[Akito Kinomoto]

I have to say that Sword Art Online wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. That isn't to say there weren't storytelling and character development problems but for me Kirito and Asuna's relationship more than made up for everything the show could not. More thoughts below...

Spoiler for Length:

Anyone who is a gamer will readily admit to spending numerous hours playing a video game. But what if the game was extreme to the point of being physically impossible to stop playing until you won and an in-game death makes you die in real life?

Enter Sword Art Online (SAO), an anime about a video game of the same name. What we have from this show is a survival story set in a high-fantasy world with epic battles and a romance prevailing the virtual veils. Unfortunately, its strengths are balanced out by its weaknesses and for more discerning viewers this can be quite severe. Don’t mistake that for being bad though; for those who can ignore storytelling and character development problems, its strengths more than make up for its weaknesses. Everyone else can expect SAO to be a mixed bag of a series.

The first shortcoming of SAO is its abundance of characters. In the first half of the anime the story tries to treat all of them as important but there’s not enough screentime for them to ingratiate themselves to the viewer so it’s hard to care about them when something significant happens. On the other hand, the characters in the earlier part of the series are usually believable compared to almost everyone introduced later on; anyone who wasn’t Suguha was either used for harem fanservice or to give Kirito an opponent. But at least SAO’s second half focuses on the important players of Kirito, Asuna, and Suguha since it didn’t know what to do with everyone else in the first half.

This isn’t to say the main trio is flawless though. Kirito switches from someone Hell-bent on saving his friends one moment and being a bleeding heart the next. Multi-sided characters are normally a good thing but Kirito’s differing sides are called exclusively from each other as the plot demands and fails to create any sort of internal dynamic. But this pseudo-one dimensionality wouldn’t be noticeable if it weren’t for Suguha. Suguha has the greatest range of emotion displayed while still keeping the less dominant personality trait passive but noticeable at the moment so that her conflict remains believable; she’s grappling with her own feelings so everything about her should be present. But the best developed of the characters is Asuna. Her change in attitude toward the game and everyone else is subtle and her relationship with Kirito is implied to have developed over a long time in-universe if her gradual changes shown over time are not enough.

That’s a good thing since Kirito and Asuna’s relationship is one of SAO’s greatest strengths. There are a few other girls Kirito grows close to but he either meets them before becoming close to Asuna or they get the hint when they see how the two behave around each other. Kirito and Asuna themselves have a balanced dynamic as two warriors who are victorious and defeated in equal measure; neither character is dominant in terms of saving the other. It’s easy for a strong character to be degraded by romance and when it happens here it’s beyond their control and not because of their mushiness; neither suddenly becomes weaker more than it is the enemy being powerful.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t exempt Kirito from being subject to random increases in power as the plot demands. We have things like him using a technique that he lost in the first half with as much effectiveness as it previously did in the second half which makes no sense because the technique’s effectiveness requires something programmed into the skill itself and not just his own talent. There’s an explanation of sorts for Kirito’s high base power in the second half but it seems coincidental considering everything else he loses. Other storytelling problems include the final dungeon which doesn’t make sense when one stops to think about the game’s mechanics.

The storytelling isn’t all bad though. The first half of the anime does a good job at explaining the gameplay mechanics and usually plays consistently barring a few scenes that make sense in hindsight considering the characters involved. The second half of the anime introduces some lore and new mechanics that aren’t fully explained or demonstrated respectively and seems to lose dramatic tension due to the lack of scope on the urgency. But the conflict is now personal and the time limit of sorts Kirito is on it doesn’t allow him to fully be involved in the game he’s playing out of necessity.

But if nothing else the series can’t be faulted on its technical presentation. Barring the troop characters in the various factions, the character designs in SAO are richly varied and colorful down to the minor characters and sometimes lower than that kind of importance; everyone could have been a generic face but Studio A-1 Pictures opts to make the game feel like an entire world with its players. This also lends itself to the storytelling since it makes it difficult to tell who’s important and who isn’t until after the fact; there are no “disposable” characters in SAO. Only permanent death lurking from the towering, skeletal, insect-like lich or the bruiser with a hammer that anyone would want to avoid.

The soundtrack is SAO’s other saving grace. Yuki Kajiura’s music in all of its English-Japanese-Latin-Hybrid glory doesn’t fail to deliver on the hopeless battles, the rising determination fights, and the stalemates between characters. Unfortunately, though good, it doesn’t manage to stand on its own. Very good music complements what it’s set to and would warrant wanting to listen to on its own. The music quality also doesn’t last throughout the show as there’s also an equal measure of forgettable synthesized tracks in the driest sense of the word. Ironically, one of the strongest scenes in the anime was one with absolutely no music at all; SAO’s soundtrack might have been better if it used the art of silence more since it demonstrates that it can use the lack of music effectively.

The opening of the show, Crossing Field, is beautifully sung by Lisa but isn’t really a boon for the series in itself since strong openings aren’t unique to SAO. On the other hand, the lyrics do an excellent job at conveying one of the show’s greatest strengths in Kirito and Asuna’s relationship. And considering how uniquely everyone is designed, it makes it difficult to tell who’s important and who isn’t meaning anything can happen in a boss battle as Kajiura’s soundtrack plays throughout the fight. Unfortunately, the storytelling and character development problems down to Kirito himself might be too many glitches (flaws) for a game (show) as big as this. People who look too much into flaws may want to avoid this while those who can let themselves enjoy the experience for its strengths might be interested. For everyone who’s closer to measuring the strengths and weaknesses in equal measure, SAO will be a flawed but enjoyable experience.