Sword Art Online... I mean, c'mon. Really?

[Falsename]

Have you ever watched SAO? I mean really 'watched' it? The series began with an original idea that disappeared half way through the first season which from my understanding was due to budgetary issues or lack of foresight. By that isn't the reason for the dramatic decline of the show.

Dialogue
*Two people are hiding in a cave*
We cannot leave or he will kill us.
Yes, he will kill us with his weapon.
We don't want that.
No so we'll avoid him.
Yes, we'll avoid him so he won't kill us.

To quote a certain robotic devil of the futurama series. "You can't just have your characters describe how they feel. That makes me feel angry!"
Not only is the dialogue of SAO painfully cringe worthy but it repeats itself over and over and over again.

There is no subtlety in it, the character's motivations are always described verbally by the characters. How they feel and what they're trying to do. And lets not even touch on how cringe worthy 'Yui's' dialogue is. "Mummy! Daddy! Daddy's the best he'll do the thing!"

The inner dialogue that the characters share with the viewer is nothing short of horrible.
"I must defeat this person to resolve my inner conflict".
"I must use all my skills to do the thing".
"I have to be stronger for these reasons. Because everyone's counting on me"
"....*more emotional conflict or motivations describe through horrible dialogue*..."

Harem
What do Asuna, Pink Haired Blacksmith, dangerously underage girl from SAO, his Own Sister and literally every female character Alfheim Online have in common. Yup, ever single one is lusting after the main character, Kirito. Let's not forget the openly pedophilic hospital nurse who makes open innuendo and excuses to touch the main character.
The female characters in Sword Art Online are a horrible cliche of what a lonely man would want in a woman. All of them are entirely devoted to him, would do anything for him and all want his 'D'.


Conclusion
The show is horribly direct in terms of its use of dialogue, using it as repetitive filler. The woman are offensively cliche and lacking in any depth of character. The show's 'original' premise was interesting, but it quickly devolved into what we have now. A project that feels like a man's fan fiction to himself about his many girlfriends and digital unmatched prowess in online gaming.

TL;DR?
Sword Art Online is essentially the male gamer's version of Fifty Shades of Grey for Mums or Twilight for teenagers.

 

[Risingblade]

It was such a nice series up till episode 16 or so, had to drop it after that.

 

[Zontar]

You're a little late on this one, the passion people like I who hate it has for the most part dried up.

The issues for the story stem from the novels it was adapted from. First and foremost is the fact that the writer knows nothing about MMOs, and wrote the story as part of some light novel competition which he had a sudden ending for, still went over the word count limit and still ended up never submitting it anyway. Then he made a second light novel which was a bunch of side stories which, when added with the story of the first light novel, causes the train wreck that is the first half of SAO to exist as an uneven story which doesn't even know what it wants to be, hitting the high water mark and jumping the shark before the third episode was over. Things only went downhill as the story got picked up and the guy decided to make more stories for it despite the definitive ending it had.

The biggest mistake the anime had was staying faithful to the source material, when massive artistic licence in the form of using the basic concept and ideas should have been used but nothing more. The show is terrible because the source material is terrible. And trust me, it doesn't get better going beyond, despite what fans may tell you the problems remain constant as the writer never, and I mean never, started to put real thought into the story.

 

[MirenBainesUSMC]

I found it very entertaining, sure there is going to be cringe worthy quirks but the whole idea of people trapped within a game and the internal gaming community degrading into a " every man or woman for himself" with the various characters attempting to steal points and level up -- not really putting into the consideration that real death is occurring. Basically put I think today's gaming community would end being terrible worse with hit squads, assassins, and large clans that would basically attempt to hoard power and kill off the rest despite knowing the results are for real. Its a reflection of the various problems we have today.

I watched the whole series and I came back with a far different experience.

 

[Elfgore]

Son, you may wish to sit down for the massive bombshell imma bout to drop on you...

People. Can. Like. Different. Things. Than. You.

Holy shit balls I almost blew my own mind with that amazing logic. It's almost like people can like different things than you, with zero need to defend why they like it. This thread has no point, other than you to say "I think SAO is bad and everyone should know about it. Cause it's not like I'm the thousandth person on the internet to do so."

