While the English dub hasn't finished airing in the United States, I have taken the liberty to finish the series in Japanese with subtitles as I'm one of those people when an anime is catches my interest, I don't care whether it's in English or subtitled, I would like to finish it in a promptly fashion if I have the means to do so.
Introduction:
Sword Art Online is a Japanese light novel series written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by abec. The series takes place in the near-future and focuses on various virtual reality MMORPG worlds. The light novels began publication on ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Bunko label from April 10, 2009, with a spin-off series launching in October 2012, and are licensed in North America by Yen Press. The series has spawned five manga adaptations. A television anime series produced by A-1 Pictures aired in Japan between July and December 2012. The anime has been licensed in North America by Aniplex of America and an English-language version began airing on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block on July 27, 2013. An Extra Edition episode aired on December 31, 2013, and a second anime series, titled Sword Art Online II, will begin airing in 2014.Plot: (Spoilers)
On November 6, 2022, the players log in for the first time, and later discover that they are unable to log out.
They are then informed by Akihiko Kayaba, SAO's creator, that if they wish to be free, they must reach the 100th floor of the game's tower and defeat the final boss. However, if their avatars die in-game, their bodies will also die in the real world. One of these players is Kazuto "Kirito" Kirigaya, a skilled player who is determined to beat the game. As the game progresses for two years, Kirito eventually befriends a female player named Asuna with whom he ultimately falls in love. After the duo discover the identity of Kayaba's avatar Heathcliff in SAO, they confront and destroy him, freeing themselves and the other players from the game.
Upon being sent back to the real world, Kirito learns that Asuna and 300 other SAO players have still not awakened yet. Following a clue about Asuna's whereabouts in another VRMMORPG called Alfheim Online (ALO), Kirito also enters the ALO's mainframe. Helped by his sister Suguha Kirigaya, known as Leafa in the game, he learns that the trapped players in ALO are part of a plan conceived by Nobuyuki Sugō to perform illegal experiments on their minds to put them under his control, including Asuna, whom he intends to marry in the real world in order to take over her family's company. After Kirito foils Nobuyuki's plans, he finally reunites with Asuna back in the real world.
The Verdict:
To judge this anime fairly, I want to split this anime into two halves. The first part that I will cover will cover the first half of the series, set in the original VRMMORPG, SAO (Sword Art Online), while the second half of this review will cover the latter half of the anime, set in ALO (Alfheim Online).
Phase One: SAO (Sword Art Online)
Throughout the course of this portion of the anime, Kirito establishes himself a loner, merely for the fact that he doesn't want be a part of any player parties after being the lone survivor of an attack that massacred all of his allies. Kirito's mindset gradually changes over this portion of the anime as he meets and bonds with several players and helps them with their ongoing struggles in the world of SAO as he maps out the world and shares this valuable information to other players. One player in particular who stands out above the rest is Asuna, who becomes Kirito's love interest in this virtual world.
Asuna shatters almost every stereotype about female gamers as she holds her own in combat, even better than Kirito in a few situations and even saves his life from a few close calls. Her appearance isn't over-sexualized, which is a surprise for many of the female characters shown in this first half of the series. You could excuse that due to Akihiko Kayaba altering everyone's avatars to resemble their real-life selves, but I like to applaud the artists for taking that aspect out of the equation from Asuna's net worth as a desirable female character. She is formidable and able to hold her own in combat without anyone coming to her aid - in world like this, those qualities are more desirable in a companion than mere appearances. Besides, it didn't hurt that the lady could cook too! (Laughs) Seriously though, Asuna was able to seamlessly transition to any role that was needed of her to survive.
It was an unique take on the MMORPG world to see Kirito and Asuna take their relationship as far as getting married in-game (I know this is VERY common nowadays...), but taking it as far as placing their concerns of trying to escape the game that they were trapped in to truly enjoy the blessing that they were given to experience a world such as this. This is why Kayaba/Heathcliff makes such a strong antagonist in this half of the narrative, as you can see why he went to such extreme means to share this world that he created to the masses and forces players and the viewers to question whether this world is a truly a blessing or is it a prison. One could argue that this is the same dilemma that was at the core of .hack//SIGN's narrative, but the fact that all players are trapped in this world adds more weight behind these emotions.
The thing that makes the romantic image of Kirito and Asuna's "marriage" even more powerful is the introduction of Yui. Kirito and Asuna originally found her wondering around the forest and allow her to call them her parents until they found her as it seemed she was merely an amnesic child. It is quickly revealed that Yui is an artificial AI that is part of the original coding for SAO as Mental Health Counseling program. During the events of Sword Art Online, she becomes self-aware and a fully realized artificial intelligence built from a program atop an existing computer architecture, which is why she usually appears in programs based on SAO, including Alfheim Online. Her core program runs and is stored on Kirito's NerveGear local memory. The relationship that is established between Kirito, Asuna, and Yui is truly significant as Kirito and Asuna took their relationship even further with a surrogate offspring of their own. Once again, the introduction of Yui into their environment forces the players to question if the world of SAO is truly a prison or is it a blessing in disguise. For Kirito and Asuna, the stakes are raised even higher - if they die in the game, Yui would lose her newfound parents.
