Initially I was pretty unimpressed with SAO. I wanted to like the show and I was having trouble bringing myself to that because of the way they handled the reveal. Having the state of the game be announced in the first episode left a bad taste that did go away, but I feel like it changed the tone of the anime a lot. I think SAO could have had a mystery element to it and been a bit darker. Though I should say, I really don't mind that they didn't do this because the anime was handled well, I just think that's one parallel to .Hack I would have liked to see. Another reason why I think this is because it became very obvious what was really going on in the SAO world, so the reveal of the mystery was pointless.
The episodic feel of the beginning was very good though. Part of the reason I enjoyed starting SAO was the way Kirito was made to be the most powerful character. I generally feel that in anime if the character second, he's last. This was one of the few instances where the character was never second, and it really gave a good perspective as to the way the SAO world works. Kirito never had to maintain a status, he could just do whatever he wanted, and so he "lived" in SAO. If he had been focused on beating the game, or on other such duties, we would have missed out on that experience.
That leads to another thing I really liked, and that was the MMO/gamer culture. They packed a lot of great stuff in there that really did make that world look like a game world, if games were virtual reality like in SAO. They even gave attention to the different roles of players both in combat, and as a part of the game economy. Lisbeth and the fisherman were two very memorable characters even though they only had a couple episodes of appearance, simply because they got to show us that unique other side.
In addition to that MMO culture, the first boss battle was also a very interesting experience because of the way the party leader was orchestrating the fight and the party was acting tactically. This is, however, one thing that I hated about SAO: It only happens twice in the series. At the beginning, and at the, well, I guess the middle. Kirito being a solo player wasn't the reasoning behind it either, it was simply a lack of willingness to show that struggle that the clearing group was going through. Instead they focused heavily on the romances (oh the many romances...) and we only got to meet those characters that Kirito personally interacted with. None of those characters were even part of the clearing group, but rather everyone but. The only people from the clearing group that we really got to know were the troublemakers, and people we had already met in the beginning.
A lot of this oversight that disappointed me so was due to the way they split SAO. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that ending SAO, and switching to ALO was just a terrible move in general. I will say now thought that the gaming culture love comes back for ALO to point out how I really liked the way they showed us the country dynamics of ALO and the way the characters interacted with the other player-run nations. Having some player politics mixed into ALO was a good move, but it really was the only good move ALO made in my opinion.
ALO's existence I hold to be responsible for nearly everything that I disliked in SAO. Not just because the plot was bad (it was a dark plot, darker for the audience than the SAO plot since it was essentially slavery, rape, and human experimentation), but because it destroyed the pacing of a great concept. If SAO had instead completed its story, instead of ending it so prematurely, there could have been such a fantastic closure to the series that would have left me satisfied. I'm really not satisfied at all, because SAO's ending to me is as follows: "Yep. You found me. I was actually the final boss all along! It's a little early but, oh well. Shoot. Now I'm dead. GG. Go home now." What a disappointment.
I get to hate on the romance a little bit too. First of all I give SAO credit for having a great romance, because I haven't seen one like this in a long time. A good romance with a happy conclusion can be so rare, even though they muddied it up with the ALO arc and all the heinous crap that had centered on their relationship. I liked the vast majority of the romance, but because of the way they paced this series it was just too fast and took up too much time. SAO was short, at slightly more than half the length, and it felt like several episodes were spent watching the honeymooners not do anything too fantastic. The honeymooning just seemed so strange and awkward to me, with the two of them not really seeming quite as in love as they were really supposed to be. It felt like it was focused on everything else, and not on their romance. They had the romance centered on the Ragout Rabbit and the implied sex after their near-death experience (honestly, I think this build up was my favorite of their romance scenes).
As much disappointment as I expressed though, I'll admit with total honesty that SAO made me giddy with its action. The one thing they gained from having less action was that it was so much better. So nicely done and so interesting that I just wanted to see more and more of it (yet again why I with SAO was full-length, instead of splitting with ALO even though the fights with the PK party and the general were amazing). I'll admit again, emotions were insufficient in expressing the joy I felt watching Kirito almost single-handedly slay that boss with his newly-revealed skill that even I didn't see coming until he asked for those ten seconds.
Another disappointment coming: Everyone else but Kirito kind of sucked. Asuna was so spectacular and so amazing in the first episode, but I never felt like she was quite as great as she was back then. Someone commented that she felt like a damsel the rest of the series, and I agree. I wanted to see Kirito and Asuna tag-teaming everything, and being tight-knit lovers taking SAO all the way to the hundredth level. We never got that though. Now that I'm finished with this series all I can really do in reflection is regret how her character was just so wasted, and we never got to see the Flash and Beater man and wife tag team.
