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Old 2013-01-01, 19:29   Link #40
Vsin
Aldracity
 
 
Join Date: Feb 2010
To put it bluntly, SAO is not what I'd consider Anime of the Year unless said year is a terrible one. Some parts were good, some parts were bad, and some parts where oh god why. However, from what I consider an objective standpoint:

Pros:
- It was a VERY faithful adaptation. The only major content cuts were half of Ep 2 (needs the entire reboot to make any sense, plus insanely large), one scene in Ep 5 with Heathcliff (removed for good reason), and an entire missing chapter in ALO that didn't do much for the story anyways (and wouldn't fit in a 25 Ep schedule).
- Sound design, both BGM and SFX.
- The decision to clip the ED of Ep 15 and the OP of Ep 25 in order to maintain story flow.
- Certain scene edits (eg: Ep 21) that aided the intentions of the story in a way not properly explained in the novel.

Cons:
- Maybe it's the fault of Prose vs Film in general, but the Anime was missing a LOT of the internal dialogue, which in turn made the faithfully adapted parts not flow as well due to the missing information.
- Animation quality during combat was a jarring drop, especially when the animators draw some pretty nice boob physics despite that.

And now for the more subjective Pros and Cons...

Pros:
- When it's done right, it's done VERY right. I'm not sure if people found Ep 3 cheesy, but I sure liked it. And while I know Kawahara Reki uses tons of cheese and cliche all over the place, he's better than most writers at not making it reek of stale Brie.
- Fishing. Yes, I actually liked that. On its own, kinda cheesy. In the context of a death game where 10,000 people have been held hostage and 4000 already died? Far more significant.
- Weapon designs. Flashy enough to be unique, without being the ridiculous sort of "Throw a billion spikes and gems on it" style, or even the "Are you sure you can carry it?" variety. Except the Black Sword, but that's a vendor trash 2h so I'll let it slide.
- Generic dumb fun. You know, the generic fanservice and stuff.

Cons:
- I don't like Fairy Dance, and I honestly wasn't impressed by most of Aincrad when I read it either. Overall, I believe that the Anime covered what I consider as the worst two arcs of the series, which isn't really anybody's fault (KR's first two attempts, premises needed for later arcs, etc) but it's still a fault nevertheless.
- Pacing, particularly during Fairy Dance. It's partly KR's fault since Fairy Dance is kinda poorly paced in the first place, but I feel that A1 could have done so much more with the pacing, without changing the Anime's nature as a faithful adaptation. In Aincrad, stuff constantly happens and then the big ending happens. From my perspective, a few big things happen at the start in Fairy Dance, then the story gets sidetracked by whatshisface (exactly) for more than half the arc before we even remember why the story started in the first place. And then a metric crapton of development gets crammed into the ending.

Overall: 7/10
It's fun, but honestly not that special. I joined because of the hype train and I stayed because of every novel past Fairy Dance.
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