Anime Sword Art Online

While I do like the show I will have to agree that they do exaggerate the concepts sometimes. I won't use the romance as an example because you have already stated that, but in some of the battle scenes, while undeniably beautiful, are over quite quickly, with epic music in the background, and shimmers in the air, the monsters are usually dead in one hit. The battle with the giant fish for instance, it runs and screams, buffing itself up, but then gets killed without hassle. The show has flaws, I can see that much, but what shows are perfect?

 

That's true, it has it's flaws, just like anything else. It just depends on the viewer to forgive the flaws. I wasn't one of those people with it though. But that's just me, if you're able to get more from it than I did, that's good. You enjoy it much more than I do, and that's a good thing.

 

Ok, so I've watched the first two episodes and, while enjoyed them and do intend to watch further, I have to ask: Do things pick up later on? So far, it's basically .hack. This is by no means a bad thing and I can't imagine that .hack wasn't an influence on the original novel's writer, but I'm left missing why this was the most popular show of 2012. Did the rest of 2012 suck that much?

 

It picks up greatly nearly after episode 6 or 7. The rest becomes a thrill to watch

 

Ah man its been some time since a post came for this anime. Well I'd like to say 2 things.

1st. The OVA is out and features the female protagonists learning to swim so fanservice, as well as Kirito going to strange meetings. Lasts for 2 hours.

2nd. Sword Art Online II was recently announced showing a trailer of Sinon from Gun Gale Online with her signature sniper. Its due to air sometime this year. Looking forward to it.

 

really looking forward to ggo this year I've read the LN and GGO is a lot more actiony that Alfheim online alfheim's anime adaption was terrible in honesty. I can't wait for underworld arc though really I won't say anything except from <3 eugeo

 

I finished this anime a while back, and I have to say it is most certainly one of the best animes I have ever seen. Like with almost every other anime, I wish it was real *^* Imagine being able to travel in another world full of magic, exploration, flying and ELVES! (I love elevesss :333) And the best part is that it would feel real and not like a game at all, and you could get there by simply wearing the needed headgear. This aspect of the anime was my favoriteee. The characters itself were wonderful, although at one point I started to be disappointed with asuna.

Spoiler

**CAUTION SPOILER**

After the first world was destroyed, and kirito had gone the new elf world, the way asuna is changes. She went from being a very badarse character in the first world to a very helpless type character in the new one. It angered me soooo much. Especially at the part when she was about to press the log out button, but decides to think about it first. WHYYY!! Why think about it! Just press the button and free yourself girl! Dang it, and then those nasty perverted slimes/slugs whatever they were caught her ;~;
I was so frustrated D:

My favorite character is Yui-chan for suree. That adorable little one >/////< She had my heart from the moment I saw her *^*

 

Aside from Fairy Tail, this anime would have to be my favourite. Can't tell you how many times i've sat here listening to the OST for it, something about it just grabs my attention and demands I listen to it. Could be better animation-wise, but I still think it's one of the better ones. Storyline-wise, I absolutely loved the first arc of it, it was pretty damn fantastic, the second arc wasn't bad itself but compared to the first it seemed kinda weak to me, perhaps it was because Asuna was almost made to go from one of the most powerful fighters in the series to suddenly helpless and weak for the entire second arc.

 

Long overdue to post this, but I've long since finished the first season and, being a few days off of the second season, let's talk about this show. More specifically, let's talk about how this show kinda sucks. It takes a promising premise and tosses it out the window to make it a bad power fantasy with serious issues with how it portrays women. Sword Art Online is a great example of how a well animated show with attractive character designs can be popular, despite being kinda terrible. Guilty Crown is further proof of that, but at least I was able to finish SAO.

Before we really begin, let's talk about what I liked about the show, which, trust me, will take far far less time than the ranting and raving that is to follow. The animation and character designs are good. The character designs and art style are recognizable as SAO. While this can be said for a lot of anime, it's worth mentioning here, especially considering that many shows, particularly bad moe shows, have a tendency to kinda blend together. For all of its faults, SAO is a great looking show.

Then there's the writing, which is probably about as good as it can get with the material it has to work with. Put together with the great visuals, this makes the show extremely watchable. Even I was eagerly watching the show as I went and it has me of two minds about season 2. On the one hand, it is a very watchable show, so it could possibly be a fun waste of time, but other hand, season 1 is kinda terrible.

