Very Cool!!!

Just perfect...

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

It is genuinely impressive on how many levels this show fails. It has become a reference point for bad writing. This is a story written by someone who has admitted to doing no research beforehand, and made by a company prone to reusing footage. It fails on so many levels, that its popularity doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Yes, this show was released around the time death games got popular, the animation looks slick to the very untrained eye, and a few worthless characters are killed early on to give a sense of danger to the whole thing, but I can't believe that it is still popular that it has already gotten spinoffs, movies, and other series. How are people still watching this mess?CharactersNone of the characters have any actual personalities, especially not the females. Pretty much all of the women onscreen are only on the show to serve as a love interest for Kirito or to draw the eye of anyone watching for the attractive anime girls. None of them have any personality other than some of them having hobbies, and having a hobby does not equate to having a personality. The side characters also don't serve any purposes, other than to propel the "plot." The main character, Kirito, is mainly just a blank slate because the writer thought that being the most overpowered character ever written is a personality. Plot The story of the first arc had some potential, but unfortunately is it very poorly executed. None of the characters act like gamers. All the characters are very weak. The villain has no motivation. The fights are terrible (just watch them without music, without the amazing soundtrack no-one would be defending those fights). There are countless filler episodes and very little plot progression. The game doesn't make sense as a game. There are a lot more problems, but the main thing is that the author can only give exposition in a bar or a cafe. Seriously, if you have seen this, think back to any time you heard a clunky speech of poorly-disguised exposition. Chances are, it took place in some kind of a restaurant, which is a pretty lazy way of conveying information to the audience. Also the villain HAS NO MOTIVATION FOR KILLING THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. Now I'm going to talk more about the Fairy Dance arc. Some of the things I mentioned previously regarding filler, exposition, and fight scenes are also here, but the plot has some extra problems. Like incest. There is an incest subplot just thrown in there and the poor writing just makes it gross and uncomfortable. If there was better writing, if Kirito's cousin had a personality outside of wanting to bang him, and if she grew over the course of the arc as a person, then it could've worked I guess. Asuna, Kirito's "wife" from the first arc has been reduced from a poorly animated badass to a caged damsel in distress. The villain of this arc has motivations, making the finale slightly less anticlimactic than the first, but they make no sense. If you lay out everything that he's trying to do, and think about how government cooperations work, and everything anywhere near his plan, it makes no sense as to why or how he would do this. There's also an uncomfortable and unnecessary rape scene with tentacle monsters that doesn't make a lot of sense in context and doesn't need to be there. For some reason Kirito is now friends with a mass-murderer and can walk immediately after being bedridden for 2 years. There's a lot I don't want to get into about how NOT A GODDAMN THING MAKES SENSE, but this review would just end up even longer and there are plenty of video essays on YouTube that go into more depth in much more entertaining manners. Sights and SoundsThe character designs and settings are ok, I guess. Most of it is pretty generic and bland. Like I said, there is a lot of reused footage and still panning shots. I wouldn't be as annoyed as the panning shots as they're common in anime, but panning over a frozen image can only be excused if its an establishing shot, not an excuse for a fight scene. For some reason people defend the fight scenes saying that they're the best thing about this show, but if you watch them with out the spectacular soundtrack, they're pretty pathetic. I can't believe that such a talented composer is working on such trash. Or they might not be anymore, I don't know. The music is still good. The voice acting is not. I watched this with the English dub, which is terrible. I also watched some of the original Japanese dub, and it really isn't any better.

