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SAO was something I really wanted to enjoy (not many stories based on VR) but never could over look the pure logic fail it was built on. If it hadn’t tried to be serious, at all, I probably could have over looked it. However, the attempts at trying to prove it was somehow based on some form of reality was the exact thing that made it impossible to over look how badly it failed at being realistic. Even the author himself couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation for why the guy suddenly decided to hold the player base hostage and twist his dream into a death trap. It’s because, the way it was setup, not even a completely insane person would consider it logical. Yes, even insanity follows a form of logic. It’s twisted but it does follow a pattern. Simply put, the main antagonist’s personality and nearly all of his actions were in direct contradiction with each other.
The author is just generally a bad writer and on top of that his experience and understanding of games and gamers as a whole felt rather lacking. I’ve never really played games with a strictly Japanese player base, so it’s possible there’s some differences there but, even allowing that, his understanding seems more than a little flawed. It’s like he has no idea about the mind of any type of gamer aside from a casual gamer. The purely casual gamer perspective really doesn’t appeal to me. It’s this lack of understanding that likely lead to his main protagonist suffering the same problem of his personality and actions being in direct conflict with each other. Either that or it just shows his inability to craft even semi-realistic characters. Even the side characters with their 2D personalities seemed to suffer from this.
Compared to the light novel, it’s hard to really say whether the show was worse or better. It was crap to begin with and the show itself was crap too. If they had at least skimmed over or shortened the emo bullshit portions of the story and left out more of the fail logic bullshit, I probably would have actually liked the anime version. However, they not only crammed most of it in, it even became the entire focus of some episodes.
The whole series felt like a bullshit wish fulfillment trip and it wasn’t fulfilling a wish that appealed to me in any way outside of being a part of the VR genre. The overall theme was something that should have appealed to me but the end result was a story and characters that I couldn’t relate to at all and even flat out irritated me at points. Every time I thought there was going to be some element that appealed to me, it’d suddenly turn a different direction and just end up pissing me off.
TLDR;
The characters (especially the main protagonist and antagonist) are completely unrealistic; actions and personalities don’t match at all.
Much of the logic the show/novels were built on is critically flawed.
SAO’s attempts at proving it is somehow based in reality makes it impossible to ignore the logic flaws.
The whole story felt like a cheap wish fulfillment trip.
The light novels suffer from poor writing and completely half-assed fact checking. The show completely inherited these problems.
Aah~ How refreshing that Sword Crap Online is finally over.
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