Sword Art Online... WTF Happened?

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ObserverStatus

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NiPah said:
Dear god... the sister wants to shag her brother and sexualized violence to boot? I knew I liked Sword Art for some reason.

The show aired uncensored on national cable and Adult Swim didn't get one complaint over the show, this isn't Please Twins here this is a little sister who has a little unrequited crush on her brother, stop with the damn bolded incest crap.
I know man, I too was extremely disappointed when Kirito didn't brush Suguha's teeth.
 

Alex Baas

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Ugicywapih said:
I've got to say I've never watched SAO, but if you're looking for a recent anime set in an MMO world, where players have somehow gotten imprisoned as their own characters, with 2 seasons, limited fanservice, at least by anime standards, good amount of hard data and information on both characters (levels, classes etc.) and the world (exposition galore), considerably fewer inconsistencies and much less squick than SAO (there still is some IMO and, not having watched SAO, I find it hard to compare, but I hadn't heard of other viewers making a fuss about it, so given the shitstorm over SAO, I'm guessing it's fairly minor in comparison), consider watching Log Horizon. It really is pretty good, though if you get down to it, it's a whole diffrent kind of story, much more focused on planning and politics, with the entire main cast getting decent amounts of agenda and screen time, rather than a personal physical (well, not quite, the world being an MMO, but you get what I mean, right?) struggle of a solitary hero.

TL;DR: Watch Log Horizon

*adjusts glasses*
*glasses adjustment intensifies*

Also, Log Horizon actually has established game mechanics, something that SAO lacks
 

And Man

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Lightspeaker said:
And Man said:
I honestly cannot understand how anyone over the age of 12 can genuinely like the second arc in any way other than so-bad-it's-good
Hey, I take issue with that. I'm 27 and as mentioned above I kinda like it...although that's largely just because Suguha is my favourite character. The story itself was really rather poor. >_>
Heh, not trying to offend. As long as you recognize that the story of that arc was bad
 

Zeraki

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Alex Baas said:
Ugicywapih said:
I've got to say I've never watched SAO, but if you're looking for a recent anime set in an MMO world, where players have somehow gotten imprisoned as their own characters, with 2 seasons, limited fanservice, at least by anime standards, good amount of hard data and information on both characters (levels, classes etc.) and the world (exposition galore), considerably fewer inconsistencies and much less squick than SAO (there still is some IMO and, not having watched SAO, I find it hard to compare, but I hadn't heard of other viewers making a fuss about it, so given the shitstorm over SAO, I'm guessing it's fairly minor in comparison), consider watching Log Horizon. It really is pretty good, though if you get down to it, it's a whole diffrent kind of story, much more focused on planning and politics, with the entire main cast getting decent amounts of agenda and screen time, rather than a personal physical (well, not quite, the world being an MMO, but you get what I mean, right?) struggle of a solitary hero.

TL;DR: Watch Log Horizon

*adjusts glasses*
*glasses adjustment intensifies*

Also, Log Horizon actually has established game mechanics, something that SAO lacks
Log Horizon feels like it was written by somebody who actually has a lot of experience with MMO's, has a love for the genre and understands how social dynamics work in those games. I haven't played WoW for years, but Log Horizon filled me with so much nostalgia for the days I used to run dungeons/raids with my guild.

Also, I like that pretty much all of the important characters in the series are adults, which is something that Anime really needs more of.
 

Alex Baas

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Tank207 said:
Alex Baas said:
Ugicywapih said:
I've got to say I've never watched SAO, but if you're looking for a recent anime set in an MMO world, where players have somehow gotten imprisoned as their own characters, with 2 seasons, limited fanservice, at least by anime standards, good amount of hard data and information on both characters (levels, classes etc.) and the world (exposition galore), considerably fewer inconsistencies and much less squick than SAO (there still is some IMO and, not having watched SAO, I find it hard to compare, but I hadn't heard of other viewers making a fuss about it, so given the shitstorm over SAO, I'm guessing it's fairly minor in comparison), consider watching Log Horizon. It really is pretty good, though if you get down to it, it's a whole diffrent kind of story, much more focused on planning and politics, with the entire main cast getting decent amounts of agenda and screen time, rather than a personal physical (well, not quite, the world being an MMO, but you get what I mean, right?) struggle of a solitary hero.

TL;DR: Watch Log Horizon

*adjusts glasses*
*glasses adjustment intensifies*

Also, Log Horizon actually has established game mechanics, something that SAO lacks
Log Horizon feels like it was written by somebody who actually has a lot of experience with MMO's, has a love for the genre and understands how social dynamics work in those games. I haven't played WoW for years, but Log Horizon filled me with so much nostalgia for the days I used to run dungeons/raids with my guild.

