alfheim arc and only watched Gungale for S2.

 

[Idea]

My thoughts on sword art online are... conflicting and fuzzy at best. So I think they warrant a bit of context.

I remember distinctly that for the longest time I wasn't even aware of what anime was as a medium. I just had a vague notion that it wasn't exactly a regular cartoon but my only exposure beyond the early years of my childhood was via digimon which I had loved since those days and all the way growing up. I think I was about 14 when I met the guy who'd introduce me to the medium. How we got from me introducing him to the group jokes to him requesting I watch Madoka Magika is a whole other can of worms, so I'll leave it to another day, but basically after I watched that show I was hooked on this bright new thing called anime. So I used what was, for a while, my way of finding new anime, that guy's recommendations and top tens on youtube.

Another key factor was that at this time I was an avid world of warcraft player, grew up playing it really, so when I saw a suggestion to watch an anime about a guy stuck in a VRMMO several times, I really wanted to jump into it. Now I can't recall if there was any anime in between madoka and SAO but if there was it wasn't more than one or two. So needless to say I was still completely new and wasn't thinking about anything critically. Which isn't to necessarily say my opinion of SAO would have been much different if I watched it today. All I can guarantee is that it would be much more concrete rather than fuzzy.

You see I loved SAO when I first watched it, I loved the animation I loved the premise, I loved the cuteness, the relationship, the badass part where Kirito first dual wielded, I was shocked by the twist (though I kinda suspected), I loved Sion's character (and no that's not because of the ass. It's because of the scarf. I find those a really cool design element for some reason) and while not as much as I do today I loved Yui's arc. The incest didn't really bother me because I did, and sitll do to this day think that it can be an aspect of a character that can be explored and I think their way of going about it wasn't that bad either. Only the villains got me a little annoyed because of how contrived they often were.

However the thing about this general love and enjoyment of sword art online is that at the time I wasn't really watching it. I was just seeing images pass by, taking in the bright colors not really sinking into it's world but more appreciating it like an outsider mesmerized by what's occurring. I was having fun with it, it was entertaining it but looking back I wasn't truly enjoying it, it wasn't the kind of experience that could stick with me. Despite that I did have enough fun that I decided to recommend it to my sibling. The fact that for the following three years I tried to hide I liked anime from the rest of my family shows how well that went.

A few years later, I was in an absolute strike because there was this show I loved called "Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry" getting shit from fans of an arguably somewhat similar anime "Asterisk War". Those who saw digibro's videos know where I am going with this because then I stumbled upon the series "why Asterisk war sucks" from that digibro. I watched and I was hooked on his style of anime analysis. So I went looking for more and oh boy did he deliver because I found those videos decomposing an anime which had been less than in the back of my mind for years by then, SAO s1 and s2. And after that I consumed more similar videos and I guess this kind of bubble developed for a while where in my head because those points about how dumb SAO is atually made a tremendous amount of sense and pretty much reached through all of the show, somehow me having at some point liked it would mean I was dumb as well.

It took me longer than I am happy to admit that thinking that was the real dumb thing.


So while I did like watching SAO and I specially liked watching SAO abridged a few years later, I don't think I could repeat the first knowing what I do now. However I do know I loved it back then for its aesthetic and that I liked it best due to specific interactions between characters than for an overall intelligent story which it lacks. However all of this "awareness" of mine wouldn't really do for me but fortunately the opportunity presented itself in the form of a certain movie named "Ordinal Scale".

Now I only watched this movie a few months ago and I tried to purposely do everything in my power to clear myself of as much bias as possible. Nonetheless I still expected to go in with a much more critial and negative attitude simply because I kind of expected it to suck balls. And in a sense, it did. The problem with SAO in my eyes is that once you know the gist of the problems it can have it just spirals down into destroying all suspension of disbelief. Nonetheless I still felt for the plot and the characters. Even if I found it extremely dumb I could still appreciate the cuteness behind the cringe, see the potential (even if wasted) of the ideas in it, and connect in some level to the characters. Which is kind of astonishing for something I expect to be complete garbage.


