mattkerr-73017
Sword Art Online season 1 review (finished 7/4/2018)Needs more:
Actual characters. There are none. I would say the lack of character arcs is the biggest flaw in this show, but you would need, you know, characters for that to happen. (EDIT: Lines of females falling helplessly for Kirito don't count.)Character development (especially Kirito, or like what is the point?! I mean come on, even the Heroes journey is like writing101)Upping the horror elements (psychological aspects of being trapped in the game - its established as a thing, but the show barely even touches on showing us any of it, why?)Interesting settings. For a large MMO, there isn't a lot of variation between the levels. SAO and ALO as games seem to fall into the Oblivion problem of promising large worlds to explore but then consist mostly of trees/forest setting. Not a huge issue, just a personal gripe. Consequence. Kirito is shown from the start that he is a bad-ass who can do anything and kick anybody's ass without consequence. Other than arguably episode 3, none of his or anybody's actions actually influence the characters in any way, and even beyond this episode it doesn't actually influence his character, because it was supposed to be his reason for having his lone-wolf persona yet its pointless because that was his thing anyway even before that episode happened. Gah!
Needs less
Yui. F**k Yui.Kirito pulling of stupid shit out of no-where, breaking the entire logic set in-universe. It makes no sense and makes nothing about the character.Yui. I just wanted to say again because she is the worst.Incest/tentacles/r**e - I wasn't told this would devolve into a fetish-show by midway through the second arc, but hey ho.Fan-servicing females that meet Kirito and instantly fall head over heels for him. Its not good writing, its embarrassing and it gets old much quicker than the show thinks it does.Subjugating the female lead into a Princess Peach role - very boring, and as established above poor treatment of promising character (also, see above)
Already fine/praisesDespite everything wrong with the series (and there is a lot of that), overall the animation/character design (note; I mean how they look, not the characters themselves), and settings (apart from the lack of variation, see above) are fine. So... despite its flaws, at least it looks nice...?Kinda similar as above, but the action scenes (when we actually get them) can be decent; one of the things that effort was put in and it shows.The first three episodes could potentially have developed into a good anime; alas I can't really praise this too much because it didn't. Lastly, the show is strangely watchable and addictive despite (or maybe partly because of?) everything else. I know people other than myself who have watched this and hated it, yet I don't know any of them that didn't at least finish the damn thing. I think this is a reason for its popularity in the first place. EDIT: forgot to mention that first op is FIRE, can't forget that. Final verdictI had a lot of fun because I was given warning to watch it ironically and preferably with a lot of alcohol on standby. I did the former and usually also the latter. This does not by any means make it a better show, but I can at least say I'm looking forward to doing the same with SAOII and Ordinal Scale. Rating: 2/10Sword Art Online season 2 review (finished 18/4/2018)You know its kind of petty coming to MAL and hating on SAO-related content at this point. Everything that could be said about the series has already been said many times by many people, that despite whatever I put there is likely to not be too much originality to it. Almost everybody I know who watches it thinks that it is trash, although I am aware that committed super fans do exist, and its fascinating that people like me continue to watch through not just the first season, but also into the second season despite knowing all to well that any enjoyment that I get will only be laughing at how poor the quality in the story and characters, falling into both the same old problems and a whole range of new problems and terrible moments that keep it entertaining enough to watch the whole way through. However, here I am anyway, so while I am here I'm going to start with what I liked about the series. Sword Art Online II makes a few decisions that pull it slightly above what can only be described as a disastrous first series; the main decisions I can think of for this are the following1. Actually having a villain that manages to be intimidating for any of the plot - in the first two arcs portrayed in the original SAO, the villains were pretty crappy. I don't remember the designs being pretty intimidating, with the first just being a dude who despite his sadistic intentions of trapping 1000 people in a game leading to the deaths of around 4000 people seems to be viewed of as something of a martyr by the end of it for literally no reason, and then the second villain certainly being vile but not exactly intimidating. Death Gun (I still can't believe that's the name they went with) manages to actually be a convincing and intimidating villain. Well... that is until their character motivations and methods are revealed, as these end up being a little bit disappointing. Still I'll give points for effort.2. Speaking of effort, at least the show TRIES to give the characters actual arcs. While their character arc for Kirito in GGO starts off promising it ultimately doesn't deliver, however I would be lying if I said that Sinon's arc doesn't at least finish fairly satisfying. I guess it's better than nothing... which instantly makes it better than SAO 1.3. Also, my problem for most of the arcs tends to be that they don't take advantage of the universe-inside-a-game settings enough, not telling enough unique stories that can be made within this setting; however, the Yuuki arc seems to be the exception of this, and I'd be lying if I said that there was no effort to evoke an emotional response here (you say feels bait, I say at least they are trying to do something dammit!)However, beyond these aspects I don't really have anything much positive to say about the show. Its dragged down by many of the things that made SAO bad in the first place; Kirito is boring and when he isn't overpowered he pulls stupid shit out of his ass, Asuna is underused, fan service is annoying, side characters are pointless, story makes no sense, too much boring exposition, lack of character development for most of the characters, lack of understanding for game mechanics and MMORPG's, lots of other stupid shit, Yui, Yui, more Yui, etc. There also manages to be new stuff that drags this season down; do I even need to talk about the arc in the middle that goes completely NOWWHERE and is completely pointless and boring, making it essentially a massive waste of time for everyone? I'd say this would drag the season back down lower if it wasn't so thankfully short.So well done Sword Art Online II, you managed to raise the bar from a terrible show to merely a poor one, although its unfortunate to see that as usual with SAO there was potential here in some of the ideas for what could have been a decent season, if not even a good one. Rating: 3/10Overall rating: 3/10