I guess my last thing is to touch on the real life segments. If I said that there was only one thing I liked about the ALO arc then I liked, the other was Suguhara, the sister. I did like that they used ALO as a way of paralleling Kirito and Suguhara and bringing to light all of those hidden feelings in their household. Even if I do think that the sister-brother (well... cousins?) incest story is a bit cliche, I give a special reservation here. I think the way they paralleled it made it seem very genuine and very unique. Actually, in a way I did like their interactions a bit more than Asuna's because the pacing was much more relaxed. If they had let Asuna and Kirito take up as much time as the sister the romance probably would have ranked among the most memorable I've watched. In the end, Asuna and Kirito bonded over food, and the sister and Kirito got to have an adventure and depend on each other for help. The gap in substance is just too much. Anyhow, Kirito meeting back up with Sigil (I believe was his name?) was an interesting touch, but I was becoming extremely upset with the fact that he wasn't meeting the others. Fortunately they teased and then showed the special education school for the SAO student-age survivors who missed out on two years of schooling. Then we got to see the party and meet the characters too old for the school (and see another romance come to fruition, great stuff!). WHERE WAS THE OLD MAN THOUGH?! I missed him.
He would have made a great cameo, coming in and saying something like: "So you two stayed together huh? Isn't youth great?" Too cliche, maybe. Still though...
When I started this nice wall of text I mentioned a parallel I noticed between SAO and .Hack. Strong words indeed. I do give SAO credit for managing to avoid a lot of the .Hack mold for this plot, and for really finding its own path and actually paralleling game culture instead of doing its own thing like .Hack really did. This had elements in it that in many ways made it superior and in many more ways gave it potential to rise far above the .Hack series. However, in my opinion they failed in one very specific and glaring way:
The ALO arc was .Hack//Roots. Not just in the plot, or in the character relationships, but in the very idea itself.
Spoiler for We must go deeper: .Hack//Roots information within!:
For those of you unfamiliar with .Hack//Roots (but don't care about learning a bit too much about the series), I'll obviously explain. Roots, one of the more unpopular .Hack anime, follows twin-blade Haseo on his journey into The World: Revision 2 (the game in .Hack). Hold on, Revision 2 you say? In the real world, a fire destroys part of the systems that contained The World and its remnants are spliced together with a project by that company to produce a new version of The World complete with PvP and significantly less comatose. Why does this sound familiar you ask? Because ALO too is based on an old version of SAO (the Cardinal System, according to the dialogue), and is also the way they saved Kirito from needing to level up and acquaint himself with a vastly different game. It was Sword Art Online with slightly different combat (for a game based on magic, people didn't use it much) and wings. But wait there's more: Roots protagonist Haseo is a solo finding himself intertwined with female characters Tabby and Shino, the former of which suffers from Unrequited Love Syndrome. The latter suffers from a comatose state and Haseo finds her in real life so he can visit her constantly and maybe even save her one day. But wait there's- I'll cut to the chase, in addition Roots and ALO both have more emphasis on a PvP aspect to MMOs and focus more on politics. Both protagonists have their fates drastically changed by "ghosts" of the game systems, but in drastically polar ways.
There are a lot of parallels for the ALO arc and Roots. I'm not necessarily waving my finger at SAO for lacking some originality in this aspect (for the most part I hated ALO as I've said, and I know a lot of people felt the same), but the ALO arc was bad and it should feel bad. It goes without saying that a lot of the content was drastically different between ALO and Roots, but the point I'm trying to make is that at a level of plot they bare striking similarities that jumped at me pretty immediately.
I'll even go as far as to make a rash statement about the ALO arc: It failed because it tried to be .Hack. It tried to be horrible and dark, and it tried to be dramatic and complicated. SAO wasn't though, it was light-hearted and intriguing in a world that was supposed to be dark and dramatic. Kirito endeavored to bring life to that world, while .Hack protagonists were part of the darkness and the drama.
I should also jokingly point out that Kirito's final form is a twin-blades user.
So there's my massive rant about the various bits and pieces of SAO. As much disappointment as I expressed in parts of SAO I do give an anime a lot of credit for simply being entertaining and for giving my mind a good bit of pleasure. SAO did that, and so even with all of these problems I feel very positively about the series. On my MAL I gave it an 8, and I think that even with the ALO blunder it deserves that.
Oh, and for this anime's sake let's not talk about the massive issue that was the revival item which would have been really helpful in the final episode of the SAO arc. I constantly expected someone to pull that out and revive someone only for them to have let it go to waste. Good job guys! I had hoped that Klein had picked it up to save for the last episode, but nope.