Also, I like that almost all the important characters in the series are adults, which is something that Anime really needs more of.
Log Horizon made me START playing MMOs! I can't wait till I got the free time this summer to actually get raiding.

Capcha: Almost got it
I know, Capcha, I know
 

NiPah

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ObserverStatus said:
NiPah said:
Dear god... the sister wants to shag her brother and sexualized violence to boot? I knew I liked Sword Art for some reason.

The show aired uncensored on national cable and Adult Swim didn't get one complaint over the show, this isn't Please Twins here this is a little sister who has a little unrequited crush on her brother, stop with the damn bolded incest crap.
I know man, I too was extremely disappointed when Kirito didn't brush Suguha's teeth.
You think brushing teeth is hot, just wait till she starts eating Inari Sushi.
 

Username Redacted

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Lightspeaker said:
Marxie said:
Thunderous Cacophony said:
SAO crops up every time someone asks, "I want to get into anime, where do I start?"
Why?! Whyyyyy would anyone dooooo that?! I can somewhat understand people who enjoy it, but getting into anime through SAO?
I mean, it is in NO WAY a classic, from the start it bashes the viewer over the head with anime tropes that one needs to be used to not to be weirded out (fanservice most of all) and it is rather non-typical in it's structure. So it's not that memorable even if one likes it, it's not entry-level and gives a rather wrong impression of what the most of anime looks like. Who could ever suggest it as a starter when there are much better suited titles by Studio Ghibli or Kyoto Animation?
To be fair I'd kinda agree with this to an extent. I don't think SAO is the worst possible introduction to anime but it really isn't the best and it could definitely turn people off. Though I fundamentally disagree on the notion that people should look at "classics" to get into it because those classics include stuff like Neon Genesis Evangelion which most definitely is NOT the best place to start either.

Ghibli isn't a bad call. Personally lately I've become rather partial to Girls und Panzer. That could potentially be a good starting point for people. Or Fate/stay night. Both are a far more reasonable mix of traditional anime tropes and really nice action. Personally I got into it from a weirder place, the anime that really got me into it was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
I think the easiest way to get someone into anime is to find their preferred genre(s) of western television and movies and find the best examples of anime equivalent. Madoka Magika may be a really good anime but I doubt you're as likely to convert a (for example) die hard Star Wars fan to anime if you show them that instead of Cowboy BeBop.
Lilani said:
I enjoyed the first arc of SAO, I thought it raised some interesting ideas about he possibility of giving up on real life for a virtual one.
That is an interesting premise. One that has been had with a few twists on it by animes that are likely better than SAO.

With regards to the topic I have no idea WTF happened to SAO as I've never seen it but I do still find its existence useful as it provides a good barometer, when someone recommends that I check it out, for where I and the offending party stand with regards to taste in anime.
 

kyp275

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Tank207 said:
Also, I like that pretty much all of the important characters in the series are adults, which is something that Anime really needs more of.
This is exactly what I was talking about. Why does "anime" need more adults? Hell, what does that even mean? There are plenty of adults in anime/manga - in the genre where adults are the primary demographic. Complaining that mainstream shounen shows that are aimed at middle/highschool kids don't have enough "adults" makes about as much sense as complaining that there are too many female protagonists in shoujo stories.
 
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StormShaun said:
Thunderous Cacophony said:
Tell me, does it get better?
Do you want the short or long version?

Short: No.

Long: Noooooooooooooo.
Kirito is still Kirito, the virtual harem king who somehow beats most people despite the main weapon of the third arc. The excitement of the new arc quickly dies, and naturally ... The added characters are not that great. Basically, it is more Sword Art Online season 1, another girl to add to the non-romantic harem. Personally, I would find it much more interesting if Kirito just marries someone ... That isn't Asuna. Hey, it would make many people angry and give the story a little twist.

Also the villain.
He is named "Death Gun".
If you are like me, you will laugh every damn time it is mentioned.
Truth be told, I'm still laughing now.

I will admit though, I disliked the first and second season. I don't know even why I started the third arc. Still, I sound quite negative. If you want someone who might redeem it, talk to Elfgore.

Anyway, I'm going to move on from SAO, and bask in the glory that is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
There is seriously a villain named "Death Gun"? That sounds more fitting for a mid-90s Image comics character! Still, it could be worse. His name could have been xxPwnchunck420xx or Ballsdeep69.

