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Originally Posted by relentlessflame
Well, I personally like both shows quite a bit, but I don't think the issues between the two shows are so directly comparable. The sort of "fragmented" storytelling style in SAO can be a barrier to some, but you can also get used to it. In a way, that fragmented storytelling can also be easier to follow because many of the stories are self-contained (or part of short two or three-episode arcs).
But if you enjoyed AW in its first half primarily due to the interactions with Kuroyukihime (and less for the protagonist Haruyuki), having her largely gone for the second half and replaced by rather big melodrama may not appeal to everyone. Personally it didn't bother me, as I could recognize from the start the reason for the drama and what was going to happen as a result... but this sort of subject matter is clearly not what everyone wanted to see. The fact that it's perceived that so many of the issues could have been more easily solved by simply notifying Kuroyukihime from the start cause some people to see the arc as that much more pointless (or contrived), despite the character development that occurred (and the generally-agreed-to-be strong resolution).
In the end, I think Accel World is in a good place now because of the struggle the characters went through (plenty of room to build on what happened), but I imagine that the narrative won't rely on that sort of contrivance to develop the characters again. And so long as that's the case, I think people will come around and give the show a second chance in any future season.
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Well I think one area where I differ from a lot of people when it comes to Haruyuki is that while I recognize him as a very flawed character I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing by default. I think I differ from a lot of people on a lot of shows in that regard though. There seems to be this idea that if a characters manner of dealing with things is clearly flawed that it must be some fault in the writing, but I just never really saw that in this show. Whatever Haru did it was believable for his flawed character in context save maybe for the deliberately exaggerated OVA episode. People look at his mistakes and shortcomings though and seem to treat it as a fault of the writing and bad characterization rather than that just being the script which seems to me to show a great disconnect between what the show is about and what they perceive it to be.
I guess it's sort of the same as the massive hatred for Shinji in Evangelion for example where the point IS that he's an obviously very flawed character who we are observing. Obviously the tone is a little different there and it's a bit more mature, but it's sort of the same operating theory of a main character. This isn't the traditional weak willed protagonist played up for laughs or as a cardboard stand-in to me which is what I think a lot of folks see. This almost looks like a character that's suffering from some form of severe bordering on pathological self-confidence issues that he's struggling to pull himself out of and who has his own character arc going on. Maybe for some this doesn't matter though and it's just that big of a turnoff, but I find that kind of compelling (it helps that he's a really loyal guy that is ultimately dependable in the long run, if he wasn't I'd probably look at him as cardboard male lead), but he could stand to be naked a little less.
