Monday, May 8, 2017

Sword art online review

I usually dont watch the full series of anime anymore. Sometimes I can bear it if it's only about 13 episodes long, but for anything longer and mainstream, I lose interest by the time I'm about a quarter way through or my anxiety kicks in and I want to avoid the whole series for some mysterious reason. So usually when I end up watching a whole series like SAO, it's usually because someone I know is forcing me to sit through it with them.
I probably don't have the rights to even review on the anime. During most of the series I was fixated on my phone or ds trying to deal with an unspoken anxiety and i don't remember the full series well.
It all began with a abridged series that was on youtube. I loved the abridged series. I love those types of parody humor and it just made fun of the whole scenario and my friend who also saw it decided it would also be great to watch the actual SAO series. I was interested what the fad was about for sometime as well so I obliged although I would've happily just not watched the series having watched the abridged.
About 1/3 of the first season was interesting (I gave up watching the second season btw). The scenario was interesting and I enjoyed watching different people's reaction to the situation and how they started handling it. When the girl suffered from hopelessness and depression, it was relatable. When groups formed up to get to the top as fast as they can to get out, it was also believable. The loss and guilt Kirito felt was also good.
But after that though... since Asuna got the second highlight, the series just lost something. Things like emotions and reactions started feeling forced and unnatural. Then suddenly we started to see more unrelateable crazy-ass characters, that felt so forced into this world to make it 'interesting'.
Like that group at the dungeon who had a leader that was pushing all his members just to carry on even though they're tired. The overly evil female character who doesn't mind killing other characters for some reason or those random characters who started being fine acting like a total npc in this world. It all just felt like a large joke than something to be taken seriously. This is why I enjoyed the abridged series. It showed that the whole scenario and character development was ridiculous. But to try and watch something that's that ridiculous is a serious manner was unenjoyable.
Then there was the ending of the first series. They destroyed the whole computer game, they got out and I wished that was the end of it. But alas. I guess the author was making a lot of money and needed to keep going. He made another universe. A universe more unrelateable, more forced to drag on the series a little longer. A universe where Kirito's sister falls in love with his brother for some poorly explained reasons. A series where Asuna is forced, yet into another game... um... then later on starts living in it basically? I mean, at some stage in the second season, she even says something along the lines of 'come back as soon as you can, since you belong in this world', like as if she's given up her life in the real world, which goes against all her character build up of how she wanted to get back... Anyway we're at a new game now with elf ears. For some reason Kirito's randomly strong again. The magical, digital 'daughter' Kirito and Asuna has, solves all the complicated problems the main characters face in the new digital world. By this time, I knew the conclusion and I knew it was shitty and I just wanted it to all end.
I won't even go into the second season of this ridiculous show and how much more it just covered itself full of shit to extend Kirito's gaming adventures by introducing guns this time, but really it was just hard to shallow.
In any case, I enjoyed the beginning of SAO and I enjoyed the forces romance between Kirito and Asuna since I am a girl of romance, but otherwise, I lost interest soon after the character development.
I'd probably give it a 6/10