I think it's impossible to review this series without referring to the first and second season separately.The first season shows the hard emotional side of being stuck in a game where you play for your life. The hardships were portrayed very realistically in my opinion. It made it even more realistic for an online gamer like myself who knows the interactions you usually have with other players. Although I could never relate or find any interest in Azuna I did find it interesting to see how the players who were captive in the game tried to build their life and form a relationship despite everything. There were a few things I hoped will be explained at the end: The motive of the man who trapped them there, how come no one managed to set them free of there for years, why did it seems that the authorities didn't get their hands on this man? I hoped for plausible answers but in the end on the first season, when they finally set free of this game, I got none. That man apparently did this because he always dreamed of a world like that. Seriously? You kill and trap thousands because of a stupid reason like this while ruining your own life too? One might argue that the man is insane but that explanation gets accepted by Kirito and Azuna like the most understandable thing ever. In the real world it's announced that the culprit has escaped the police. The man caused an equivalent to a massive terror attack and the police understood that he's behind it only after all the players woke up and then he simply slips between their fingers?? From that point on things started to become even less logical as the Mangaka who came up with this story obviously was trying desperately to drag it as much as he could. So apparently Azuna got purposefully trapped again in another game by the "bad guy" of this season who works with her dad. His plan was to marry her while she's still in a coma with the permission of her father. Logically her dad agreed. And of course this is completely legal. Now we can assume that the Japan in "Sword art online" isn't democratic and trades women like some other countries in the world, but throughout the series there is no indication to this. What follows is Azuna the damsel in distress, a bunch of people who take a game way too seriously (without any reason as no one can die anymore in reality), Kirito somehow keeping all his powers from the previous game, and many more nonsense. I stopped watching towards the end of season two.

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS I first watched SAO when I was starting Secondary school (Around 6th grade for Americans) The hype for this show was skyrocketing in my school and I was one of those die-hard fans for the show. That was 5 years ago, and my opinion of the show has drastically changed. SAO starts off REALLY strong as it's hard enough to engage an audience with such an over-saturated genre. However SAO had a very unique sense of horror and dread going from a happy, light mood to complete panic and unknowing. Thats what hooked me on the show originally, the characters throughout the WHOLE show either wanna f*** Kirito or are bland filers who are to further the meaningless plot. Although there are two exceptions (Klein and Yuuki) and I'll get to that. Anyway after the first episode, here comes the adventures of edgy Jesus! who is about as deep as a matchbox. Another HUGE flaw of the show is its pacing, you can't write something then ignore everything that happened before it! Let me just give some context.Episode 2: Beat the first bossEpisode 3: Floor 50To me, this is nothing but laziness. But before I move on I'd like to mention even after re-watching I did REALLY enjoy this arc. Believe it or not the show has a great soundtrack and is animated so well I can't help but enjoy the Aincrad arc.Aincrad arc: 7/10 It's entertaining....need I say more?The second half of the first season was a dumpster fire, nothing short of fan-service between furthering a relationship everyone is a little sick of. Oh did I mention Kirito's Sister/Cousin wants to f*** him? To me all their is to say about this arc is Asuna went from cool sword wielding bad-ass to Sloppy damsel in distress who sits in a cage waiting for her narcissistic boyfriend to come save her. Also she gets assaulted sexually...Family friendly content!ALO arc: 2/10 Ruined the whole show and gave it a bad name...Not much to say about Gun Gale it had a really interesting plot and Sinon had a nice developing character from start to end. Then again, she wants to f*** Kirito.....So that kinda kills it. DeathGun is a bad-ass. Even though he doesn't say much in character Ignite was a great opening too. It really brought what the arc was about to life.Gungale: 6/10 Unique and interesting but then again kinda fell flat with the other part of the plot leading to it slowly becoming irrelevant.Mothers Rosario was a beautiful way to sum up season 2 with the main character (Edgelord) being replaced by Yuuki a bright bubbly character with a helluva fighting spirit. The show did everything right it was beautifully written and the ending made me cry my eyes out for a couple day straight. Probably my favorite arc, the development of Asuna and Yuuki's relationship was so special and adorable.Mothers Rosario: 9/10 I love this arc and I just hope they can make season 3 like this.Overall I'd give the show a solid 5/10 as it just lacks consistency but it is a show I will never forget. You should watch this show and forge your own opinion of it though, after all I'm not Jesus, and I'm certainly not edgy Jesus ;)

This anime has a special place between my favorite animes. That's mainly for the things it made me feel. I agree with most of the other reviews, the first arc is the best by a huge difference but I also enjoyed the rest of the show. I recommend that you try and watch the first 8 episodes. If you don't like it, stop there and try another one.