 

[Pandalisk]

I'm more of a fan of LOG HORIZON, but the lack of a penalty from death (Memory loss not withstanding) and the slow pacing of the story is a bit of a buzzkill, it's clever and constant (mostly) though. I enjoyed GGO somewhat but there's just something...vapid? I guess? With the shows overall.

I liked the first few episodes of SOA, the psychological and sociological exploration was good for what it was but was pretty much forgotten after.. 12 episodes I guess?.. and It didn't help that the main characters are all major Mary Sue's.

Yui was the most cringe worthy character, and the whole haram thing did bug me somewhat, some social realism wouldn't go amiss sometimes, keep your love triangles and harams and such if you must but I wish they'd give some gravitas to relationships.

Son, you may wish to sit down for the massive bombshell imma bout to drop on you...

People. Can. Like. Different. Things. Than. You.

Holy shit balls I almost blew my own mind with that amazing logic. It's almost like people can like different things than you, with zero need to defend why they like it. This thread has no point, other than you to say "I think SAO is bad and everyone should know about it. Cause it's not like I'm the thousandth person on the internet to do so."

He's not mentioned anything about us having to agree with him. Sure he's given a scathing critique in a less than cordial way, perhaps holier than thou in his opening line, but c'est la vie. His criticism stands none the less.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

Eh, I just thought it was dumb fun.

The problems I hear people bring up over and over have never personally bothered me. In fact I mostly laugh with and embrace them.

 

[Falsename]

Well a lot of people argue their criticisms to the death, I won't because an opinion is still just that.

I'm not saying anyone shouldn't like it. Much like Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey. You can enjoy it, sure. But by enjoying those books you're advocating the shallowness and creative decline of literature and are steadily leading this world into an intellectually numb abyss that we might never recover from.... *ahem*...

Haha. Some media deserves to be criticised otherwise we wouldn't know what is good or bad. Which is why there are different shows for different types of people. This show was not for me...
...but...
I still watched it. I think it was probably the hopes that the original premise would make some kind of comeback but that sadly wasn't the case. The story might have been slightly compelling, if only for the hopes of having a conclusion to it. A conclusion that could have been discovered and enjoyed just as much by skipping to the last episode.

There are things that are making society dumber. Keeping up with the Kardashians. Twilight. Jersey Shore.
There are things that are making society smarter. Anything by Christopher Nolan (ha-ha-ha), The Diary of Ann Frank, Breaking Bad, GOT.
Sword Art Online doesn't really fall under either category, but it would much sooner fall under 'dumber' than 'smarter'.


(Don't worry that's satire. With a little truth. I'm not that intense. You're cool. Keep being you and enjoying the things you enjoy. Don't ever apologise for what you like. You don't owe anyone anything. Love love. Love life).

 

[FalloutJack]

The series began with an original idea.

What? You mean like Dot-Hack?

I rather like the show, actually. Not simply because of my love of Dot-Hack, but because it's entertaining in its own right. Your complaints should be directed at anime culture overall. You cannot blame any specific people, unless you'd like to attack all of Japan. And good luck with that. They've got a giant robot.

 

[shrekfan246]

There are things that are making society dumber. Keeping up with the Kardashians. Twilight. Jersey Shore.
There are things that are making society smarter. Anything by Christopher Nolan (ha-ha-ha), The Diary of Ann Frank, Breaking Bad, GOT.

The beauty of our world lies in the fact that all of these things can coexist and simultaneously be enjoyed by vast numbers of people.

There's something to be said for the way trends tend to dominate markets, but a constant always seems to apply that whenever companies decide something isn't worth investing in any longer and thus put their money into less interesting projects, smaller studios or sometimes even individual people will challenge that and create it themselves.

 

[infohippie]

Yeah, SAO is pretty poor in a lot of ways. It has a few great scenes, though, and the premise is a solid one. Also, "Own Sister" was pretty cute, much more so than the actual love interest character.
If you like the premise and want to see it done well, try Log Horizon. Like SAO but without the suck.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Golly gee willickers! Is it THAT time again?! Hooray!

Elfgore had it pretty much down. You're a bit late to the party. All of the hate the show got has sort of calmed down, and only small spatters of critique like this still manage to come up. I thought we were all over this. If not, lemme throw my hat into the ring...