Now, you might be asking yourself, "Cloud, you brilliant and handsome critical genius, if the show is so watchable, why do you say it sucks?" Well, aside from the extremely wrong claims of brilliance, handsomeness and genius, that's a great question. It doesn't challenge you. It gives you everything and expects you to take it at face value, which is extremely easy to do if you're not the type to read into things beneath the surface. The problem is that there are far better choices for shallow action and romance anime out there that SAO is only impressive to people who buy into the hype surrounding the flavor of the month.

Hell, go watch Gurren Lagann if you want a fun mindless action show. At least that's a GOOD fun mindless action show.

My favorite anime of all time is Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad. I love it for almost all of the reasons I don't like SAO. The story has been done before. When you boil it down, it is still a very shonen story of "cast has big dream, they follow big dream," with some elements involving the band's encounters with a corrupt record executive risking dives into the silly. However, there's more to it. The characters more than make up for the simple premise as it has some of the best character development in anime.

What makes a good story isn't a good premise or even an original story, but the characters. Premise can only get you so far. Without good characters, you're left with a lifeless waste of time.

However, while the characters are probably the catalyst for the vast majority of SAO's problems, they aren't the only problems with it. Let's start from the beginning with the very first episode.

The first episode is, for the most part, actually pretty good. It introduces Kirito, our primary protagonist, Klein, potentially another main character (though the show completely drops the ball as he could have been cut out of the show completely with nothing of value lost), the world we're going to be exploring and the basic premise, which is pretty solid. The GM has decided that he wants to be a god, so he locks 10,000 people in the game with only one way out: To clear the final raid dungeon and beat the game. What should have followed is a chronicle of the war waged against the GM. What actually followed was a frustrating mix of generic shonen and harem idiocy as, for almost half of the damn show, the initial premise means NOTHING and is just a way to artificially raise the stakes. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Near the end of the first episode as the GM is explaining the show's premise (pretty blatant exposition, but I can't think of a better way to make the characters aware of the premise without changing the story's goal completely), he announces that he placed an item into everyone's inventory. Everyone pulls out a mirror and all of their appearances are reset to what they actually look like (save hair color for some reason).

This begs one simple question: WHY? What was the point of this? Why did it matter if everyone looked like they do in real life? For that matter, how does the game know what they all look like? The Nervgear's visor only covers a person's eyes and we see that two years later there is a more streamlined version of the Nervgear, so it suggests that there are other versions of the Nervgear, so who's to say that there isn't already a version that doesn't cover any part of the user's face?

The only pay off we get from the mirror plot point is a quick joke when we see two players that were flirting with each other near the start of the episode, one was a girl and the other was a handsome guy, but wouldn't you know it, the girl was actually a guy and the guy was actually fat! So whimsical! No points for assuming this is sarcasm.

I've read elsewhere that the novel explains that men who use the Nervgear to emulate a female form for too long get uncomfortable due to missing certain anatomy, but this is never explained in the anime and is pointless anyway. The mirror is a violation of Chekov's Gun, which, basically, states that if a shotgun is established as being on the wall in act one, it must be fired at some point during the play. If you aren't going to use the gun, don't establish it.

Take Shaun of the Dead for example. The Winchester pub is established to have a Winchester rifle hanging above the bar, which is why it's called the Winchester. While this could have been a throwaway gag as it also works as world-building, we get payoff at the end of the movie when they find out that, despite Shaun's belief otherwise, the gun is real and they use it fight off the zombies.

It would have been far less jarring and more professional to just not draw attention to the customized characters. The audience would have believed that the main characters used their real appearances, despite the issue of how the Nervgear picks up their appearance in the first place (maybe it picks it up from their brains? I don't know).

Now, what's the point of this tangent? It seems like a lot of complaining for a rather minor thing. Admittedly, it is, but it serves to highlight how amateur the show is. Ultimately, not only can the show not stick to its premise, but most of it can be cut out without losing anything of value. Let's go through the episodes one by one and see what can be cut out:

Episode 1: No, but the mirror plot point was the first sign of problems to come.