So in the end of the day, what are my concise thoughts? That SAO is a picture book. It can get pretty and some of the panels are adorable and relatable in some sense, but if you think about the larger picture for a minute it's gonna all seem really stupid. And yet even when you know only someone with the heart of a toddler could be completely immersed in it (which don't take me wrong is not saying people who like SAO are dumb, but that they are much more willing to accept it at face value) you can still find yourself enjoying what it is trying to invoke in those panels. For nostalgia or for the almost childish failure of the attempt that is endearing in it's own way. There's no such thing as an artist completely devoid of passion for their art and that applies to the makers of SAO as well.

 

[Platypus]

It's probably one of the worst anime I've seen in my opinion. I mean, the writing is decent at best in the fist arc and downright terrible after that, Kirito is so ridiculously powerful and good at everything that it's not even funny and most of the characters are kind of bland.

 

[Hall Kervean]

Penultimate episode of the Alfheim Arc slaughtered any hope this show had at redeeming itself for me.
First four episodes I actually liked, 5-whenever they left Aincrad I forgot were adequate, everything after that was either boring or was, again, the penultimate episode of the second arc.
I liked episodes 1-4 because they (or so I thought) set up the tone of the show, the stakes, and Kirito's character. Many people would end that at 3, but for me, 4 actually showed some of Kirito's character too by having him be a powerful dude who will risk things despite being hurt. I fully expected his losses to slowly wear him down over time, and I expected Kirito would continue to grow and build upon the foundation they were establishing.
Even the brightly-colored, fun places were at least somewhat dangerous. All the bosses? Hard to beat; it takes a team of people to do it, and there will be losses.
From episode 1-3, the stakes were very real; people could die and, if you weren't careful, people would die. Episode 4 was a bit more loose with death, but it also introduced player-killing guilds, and that even the other players could be your enemy.
The tension was high, the stakes were set, and then we got a murder mystery, Kirito slaying a dragon, Kirito soloing a boss, Kirito losing and then suffering no major repercussions from it, a romance, and then they just cut it short. No payoff, no development, nothing.
Tfw you make Chekhov's Guns of your character's motivations and traits, the setting, the tone, and the rules of your universe, you know, the basic stuff.
With the exception of 5 and 6, the episodes, despite not really being of good quality, were an enjoyable spectacle (5 and 6 were really boring).
Everything else, save a few moments throughout like the few minutes of screen time we see Kirito encountering Death Gun for the first time and having to deal with that, was boring and somewhat stupid.
Except the Alfheim penultimate episode
That was downright insulting and revolting on both a storytelling and moral level.

 

[AnimeGenork]

I have extremely mixed feelings regarding SAO. At first, I thought its idea was really brilliant, but that was back when it was on Toonami and it was on too late for me to actually watch it. By the time I finally could watch it (yay Internet), I wasn't an anime buff, but I had gone through Attack on Titan, Blue Exorcist, and others where Bryce Papenbrook voiced the lead. (Notably dark-haired leads.)

I have to admit, I was kind of upset. Considering the entire synopsis is based around the Aincrad arc, I expected it to be longer. Hell, if my life was so great that I could be married by episode 11, I'D DO IT. Unfortunately, it's not. I like Kirito and Asuna well enough, but I was pissed that it seemed so easy for them. Yui became something of a bane to my hatred of it. Her cuteness challenged me at every turn. Then there was Alfheim, which was okay, up until I realized at least five other women had fallen for Kirito. Is this a harem anime or not? WHY IS KLEIN ALL OF A SUDDEN THE ONLY DECENT CHARACTER HERE? Maybe I'm just miffed that my precious Todd Haberkorn played the creeper rapist guy, or maybe I wanted more Aincrad.