Without question, the best part of this half of the anime (or the anime as whole, in my opinion) is when Kirito figures out that Heathcliff and Akihiko Kayaba are one in the same when the advanced party is still a quite a few floors away from the end of the game. It shows exactly how arrogant Akihiko Kayaba is to disguise himself among the players and to expect that he would remain undetected for this long without question nor conflict, while at the same time, the viewers are spared from the anime dragging on until the players reached the end in the game. The moment is reminiscent of the vital significance of the event in Watchmen when Ozymandias was confronted by Rorschach and Nite Owl to stop his plot to destroy the world when he simply stated, "I already did." It was pure genius that the creators of this anime choose not to drag this out like commonly known Shonen Jump properties, and put everything at stake at this moment of the anime.
Phase Two: ALO (Alfheim Online)
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| This will not be the only rack on display during the latter half of SAO... |
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| Everyone wants to seduce Kirito... |
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| My thoughts exactly, Leafa... |
Another factor that makes this half of the series a bit uncomfortable to watch is that Leafa is Kirito's real-life cousin, Suguha, who was raised as his sister in his family. As stupid as it sounds that how two siblings could be playing the same video game online and don't know their own avatars is a bit absurd to me, but to make things even more outlandish, Leafa develops an ongoing crush on Kirito, not knowing that's the avatar of her own brother/cousin. Thus, this turn of events inadvertently creates a love triangle for the bulk of this latter half of the anime between the highly oblivious Kirito, Leafa, and the damsel trapped in the bird cage at the top of the World Tree, Asuna. When Kirito gets to the World Tree and it's revealed that Kazuto is Kirito, I couldn't help but feel sorry for Suguha/Leafa. At the same time, she had herself to blame in a way when it comes to investing so much emotion towards strangers. Much like the first half of Sword Art Online, this is one of those few concepts that is portrayed with beautiful precision that gamers and especially players who invest so much time attaching themselves to the people they think they know so well in these games and are disappointed when that same person isn't the same person who they thought they knew so well.
As much as I wanted to like Leafa as the female lead in this half of Sword Art Online, I couldn't find any way to put her on a pedestal higher than Asuna, despite her being trapped symbolically like a caged bird at the top of the World Tree for the duration of this series. From the moment that Leafa is introduced, she is reduced to a damsel in distress, where the newbie Kirito has to save her from the Salamander soldiers. Despite the fact that she takes Kirito under her wing to show him the ropes of Alfheim Online, Kirito holds his own combat and manages to quickly surpass Leafa in combat prowess, time and time again as she is left to look on in disbelief from the sidelines. By the end of this half of the series, she is reduced to merely a support role in Kirito's party, only healing and buffing his stats. After the high standard that Asuna set for women in the anime's first half, it was a bit of a disappointment to see a woman's role reduced to the backseat in the latter half of the anime when Kirito and Asuna were portrayed equals in combat.
After the recent announcement that there will be a Sword Art Online II, which will cover the remaining events found in the Sword Art Online mangas, I was relieved to know that this story does not end here. As it stands in its current state, Kirito and Asuna are together in real life and in their gaming lives, with all of the remaining comatose SAO players finally returning to somewhat normal lives. After a stellar first half, the anime falls short of hitting the high notes that made the initial part of this journey such a brilliant experience to behold. This anime suffers from what I would like to call "Death Note syndrome", where that anime of the same name hit a monumental high point, then just fell flat on just about everything else afterwards and never reached that height again before offering a lackluster ending (meaning that we knew it was coming a mile away...) as the reward for fans sticking around to the end.
Despite its faults, SAO does provide some superb action sequences and offers one of the better anime romances in recent memory, along with touching on the drama of online interactions and relationships found in MMOs, which was handled in a more clever manner than found in the .hack//SIGN series.
At the end of the day, I would still humbly suggest for my fellow otakus to give this anime a whirl at your viewing peasure, but Sword Art Online left me wanting more by the end of its finale. I give Sword Art Online a 8.75 out of 10.
Final Thoughts
After the recent announcement that there will be a Sword Art Online II, which will cover the remaining events found in the Sword Art Online mangas, I was relieved to know that this story does not end here. As it stands in its current state, Kirito and Asuna are together in real life and in their gaming lives, with all of the remaining comatose SAO players finally returning to somewhat normal lives. After a stellar first half, the anime falls short of hitting the high notes that made the initial part of this journey such a brilliant experience to behold. This anime suffers from what I would like to call "Death Note syndrome", where that anime of the same name hit a monumental high point, then just fell flat on just about everything else afterwards and never reached that height again before offering a lackluster ending (meaning that we knew it was coming a mile away...) as the reward for fans sticking around to the end.
Despite its faults, SAO does provide some superb action sequences and offers one of the better anime romances in recent memory, along with touching on the drama of online interactions and relationships found in MMOs, which was handled in a more clever manner than found in the .hack//SIGN series.
At the end of the day, I would still humbly suggest for my fellow otakus to give this anime a whirl at your viewing peasure, but Sword Art Online left me wanting more by the end of its finale. I give Sword Art Online a 8.75 out of 10.
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