Episode 2: No, but surprisingly, I don't have much of an issue with this one.

Episode 3: Yes and I'll be ripping this one a massive hole.

Episode 4: Yes, it adds nothing to the story.

Episodes 5 and 6: Yes. You could probably argue that it develops Kirito and Asuna's relationship, but as I'll get to, that relationship was poorly developed anyway.

Episode 7: Yes and no. The plot point of Kirito getting a second sword will pay off later, but the story itself is filler. It isn't important to see him get the materials for crafting the sword. The audience would have accepted something as simple as “a boss dropped it.”

Episodes 8, 9 and 10: No as this is the longest stretch where we actually get relevant story.

Episodes 11, 12 and 13: Yes and no. While the arc showing Kirito and Asuna as the height of their relationship makes for good breather filler, the Yui plot ultimately means nothing and I'll get to the bigger issues with the Yui subplot. Of course, there's also the problem of breather filler being largely unnecessary as we haven't had any sort of arc fatigue to justify it. Maybe if the show would stick to the damn premise.

Episode 14: Nope and the second of two episodes I have no problem with.

That's just the Aincrad arc. Six episodes can be left intact and actually are fully relevant to the story, while four episodes have some relevance, but could have been told far better without running off on some pointless tangent and four episodes could be completely removed from the show with nothing lost. This means that at least half of the show is pointless filler. I give the Fairy Dance arc credit for actually sticking to the story, but as I'll get to, it manages to be even worse than the Aincrad arc for other reasons. But let's move into episode 3, which is the worst episode in the show.

The basic plot of episode 3 is Kirito meets a small group of friends and starts spending his time with them, eventually joining their guild. They have adventures together and plan to buy a house so they have a permanent place to live. But then a couple of them get bold and suggest going into a dungeon instead of their usual hunting grounds because they've gained a couple levels and Kirito being far high leveled than them, despite his completely pointles decision to hide his level. In the dungeon, they find a secret room with a booby trapped chest that summons monsters that kill everyone except Kirito.

Because Kirito is stupid, he blames himself and says it's because he was arrogant, which he wasn't, and because he hid his level, when being honest about his level wouldn't have kept them from being Zerg rushed like they were. The idea of him being arrogant is laughable. He hid his level so he wouldn't look arrogant. He suggested against going to the dungeon and tried to warn the others when they found the hidden room.

Throughout the episode, Kirito especially bonds with Sochie, the only girl in the group. The group always tried to push her to do things she wasn't comfortable and only Kirito would tell her that she doesn't have to. And she's the only one that matters when everyone dies. And that is the first example of Sword Art Online's sexist portrayal of women.

Why did Sochie die? To make Kirito angst. That's it. After her death, he went on a suicide mission to find a rumored item that could supposedly bring someone back to life, only to find that the item has to be used immediately after the character's death (how this works is beyond me as bodies explode into white sparkles immediately after death).Why? I actually have no idea. After this episode, he goes back to exactly as he was before. He even keeps grouping with people from time to time.

But why do I call it the show's first example of sexism? Because this is a textbook example of Women in Refrigerators.

Women in Refrigerators is a term coined by comic writer Gail Simone (one of the best writers in comics today. The only writer I like more than her is Brian Clevinger) to describe when a female character is killed for no reason other than to artificially develop a male character. It objectifies women by saing that they are only defined by their relationship to a man.

Sochie's death didn't mean anything. It was purely to make Kirito angst. Ultimately it means nothing as it's pretty much forgotten by the end of the show. Again, there's no pay off.

None of the other members of that guild matter and are never mentioned again after they die, while, if I remember correctly, Sochie gets a single, pointless mention near the end of the arc.

Now that we've established that the show is sexist, let's examine the secondary characters:

Klein: Could have been cut from the show entirely and nothing would have changed. For the life of me, I can't think of a single thing he did that couldn't have been accomplished by a nameless one-off character. He has no character development. Ironically, since he's more likable than characters that actually matter, he quickly became my favorite character.

Egil: Also could have been cut from the show with no consequence. He did even less than Klein. We're told that he has some character development, but we never see it. I'll get to the show's numerous violations of Show, Don't Tell.

Sochie: See above.

Silica: Exists purely to fawn over Kirito. Could have been cut from the show with no loss.