If there's anything I continuously loved about SAO, it was the music. I loved the openings especially, even in the second season. They were the one thing I stayed around for. And Klein. Yes, I'm obsessed with Kirk Thornton, but COME ON! He was funny! I like funny. To this day, the music and Klein are the main reasons I can't fully hate SAO. That and the fact that it was one of the first twenty anime I got into. I think. Bad memory.

As for what SAO contributed, well, look at this thread! SAO allows its fans and its haters to have healthy debates on how characters and plot should be executed. It also allowed us to explore what we consider true romance not getting married by episode 11, what we consider good characters, all that good stuff. What would the anime world be without SAO? Yeah, we'd still argue over Attack on Titan and the Digimon/Pokemon debate, but otherwise, we probably wouldn't have as fun of debates.
Okay what did I just say

For future anime: stick to the plot you're presenting us with. Don't pull an Aincrad. Please. If you're going to give me one plot, please stay with it so I can pretend I'm interested. Please and thank you.

 

[Suum]

SAO started out incredibly good, and arguably continued being excellent for the vast majority of the first season. As I think was potentially agreed upon even by the creator in the revisiting of the world later on, the story in the SAO-verse was rushed to fit into one season, which did see a lot of lost potential. Up until the end of the season it didn't truly feel all that rushed, but the ending did come far too early and I also felt the artistic style wasn't quite there towards the end also. The attempts at following the plot in later seasons were really quite poor and none of these worlds had the tension and anticipation experienced in the first.

I would definitely say that the depth of the story in the first season was touching, immersive, creative, and was expectedly insanely popular at the time. Naturally a series of other shows have followed in its footsteps to the extent the sub-genre is not as popular as it once was, but that doesn't diminish SAO in my eyes.

 

[Blitzkrieg Bob]

Uhmmm ... SAO, well I liked the Aincrad Arc, but I can't avoid to see many incoherent and weak points in the plot.

The music, the character (colour and image) design was ok, and the basic premise of the show, which establishes the tension of a death game and reveals the real face and body of the players, serves to create the tension, a goal and even some emphaty with the viewers, but as the show progresses this points diminishes.

Still, in my opinion, the show is much better written and organized than the novel.

Probably, this show works better as a love story between Asuna and Kirito, rather than an adventure story or even a virtual world related plot.

 

[The_Omega_Effect]

Its garbage really. I mean if you are able to just turn your brain off and go with whatever bullshit that the creators make up then I guess you can "enjoy" it. The writing is absolutely horrendous though. Like the amount of plot holes there is every single goddamn episode makes me want to tear my hair out. Not to mention how Kirito is just a single, overpowered guy who nobody can beat. Like every episode he can do more and more things. I lost my shit at that glitch episode where he gets access to the code of the game and decides to...turn the glitch into a fucking tear or someshit. What the fuck Kirito? Are you that fucking selfish? How about oh...I don't know...MAKE IT SO THAT THE DISCONNECT BUTTON IS AVAILABLE? Like it was just gone one day meaning that it is like changing a single variable in the code. Even if it wasnt gone, he could just code the button into place, considering he coded the glitch into whatever form it got into. My god. I was initially interested in Klein but goddamn did they just throw him into the side to focus on Kirito and Asuna. I cannot relate to either of them. Like the only part I can remotely relate to is Kirito farming his ass off and being overpowered because that is what I always do when I am given the opportunity to do so. But the rest of his character is just fucking mindnumbing. The anime just turns into a harem where it develops one female character really well and then throws her to the side for the rest of the fucking show.

This turned into a rant really. I only got through gun gale online because I used to play Counter Strike. But I got immediately disinterested as soon as I saw Kirito destroy shit again. Like MOTHERFUCKER, YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED THIS GAME IN YOUR LIFE. Like I said, plotholes on top of plot holes. You can also tell that the death gun guy is SPOILER ALERT the friend of Shinon because of the way they show him in the opening sequence. THE BIG TWIST OF THE SHOW IS SPOILT IN THE FUCKING OPENIIING. AND KIRITO FINDS SHINON AND SAVES HER IN REAL LIFE? That is just fucking ridiculous. I can't understand how one can enjoy this shit.

