This was an excellent episode. Great character development, and the plot is moving along fast. They're not dragging this out and wasting time showing us the world. They're actually focusing on the characters. This is a very rare thing on television today. I look forward to next week's episode.
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Originally Posted by eupseudes
Having read the entire SAO novel 1, but not any of the side stories, the episode did seem quick paced (though not *quite* rushed), but when it got to the end and the ED rolled, I thought, "They really didn't have a choice." As a single unit, I thought it felt well put together, but I can't help but feel that first time viewers are suffering from a lot of whiplash. However, if you sort of treat this as a, "Here is a universe, and we are going to tell some stories in it", it makes a bit more sense, and having to fill in the details of time skips is fun, in its own sense. Which makes it a much more conventional anime setup: "premise", "character/worldbuilding short stories", "story arc".
I think what the anime really loses is the detailed explanations of MMOs which, in the LN, really demonstrated the author as someone who knew a lot (and cared a lot) about MMOs. But unless you put Kirito in "monologue forever" mode, the decision really is justified.
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I'm a first time anime only viewer of this series, and so far everything is well done. I think an anime about an MMO can't drag on, and I also think since its a survival one at that there needs to be a focus on the characters and character development. The writers have so much to fill in, there isn't any time to really focus too much on the world itself, and the time skips make it easier to show the growth of each of the characters