Lisbeth: See Silica.

See a pattern? Not one of these characters actually matter. Every single one of them could have been cut from the show and nothing would have been lost.

However, there are other implications involving Silica and Lisbeth. Hell, in the last episode we see that that they're still in love with him, despite the fact that they probably spent a total of a few days with him, combined. This is what I mean when I say they exist purely to fawn over Kirito. It's to raise him on a pedastal and make him even more of a power fantasy than he already is.

Yes, Kirito is nothing more than a Mary Sue power fantasy. I can't think of any flaws he has as a character that aren't induced by stuffing Sochi into the fridge. The show tries to tell us that his loner attitude is bad, but it doesn't show us why. In fact, it shows that he was rewarded for it with the GM giving him a unique skill and him climbing levels at a faster rate than most players, even those who join the strongest guilds. In fact, despite telling us that it's bad and extremely dangerous to be a loner, all we're shown is that being a loner makes Kirito stronger.

Kirito can do no wrong. He's the center of attention at pretty much every point. The only time he doesn't win is when the GM, disguised as a player, challenges him to a duel. He is designed to make the viewers imagine themselves in his place, being a badass who can defeat every enemy in his way and having every beautiful girl fall for him.

Speaking of beautiful girls falling for Kirito, let's look as Asuna next.

When we're first introduced to Asuna, she's very shy, a loner, unconfident and barely agreed to group with Kirito for the purposes of the first boss fight. Next we see her, she's a leader in the top guild and one of the strongest players. Her personality has developed into a confident, independent and strong warrior. The change is extremely jarring and comes out of no where.

What did she do after that boss fight? Who did she meet? How did she encounter the Knights of the Blood Oath? Why did she join them? Why didn't she join some other guild? What did she do when she first joined them? Who did she encounter? Did she contribute to some of the raids?

There are so many questions that are left unanswered. This is not character development. This is expecing us to take a complete change in character at face value.

I've seen Asuna championed as an example of a strong female character, but I srongly disagree. We never see her character development, but we do get a single token explanation: Kirito. The explanation is a total of about three, maybe four lines, but she simply states that she was inspired by Kirito and wanted to impress him.

Not only is that a severe violation of Show, Don't Tell, it's yet another example of sexism. By that explanation, her character and motivation are defined entirely by her relationship with her love interest. This means that she, like Silica, exists to just fawn over Kirito and raise him on a pedastal to make him look good.

This is a recurring trend with the show. Other characters exist to make Kirito look good. Silica, Lisbeth and Asuna want him. Klein pities him to try to paint him as a victim for some reason. Sochie was killed off to artifically develop him. The only character I've talked about so far that isn't there to put Kirito on a pedastal is Egil, who, as I said, doesn't do anything.

Then we have Yui. Oh, god, what a load of utter ****. I'm not going to make the kneejerk reactions some have regarding her and her story arc, which generally boil down to generic rejections of moe and calling her pedobait. If I can give the show credit for anything, it's the lack of sexualization of an underage girl... at least until Suguha gets promoted to main character status.

Instead, I'm going to call it contrived and rushed. While it could have worked as a one off filler episode with Kirito and Asuna role playing her parents, instead we get an attempt to have them actually effectively adopt her. Sure, except they knew this girl for maybe three days. It's awkward and forced. Then, when they find out she's an AI (ignoring the fact that this just plain SCREAMS .hack// knockoff) and she “dies,” we get scenes of Kirito and Asuna mourning her as if they actually did lose their daughter. Like I said, they've known this girl for maybe three days, a week, tops. They didn't react this way to any actual human death... and then Yui comes back four episodes later anyway, making this bit, like so much of the rest of the show, completely pointless.

Of course, four episodes later, we're knee-deep into the Fairy Dance arc, which, as I've just finished writing five ****ing pages about the Aincrad arc, I'll get to later.

For now, I'll just say that season 2 has a big job ahead of itself. I've read about Shinon and I like the premise of her character, so we'll see if, like with so many other interesting concepts, Sword Art Online will screw it up somehow. And I expect it to.

 

I've only seen the SAO anime once, so my answers are based on what (I vaguely remember) is given in the show.