 

[VictusXIII]

I won't get as wordy as a few of the other people before me; I can be honest I enjoy Anime but I'm not super passionate about it. I have a tendency to not -get- right into things, to look for plot holes and pick things apart.
I took the whole series at surface value and I found myself quite enjoying it. I was not much into S2, but It was all right. I think all the magic really happened in the first iteration.

 

[Becker]

Liked SAO for the eye candy, explosions and fight scenes.. Liked Log Horizon better for making alot of sense in terms of how the playerbase would react and cope. That's not to say that I think SAO is bad at realism. Actually no that's a lie, SAO makes little sense to me but eh.. it's decent at the end of the day. (My opinion and preference of course).

 

[Kalgorn]

Aha! I always wondered why this show was hated so much when it's such an awesome anime. Maybe I can say that because I'm not exactly well versed in what is considered a good or bad anime, but fortunatly I also don't care about that.

I was really impressed by SAO when I first watched it. I tend to just accept things as how they are presented to me. I could be really picky and tear everything apart to expose all of its flaws, but that's no way to go through life. There's enough negativity already without contributing more to it. Did anyone not get goosebumps when Kirito whipped out the Duel Wield?

I enjoyed Kirito's character, and I enjoyed Asuna's character. The connection between the two was also a great element that had me binge watching the series when I discovered it.

There was only ever a few details that raised a few eyebrows for me, all of which I was able to forgive the show for. I think the biggest problem I had was near the end with those tentacle creatures.
I was like "WTF is this doing in this show?!"
I wanted to skip it, but I obviously couldn't.

I was so excited for SAO 2 that it's the only time I've ever suffered through Sub anime, and I couldn't make it more than the first few episodes. I always planned on going back to watch it when they dub it, but much like Attack on Titan, I haven't been able to find the dub.

 

[donnieth65]

I love SAO and anyone who thinks that it's bad just because of the romance between Kiruto and Asuna in the middle of the season, I just need to say, it wasn't a forced or rushed romance at all. There were so many hints and moments between the two in the beginning up to that point that it was clear to see they could be a good couple. Beside that, it was 2 years! It says so! They were trapped in the game for 2 years! Lots of people dating for that amount of time usually get married, most of the time even in 1 year so it's not that big of a deal. I think it's a great anime, the action is great and the story is great.

 

[Kylesar1]

To me, SAO is utter garbage. Anything after Aincrad shouldn't have existed in the first place. Kirito is an OP Gary and his stats transferring to the other games should NEVER have been possible. You went from his stats in a Sword Game with NO magic whatsoever, to them transferring to a game with a bunch of different classes with their own strengths and weaknesses to a game based on guns whose stats have to be vastly different from SAO.

Kirito was the only badass in the show. The only 2 males in the show that WEREN'T assholes were wholly neglected and all the females became personality-less harem fodder. Sinon and Asuna had extreme potential to be some very good characters, and Silica as well since she was the most unique of the lesser harem fodder, but they all became the same. The sexual assault scenes were just sickening and the incest wasn't wincest because Leafa was the same personality-less harem fodder as the rest.

VRMMORPGS shouldn't have survived as a market. 4,000 people die from 10,000 trapped in it for 2 years in a headset designed to fry your brain. Yeeeeaaaahhhh NO. That shit would've been banned in a heartbeat. Sinon's PTSD was crap, her development in getting over it forced. Death Gun is a terrible villain name and Leafa as well as Sinon were both extreme assholes to the other guys they spent time with on a daily after Kirito came into the picture.


