It gets annoying, especially since I don’t consider her THAT attractive.ĭue to the series originally being an entry to a writing contest, it kicks off with a decent setup volume before it immediately guns it to the final boss. Kawahara develops a running theme of reminding us just how much of a beauty she is and that she is Kirito’s and nobody else’s. The far better female lead, Asuna, doesn’t take long to become a inconsequential girl with untapped potential. The main character, Kirito, is as blank-slate as his character design, and is insanely powerful for no reason (I get that he played the beta, but it doesn’t explain his equipment setup, that the game ISN’T EVEN PROGRAMMED TO ALLOW). However, the first players who log in are unable to log out, and death in-game becomes death IRL, which is evidently all according to the keikaku of the game’s original creator. The world’s first VRMMO, Sword Art Online, is released. Apologies in advance… I’m not going to be bringing anything new to the table.
Due to its episodic nature, I will be splitting this post by story arc. I enjoyed it at first (key word: “at first”), but since joining the anime community, I’ve come to know full-well the criticism that the series has garnered over the years. It was the first light novel I’d ever read. Light novels had definitely changed drastically at the start of the 2010s, and it can largely be traced to one source: Reki Kawahara’s Sword Art Online, published in English by Yen Press. I did NOT feel like rereading volumes of something I don’t even like (spoilers: I, an Internet critic, do not like SAO) when I’m already swamped enough as it is.
If I mention anything about the actual story that ends up being inaccurate, it’s entirely on me. PREFACE: Most of this post, up to the second half of the Alicization Arc, is a reworked draft of an old MyAnimeList review that I had, at the time, written from memory.