Supposedly (as stated by a character but I can't remember who), the players were prompted to pat themselves down when first using the Nervgear as a form of calibration or something. Pretty vague mention, but at least there was a bit of an attempt to explain the unlikeliness of the avatars to look almost exactly like their users. As for why the avatars are turned into their users' appearance story-wise, probably to impress upon the players even further how dire the situation actually is. This is life or death and you are real, and the death of you here is your real death and not just some game over for a character/avatar. Just my interpretation.

Again, mentioned briefly in an episode or two. The death of an avatar in game triggers something in the Nervgear to kill the player's brain and causes death. I think the description of that item mentioned its use had about ten seconds within the player's death. So the "explosion" of the avatar in the game and the death of the actual player's physical body seems to have some delay and so this item can give someone a chance to stop the Nervgear brain-killing act from triggering and thus "reviving" the character in game.


Not a big fan of the anime myself because of many of the reasons given before me. If I ever decide to watch it again, it'll only be to look at the pretty animation/designs. SAO definitely suffers from giving the illusion that a lot of stuff/plot is happening while focusing on silly/forced relationships that were given little development overall. All flair, little substance.

 

I think he was asking more of the artistic, moral reason why she died. I mean, he goes through all that emotional trauma after her death, but in the next episode, it's like it never affected him. If he was just going back to normal, why was she so important in the first place.

With all my complaints about it, this was actually my favorite episode. He needed to have someone important to him die for him to truly understand the stakes of this world, that this world isn't fair. And I think there is a reason why he goes back to normal; it's because of the letter he receives from her on Christmas. She doesn't want him to mourn, she wants him to live and be happy, because that's what gave her and others hope for the future.

And it does affect him in more episodes. I rewatched the series simply because I had a friend who was in the dub, and I wanted to support them. At least from what I saw watching it a second time and dubbed, I could tell that a lot of his choices were about preserving life, and that he saw Sochie in just about everybody.

I still think it's just an okay series, nothing all that great, but I really appreciate small things like that.

 

The problem with saying that Sochie died to show what's at stake is that there are far less sexist ways of doing it. By the start of the second episode, 2000 people are dead and the first raid has yet to be cleared. Given some focus, that could have done the job without including a throwaway love interest to be killed in cold blood to make Kirito angst.

Remember that I make the point that Sochie's character is defined entirely by her relation to Kirito. Without her relationship to a male character, she's a background character, at best.

My suspension of disbelief is willing to accept that the Nervgear somehow has access to the players' real appearances. The reason that disbelief is shattered is because of the mirror, which just draws attention to what I pointed out.

If you wanted to argue the point of later games having customizable characters, the appearance reset could have been explained later. Again, the question is why was the reset necessary? If it was to exemplify what's at stake, the show completely failed to explain that.

The explanation doesn't have to be immediate. In fact, that's the best way to avoid an awkward exposition dump. Even if the last line in the show was an explanation, it would have been in line with Chekov's Gun.

Remember that the GM is pretty obviously a sociopath and has a massive ego. He has no regard for anyone but himself. He explains later on that his point of posing as a player was to serve the story with him planning to reveal himself as the villain near the end of the game (and, believe it or not, I actually rather like the GM. He was a fascinating character that I wish we could have seen more of). It would have been simple for him to make an off-handed mention of the appearance reset, such as a statement of him wanting to see the real face of the people he rules as a god. The mirror was just contrived and served no purpose.

 

Sometimes characters are just there to act as a device. That goes into a lot of basic storytelling. A good writer will have that character evolve into something more. But this is Sword Art Online, where you just have to be happy with mediocre story telling.

And I don't see it sexist at all. I believe she explains that she's new in all of this, so she doesn't know what to do. And yes, all those people died, but they're not an impact because it wasn't anything that was personal. In order for him to grasp the magnitude, it had to be someone he was close to, who he had a personal connection with. Many stories have done this in the past to wake the hero up and realize that there's more at stake that what they first believed. He needed to go through a loss of innocence.

Why the hell am I defending this show?!

 

Quoted to answer out of order: Because it can make some decent discussion.

