TL;DR: the first 13 episodes or so were fine. After that it gets terrible.
Synopsis: boy gets stuck in a video game and needs to beat all 100 floors of it to get out.
Sword Art Online. Ah yes, the devil himself. This wouldn’t be an anime reviewing blog if I didn’t shit on sword art online at least once.
For the uninitiated, SAO became the most prominent anime in the community for quite some time after its release in 2012. I would argue it is one of the most definitive anime of that decade barring maybe Attack on Titan, as it jumpstarted the isekai craze and changed anime culture.
The premise is part of what made this anime such a phenomenon.
Our hero Kirito and everybody else playing the game are stuck inside a fantasy video game and have to beat all 100 floors to get out. If the people die in the real video game, they die in real life; many argue this is a very good premise as it sets up a definitive long-term goal to the plot and hooks the viewer in. The problem with this is that you are setting yourself up for either:
A. A slog where the MC powers through the 100 levels.
B. A skipped through anime where footage of each level is selectively presented, undermining the grand nature of the premise.
C. A tragedy where everybody dies by the 10th level or so.
This part of the anime was not actually done that poorly — the writing was kind of mediocre and the main characters were kind of bland, but it wasn’t a poor showing overall. Things really start to take off is the second arc, where the main villain traps the main girl and molests her (several times) in front of Kirito.
In the second arc dying in the game no longer makes you die in the real world, which lowers the stakes of the anime immensely. Not only that, but the main villain’s motivations just seem to be to lust after the main heroine and fuck over Kirito, motivations that are convenient for the sake of the plot and don’t really reflect regular human behaviour.
Normally I don’t rag on anime for being wish-fufillment or trashy, but I have to make an exception here due to how egregious sword art online is. Our protagonist is this generic teenage gamer who meets his tsundere hot girlfriend in a video game and attracts the attention of a harem due to his marvelous gamer skills. Not only that, his cousin is in love with him. Fucking Christ.
SAO is to some extent an anime that is optimized for dropping in quality the more you pay attention to it and watch it: it looks good, the premise is cool, it starts out fine, and the fights are cool. The problem is that it becomes less enjoyable if you really start to pay attention to the writing or go past the first arc. Accordingly, it rode a wave of support from low IQ people, vibes-based reasoning people, and young people who hyped up the series, only for it to be shut down by more critical and cynical people.
I suspect that this completely changed anime culture into becoming much more cynical about the concept of “taste” and “quality”. Imagine being a 105 IQ 13 year old who got really into Sword Art Online and rode the wave. Then, you hear all of the criticisms of the series: wish fulfillment, writing, the alfeim arc, and whatnot. Naturally, you get defensive at first, but once you rewatch the series, you actually find that the critics had some points. So what do you do?
Write off liking it as the behaviour of a 16 year old? The rational thing to do, but people do not exactly work that way.
Unconsciously accept you have “bad taste” and start basing your tastes on critical approval? Maybe you do, but that’s not exactly something people can do either.
Become cynical about the concept of taste/quality? Maybe not so rational, but it’s what most do.
Usually, I am skeptical about grand narratives of individual actors — in this scenario, it feels appropriate, as at least 90% of the hardcore anime community has at least tried watching Sword Art Online.
Scoring:
Design (8/15):
Distinguishment: (3/5)
Animation: (1/2)
Sound: (1/2)
OST: (1/2)
Character designs: (1/2) - bland
Backgrounds: (1/2)
Script (26/50):
Character Investment: (6/10)
Character Realism: (1/2)
Character Complexity: (1/3)
Plot solidness: (1/5)
Plot complexity: (3/10)
Ending: (3/5)
Pacing: (3/5)
Stakes: (8/10)
Value (3/15):
Thematic elements: (0/5)
Skill: (1/5)
Originality: (2/5)
Enjoyment (8/20):
Did I like it: (8/20)