On an unrelated note, if you do want to see a...different take on SAO, give this a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6kJKxvbgZ0
 

Zeraki

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kyp275 said:
Tank207 said:
Also, I like that pretty much all of the important characters in the series are adults, which is something that Anime really needs more of.
This is exactly what I was talking about. Why does "anime" need more adults? Hell, what does that even mean? There are plenty of adults in anime/manga - in the genre where adults are the primary demographic. Complaining that mainstream shounen shows that are aimed at middle/highschool kids don't have enough "adults" makes about as much sense as complaining that there are too many female protagonists in shoujo stories.
In retrospect "need" was a poor choice word on my part, it's just something I liked and would like to see more of to help keep the genre feeling fresh every once in a while. I'm not saying that all Shounen should be all adults all the time.

Also I wasn't complaining about anything, just expressing a couple reasons why I loved a series to someone who brought it up.
 

Chaos Isaac

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Dude, you watched a bad anime. That's all that happened.

In hindsight, it makes me appreciate .Hack even more.
 

Lilani

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Username Redacted said:
That is an interesting premise. One that has been had with a few twists on it by animes that are likely better than SAO.

With regards to the topic I have no idea WTF happened to SAO as I've never seen it but I do still find its existence useful as it provides a good barometer, when someone recommends that I check it out, for where I and the offending party stand with regards to taste in anime.
Given the way you talk about it you may never watch it and not care about spoilers, but I'll put this in the spoiler box anyway just in case.

The way SAO gets into the whole choosing game live VS real life is rather interesting, because it starts with everybody fighting to get out. If you don't know the premise already, basically all the people who first logged into the game SAO when it officially launched get trapped in the game forever until somebody beats all 100 floors of the game's main tower. And if you die in the game, you die in real-life as well. At first everybody's motivated to do this and people group up into big guilds and raiding parties to level up and succeed in numbers. But two years pass and nobody has done it yet. That is a long time, and many by that point began to accept that the game was their life.

So after a while when the main characters Kirito and Asuna fall in love, they eventually decide to retire for a while. They get a house in the woods, and raise a little NPC girl who they found and calls them mommy and daddy (it's a little more complicated than that, but they basically treat her like an adopted child, and that's sort of what she is). I think it's a really interesting look at how something like that may actually play out. Sure people might be motivated at first, but for many the risk of dying forever is not worth getting back to real-life, for some reason or another. But Kirito and Asuna in particular didn't take that break out of despair or fear, they just wanted to enjoy the life they had together. Eventually they got back into the fight, but if not for their friends still fighting and mysteries being unfolded about the game's creator and that little NPC that they adopted, they would have been content to live like that.

So to me, that element was very interesting, and kept me going until the end. The idea that, after so long, you would just begin to accept the game as life, and stop seeing the point in trying to get real-life back, especially if failure means death.
 
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kyp275 said:
Tank207 said:
Also, I like that pretty much all of the important characters in the series are adults, which is something that Anime really needs more of.
This is exactly what I was talking about. Why does "anime" need more adults? Hell, what does that even mean? There are plenty of adults in anime/manga - in the genre where adults are the primary demographic. Complaining that mainstream shounen shows that are aimed at middle/highschool kids don't have enough "adults" makes about as much sense as complaining that there are too many female protagonists in shoujo stories.
OK, not an expert on anime, but what genre has adults as the primary demographic? Just looking through Netflix it seems like most of them star teenagers, which means you see the same ideas in the romance and interpersonal relationships (there's only so many ways to deal with young love). It also means that there's an abundance of young prodigies (to explain why the adults let a 14-year-old be in charge) which further limits the kinds of stories that are told.
 

Lightspeaker

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Thunderous Cacophony said:
OK, not an expert on anime, but what genre has adults as the primary demographic?
Seinen and Josei are the demographic terms you're looking for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinen_manga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josei_manga

As I understand it they're less commonly adapted to anime than other demographics but it does happen. Elfen Lied being a choice example and quite possibly the most violent and horrifying thing I've ever seen; amusingly thanks to the fact that mainstream view of anime is that its "just cartoons" I've seen it sold literally right alongside Pokemon.
 

circularlogic88

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This was just a garbage series elevated to something more than what it could ever hope to have been. It's .hack//sign without any of the mystery or intrigue of a bigger picture, behind the scenes plot. It's Accel World without a likeable, sympathetic protagonist.

People who love this series are the same people who love anything from the Nihon and are quick to defend and justify the semantics of an incestuous brother sister relationship with the fact that it's okay because they're just cousins and the age of consent in Japan is 13, as if that makes it any less creepy.

The series had an interesting premise and it chose to be "faithful" to the source material and show off just how horn and poor of a writer the author was when he was in high school.

You want a better male power fantasy harem wish-fulfillment anime? Watch A Certain Magical Index.
You want a better Shonen-style anime in a virtual world? Watch Accel World Season 1.
You want a better MMORPG story that doesn't pander (as much) to fanservice? Watch Log Horizon Season 1.