See, I LOVED SAO when I first saw it.............Then I watched it again. When you watch something you've seen before, you notice things that you haven't seen before. That's where the EXTREME amount of flaws became prevalent and impossible to ignore. I DESPERATELY wanted to keep liking SAO, but I realized that I was just in love with the amazing concept of SAO, not the execution

 

[Shiyonichi]

Decent.

It had interesting ideas, but it needed a better way to express them.

 

[SoftSmile]

I loved the story. I loved it the first time though was a bit suspicious the way Kirito was acting around little girls.
Hated the main character. Second time around I came to notice how much I just hated Kirito.

 

[XXDemonCutesXX]

I personally found it to be an amazing anime, despite reviews from others When I watched the first SAO (not GGO) I watched it in dub, and since then I've noticed that Kirito's voice corresponds to other dubbed characters. So now everytime I hear a dubbed voice that's the same as Kirito's, I can only think of him an that bugs me. Besides that, I found it to be a unique plot and it was executed nicely.

 

[Kylesar1]

I personally found it to be an amazing anime, despite reviews from others When I watched the first SAO (not GGO) I watched it in dub, and since then I've noticed that Kirito's voice corresponds to other dubbed characters. So now everytime I hear a dubbed voice that's the same as Kirito's, I can only think of him an that bugs me. Besides that, I found it to be a unique plot and it was executed nicely.

You're a trooper, I give you that. There are plot holes out the ass

 

[Dalamus Ulom]

I'm not a fan, but I do appreciate the series for being a solid entryway into anime for many people. I still watch it, and I mildly enjoy it, but I'm able to still examine it clearly.

 

[Foomy]

As someone who has read everything available of the original source material (The light novels written by Reki Kawahara) as well as having watched through everything produced of the anime twice (Both Seasons, the filler OVA between seasons 1 and 2, and the movie) I feel pretty grounded in my own opinion: I love the series. Despite this, I am also entirely capable of viewing it objectively and accepting the flaws it has.

I'm not going out there to say that it's the best thing ever made. I'm capable of looking at it and analyzing where the problems come from. But I also don't think that it deserves the hate that it gets. I also find the wave of insults toward people that enjoyed the series from the more vocal anime fan community at large (not on this forum, just in general) to be completely inappropriate. People should be allowed to like what they like, regardless of whether or not it's percieved as good or bad by the community. But that's a different kind of rant.

SAO as an anime suffered from a particular problem involving both how the main storyline was released in book format, as well as particular production decisions. The animation quality from A-1 Studios is really great. They know what they're doing on a technical level and are able to present some absolutely spectacular animation sequences. I've never had a problem with that. The baseline problem of the series comes from the fact that Kawahara's presentation of his own idea was rather flawed in its execution. It seemed as though he was more interested in telling Kirito and Asuna's love story than he was in actively exploring the wild setting he had created.

If you actually read the books, you see that Volume 1of the light novels correlates specifically with Episode 1, then Episodes 8 - 10 and 13 - 15 of the anime. There was a brief explanation of how the characters got to where they were, but book one is literally the 1 or 2 month period depicting Kirito and Asuna getting together up to them escaping SAO.

Following that, it seems Kawahara either got the urge to explore Aincrad a bit more or people made requests that the world be explored more, because Volume 2 of the books was a collection of short stories that introduced and explored all of the side characters we see in episodes 2 - 4, episode 7, and Episodes 11 and 12. Episodes 5 and 6 were a short story that came from volume 8 of the books. All of these were presented in chronological order in the anime, so we end up being able to form a time-line of how things go over the 2 years that the players are all trapped in the game. The problem with those short stories though is that they're mostly presented from the points of view of other characters observing Kirito. People he has over-leveled by the time he has met them. As viewers, we are denied the opportunity to actually see Kirito grow into his strength as well as the majority of his personal emotional struggles throughout the Aincrad arc. One of those short stories from Volume 8 that I think is an absolute crime that they did not include in the anime has to do with Kirito obtaining his first rare weapon on floor 1. It's a story that gives us some insight as to Kirito's particular brand of trust issues and gives us some real worth-while characterization for the character that is particularly lacking in the anime as a whole.