The reason I make the sexism point is because her character has exactly one purpose: To make Kirito angst. While I can credit it for actually showing that he spent a pretty good amount of time with the guild - which is why I haven't made the point of "well, he only knew her for a few days," like I did with other characters - the episode focuses only on her and the only member of the guild that matters is her. Can you name the other members of the guild without looking it up? I doubt it because they're simply there to show how poorly poor little Sochie was treated until Kirito came along.

Even if the focus was entirely on Sochie, the problem is less "the woman died" and more "the woman was introduced and then killed off to make the man angst because he was the only one who REALLY cared about her." Again, I point out that her guild treated her poorly and didn't respect the fact that she was uncomfortable with a lot of what they wanted her to do. Kirito was the only one who didn't expect her to leave her comfort zone. This is, again, to put Kirito on a pedestal. It had less to do with showing Kirito what's at stake and more to do with artificially painting flaws on him.

You make a point I didn't think about when you mention Sochie's farewell. I'm going to ignore the contrivance of her conveniently writing a letter that just HAPPENS to get to him after her death and also just HAPPENS to be written as if she knew she was going to die as, while cliche, there are far worse sins in this show. However, this is more reason why I call it angst instead of character development. Again, I point out that Sochie's death meant nothing. After she died, Kirito went back to exactly how he was before, which is the problem. While you make a good point of why he wasn't mourning her death for the whole show, his character didn't change at all.

When we're told there was character development, but aren't shown it or are shown it and it is forgotten immediately after, there was no real development. Note what I said about Asuna and Egil. There's a reason a very popular critical mantra is "Show, don't tell."

 

Alright ignoring the debate above. My views on the first episode of SAO; I liked the intro it portrayed death gun exactly the way I expected..though at this point in time I don't know why they showed his face because having read the light novels (personally I'm only watching to see the contrast with the LN's) the author obviously wanted to have death gun's features or any appearance in the prologue hidden so that we'd be completely clueless to this new character who's the main focus for the new hardcore VRMMO personally I had hoped they wouldn't have shown us his face at all.

I think that the scene with kirito and asuna was done just right, it focused on their attachment to Yui and their idea's of being with Yui all the time through technology advancing..though I wish they had brought up Asuna and her idea of giving Yui a sister which was actually really funny, it let me see how their relationship has advanced in not much off of a year.

Now the scene between Kirito and Kikuoka was done well, though I wish they had put in the more cold humourous side of kikuoka and had expressed Kirito's cold attitude towards kikuoka more than it did within the Anime.

Now what I hope for the next episode, is that they just get Sinon's character right, I hope they actually give us more of an impression on her rather than just a cold tsundere passive borderline emo character, honestly because of the title of the next episode being named "The Icy Sniper" I know this will be focused on Sinon so I hope they get her emotional peaks and flashbacks (if they include them) just right so we have a feel for the type of character she really is.

and that about does it for my thoughts on the first episode of SAO II

 

When I saw the first episode I think "Wow! I never see an anime like this" and I don't know if there is anime about rpg but I lost this interests quickly. When they begin a new storyline, they don't close it.
I didn't like time shifts of one year in an episode without know what Kirito did meanwhile, or how Kirito become powerful. Fights too short. A fight against a boss should take few episodes, but here Kirito uses a skill learned somehow and the boss is defeated in less of 30 seconds.
For example in the second part (the second rpg) Kirito uses a some kind of Omnislash that uses Cloud in FF7 Advent Children against Sephiroth.

There are too many useless episodes where appear characters for one or two times and then no one will see again.

To conclude, I didn't like it.

 

So season 2 has begun. And before you ask, no I haven't seen the new episode. I don't pay for Crunchyroll and am not about to waste a free trial on a show I don't expect to be very good. But I'll get to it.

 

You didn't need crunchyroll to see the new episode JS.

 

So, where can I legally watch it for free, then? If I have a legal option that's that easy, I'm not going to pirate it.

 

I went into the first episode of SAO2 with medium to low expectations. While I find the premise of this season very interesting, I know not to trust SAO on premise alone. Fool me once, shame on you and all that. However, I was surprised by the lack of big action sequences. Maybe there will be more emphasis on story, but I highly doubt it. I definitely like all the stuff that isn't revolving around the returning cast.

Slightly hyped, but I know what I'm in for. I just need something to keep me occupied as I wait for Log Horizon Season Two.