Anime like SAO is the reason I stopped caring about watching hyped up "mainstream" anime.
 
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Honestly, SAO lost me after Kirito switched to the new game about elves or something and Asuna became a damsel in distress. I started SAO 2, but I couldn't get into it. I don't understand what happened. I used to enjoy HArem/Reverse Harem anime, but now I can hardly stand them. I prefer the abridged series on YouTube. Makes SAO look like crap.

In my own opinion, Log Horizon is the superior MMO anime. Less about one badass and more about the community of players. It feels so much better. They even treat death in a different manner that I prefer. I haven't finished season 2 yet, but I intend to tonight.
 

Ugicywapih

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Marxie said:
Lightspeaker said:
I was thinking more along the lines of the old and respected shounen titles, like Hokuto no Ken or Dragonball Z.
You cannot be serious. Elfen Lied is to guro what... I dunno, what SAO is to actual swordsmanship. And it's by far too stupid and pretentious to be actually disturbing.
To each their own, shounens are often a gateway genre, but they play right into a whole bunch of stereotypes about anime, often ones, that keep people who don't watch it away. I've actually seen some oldschool shounens before I've started watching and it just didn't click for me - I got into anime with Bleach, admittedly (which is a shounen classic, but really not that old), though it ended up jumping the shark pretty early on and I've picked up other titles mostly out of curiosity - I think the first one I've actually enjoyed in its entirety was Black Lagoon or Cowboy Bebop (I've loved both, but I'm not sure which one I've seen first).

Marxie said:
Lightspeaker said:
the anime that really got me into it was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
My condolences.
I find your lack of faith (in the Creator God, Haruhi Suzumiya) disturbing. *force choke*

Marxie said:
Lightspeaker said:
Lightspeaker said:
Elfen Lied being a choice example and quite possibly the most violent and horrifying thing I've ever seen
You cannot be serious. Elfen Lied is to guro what... I dunno, what SAO is to actual swordsmanship. And it's by far too stupid and pretentious to be actually disturbing.
I'll agree Elfen Lied wasn't really much of a shocker, but I've kinda liked it myself, all things considered, not sure why you'd consider it stupid. Besides, after watching Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, I'd say guro can be disturbing despite being pretty damn stupid, you just need to dial shit up to eleven.
 

Lightspeaker

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Marxie said:
Lightspeaker said:
the anime that really got me into it was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
My condolences.
Don't be so damn patronising.


Marxie said:
Lightspeaker said:
Elfen Lied being a choice example and quite possibly the most violent and horrifying thing I've ever seen
You cannot be serious. Elfen Lied is to guro what... I dunno, what SAO is to actual swordsmanship. And it's by far too stupid and pretentious to be actually disturbing.
Did you somehow miss the part where it fairly graphically showed a young girl being sexually abused by her step-father or something?

And that thing is rated 15.
 

Fat Hippo

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Lightspeaker said:
Marxie said:
Lightspeaker said:
the anime that really got me into it was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
My condolences.
Don't be so damn patronising.


Marxie said:
Lightspeaker said:
Elfen Lied being a choice example and quite possibly the most violent and horrifying thing I've ever seen
You cannot be serious. Elfen Lied is to guro what... I dunno, what SAO is to actual swordsmanship. And it's by far too stupid and pretentious to be actually disturbing.
Did you somehow miss the part where it fairly graphically showed a young girl being sexually abused by her step-father or something?

And that thing is rated 15.
For me, it was just far too over the top and absurd to have much emotional impact. It starts off with fountains and blood and doesn't really have anywhere left to go from there. I mean aside from chopping off all the limbs of a kid, but at that point, who's counting how many limbs have been severed? The characters were all far too dumb and never very believable. In terms of its target audience, I'd say it was rather older teenagers (16 and up) who like violent anime, rather than primarily adults.

Of course, if you found it disturbing, that's perfectly legitimate. I mean, the things being shown ARE extremely fucked up, but I had become far too detached from what I was watching to be emotionally impacted, which is interesting, because I tend to be fairly squeamish about these things. I didn't see it until I was about 21, not sure how I would have reacted to it at 15.

At least the intro was great. So great that I though a better show was going to be followed by it. So great that they built it into the actual show itself. I almost felt like it was wasted on Elfen Lied.
 

Elfgore

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Jesus Christ, every SAO thread... People! SAO is not objectively bad no matter how much you think it is. No one has ever elected you to decide what anime is objectively terrible. Your post reek of elitism. So how about we stop insulting people who have the audacity to like it? Mkay?

If you didn't like the first season, you will not like the second season. The first arc is weak as hell, the second is downright boring, and the last one is amazing. But five or six episodes can't save an entire season. Just watch Mother Rosario and call it a day.