With all of that weird jumping around out of the way, everything else from episode 16 through the end of Season 2 follows the story-line as presented in the books (with the exception of that weird OVA in between Seasons 1 and 2 because that was mostly just a review thing to get people ramped up for Season 2).

Something to note about the majority of the books is that they are written in first person. The novels allow you to read how all of the events turn out specifically from Kirito's perspective, with his mental narration and reactions to all of the situations that are presented. His characterization is MUCH more prominent in the novels than in the anime, where he is just presented as this overpowered and aloof Gary Stu.

There is a lot of funky narratives going on with how the technology works and the games play and all of that stuff, but it's up to the viewer to utilize that old friend 'suspension of disbelief' to get past it as we do with a lot of other series in general. The series definitely has problems, I wont deny that, and I largely feel that whether or not it is a "Good" anime is almost entirely subjective considering where it sits amongst the collective consciousness of anime fans. If you people don't like it, then i'm not expecting to change anyone's mind, but I feel a little bit of insight into the actual production of a series helps to explain where some of the problems might have come from.

One last thing of note that I like to mention: SAO didn't actually start out as a full fledged novel. Kawahara had actually been working on the idea as a web novel from as far back as 2003. Eventually, at some point prior to the book's debut in 2009 he reworked the manuscript for what would eventually come out to be volume 1 and submitted to a writing competition, in which it actually won. Further reworking after that with Dengeki Bunko, the publishing house that eventually released the books, is what gave us that first volume. Web novels being converted into actual novels in Japan has become something of a huge resource for publishers, and TONS of these publishing houses do this as a cheap way to get fresh talent into their doors. The problem with all of this is that a fair number of authors on the web don't accept constructive criticism, and since the commercial success of SAO exploded onto the scene, tons of imitations have come out that really put the quality of SAO into perspective. Like I said, SAO isn't the best thing in the world, but there's a lot of garbage that has come out over the years that is even worse.

Final Note: Anyone paying attention to the books may have noticed that a new SAO books series started coming out called SAO: Progressive. This is basically Kawahara going back to the beginning of SAO and writing everything about their journey through Aincrad out floor by floor. His writing has improved and if SAO as an idea is still interesting and you want more Aincrad, I recommend checking it out. Volume 5 will be coming out in... November I believe.

Alright. Rant over. Sorry for the wall of text XD.

 

[Laurensmas]

SAO is not a good anime.
The first season is decent. Not bad, but definitely not good.
The second season... Oh god... I don't even know where to start. Let's not go into that deep pit of awfulness.

But, that doesn't make it not enjoyable. I liked watching it, and truly enjoyed the setting and animation of the series.

If you like these types of series, try Log Horizon! The story and characters are a whole lot better, and it has this same idea of being trapped in an MMORPG game.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Objectively, the writing is pretty bad. There's also the offensive themes, the inability of the author to write any female character as not is love with Kirito- yeah, it's bad. But it's also got a good premise, so I can kind of get why people like it.

 

[smallnscrappy]

The absolute worst. The worst of the worst.

Dont get me wrong, the idea is great and in the beginning the show was charming...but it eventually spiraled out of control into this sob story of unlikable characters (plot devices) . It has become so much worse. The show has grown into this bloated over done cash cow where the writing is generic, no one has anything interesting to say, or anything to do for that matter.

This is as bad as that Holy Grail war anime. Clunky writing, half baked characters, boring and confusing dialogue, an over all kitschy Kitchen Sink.

 

[Falka]

Tbh I couldn't get past the third episode, so I can't imagine how bad the rest of it must be if people say things like "it used to be good in the beginning, but then it jumped the shark". The premise was okay, but it was butchered by incompetent writing and a MC I wanted to punch in the face.