Ahem... Yes, it's flawed. Yes, it's dumb. Yes, Kirito isn't the best character, nor is he very well done in a lot of respects. Now, let's talk about what the show does well. For starters, the soundtrack is amazing. The animation is good, especially in the fight scenes. I rather liked how it was handled in a lot of ways, and didn't for some (Mother Rosario was, oddly enough, not my fave season. SAO 1 or GunGale earns that vote). It explores its themes nicely in several scenarios. I could name a few, but I'm tired and lazy after a strong D&D session.

Ahh, I can dust off this stuff a thousand times over. Though, it seems like I will be doing just that at this rate... Woo (No, really, please, can we fuckin be over SAO? These threads... keep... happening!)

 

[Story]

Whelp.
Farther proof that I can safely skip this series. I saw it on Netflix yesturday and was tempted.

 

[Alex Baas]

My friend, have you consi-

I'm more of a fan of LOG HORIZON

Well it looks like my work here is done. Log Horizon was written by someone who has actually played an MMO before

 

[Alex Baas]

snip

What is the general attitude surrounding this one? I personally liked it which surprised me as I hate SAO with a passion

 

[Maphysto]

Welcome to anime. No subtlety allowed, please check your willing suspension of disbelief at the door.

 

[Infernai]

Guys Guys Guys...relax.

Yeah, the original Sword Art Online sucks BUT it did give us something truly remarkable. Something that makes all the previous effort of the original animators worth it:

Sword Art Online Abridged by SWEabridged


Surprisingly well edited for an abridged series too, so go and watch that instead and learn to look at Sword Art Online for what it was always meant to be: More material SWEabridged can use to make more episodes.

 

[lucky_sharm]

Welcome to anime. No subtlety allowed, please check your willing suspension of disbelief at the door.

That's pretty unfair to anime, there's tons and tons of it out there that exist as superior properties compared to SAO.

But I guess that doesn't really say much considering SAO is basically the nadir of entertainment. The most that can be said about SAO is that it looks pretty and flashy, but look at it from any other angle and you'll see how painfully 2 dimensional it is.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Meh, i still think the start of the anime was top notch and had a neat idea. They may fumbled the rest, but for a short period of time it was really high in my rankings.

 

[Maphysto]

Welcome to anime. No subtlety allowed, please check your willing suspension of disbelief at the door.

That's pretty unfair to anime, there's tons and tons of it out there that exist as superior properties compared to SAO.

But I guess that doesn't really say much considering SAO is basically the nadir of entertainment. The most that can be said about SAO is that it looks pretty and flashy, but look at it from any other angle and you'll see how painfully 2 dimensional it is.

I actually like a lot of anime series, but as a whole it tends to be formulaic, badly written and incredibly poorly paced.

Falsename's OP summed up one of my major complaints with anime: The badly written and repetitive dialogue (or, more often, internal monologue) where the characters go on and fucking on about shit that was painfully obvious to begin with. And it's all just the same fucking thing anyway. In fact, here. Let me show you how easy it is to write a climactic anime fight.

1. Put the protagonist in a room with an antagonist. The antagonist is too strong for the protagonist to beat ohhh noooo!

2. Show at least ten minutes of flashbacks explaining the antagonist's backstory and motivations, because you literally just pulled this character out of your ass and haven't had time to develop him/her but have to at least pretend you want the audience to relate to him/her.

3. Have the protagonist monologue internally about his own motivations that you've already established a hundred times. You can do this either while the protagonist and antagonist glare at each other, or while you're recycling a three frame loop of them trying to hit each other. If you're feeling REALLY ballsy, play the monologue over actual new footage of the fight!

4. Show at least 50 fucking reaction shots of the side characters whenever the protagonist or antagonist do a thing.

5. Have the protagonist and antagonist run at each other screaming and hit each other at the same time, and then do the thing where they're standing facing away from each other for a couple of minutes and then one of them falls. Then more reaction shots.

6. The protagonist wins because of the power of his/her determination to do the thing! Hooray!

There. You now know the formula behind every anime fight. Variables include the protagonist losing but then coming back stronger, the antagonist joining the protagonist's side, and the protagonist being sad the antognist died/lost because of whatever backstory you pulled out of your ass.

The moral of the story is, anime is kinda bad.