We All Need to Watch Sword Art Online

Sword Art Online is not a good anime.

Already I can hear at least one person furiously slamming away on their keyboard as they launch into a doctoral thesis on just how much they despise Sword Art Online, so I’m saying that up front and off the bat. If we ignore the fact I’m a little hard to impress anyways, SAO is infamous in many circles as one of the worst series to have ever been made. And while I think that claim is a little hyperbolic considering some the other stuff I’ve seen, it’s hard not to see where they’re coming from. Most of the characters are forgettable if not useless if not easy sex joke fodder, Kirito is an incredibly bland lead whose abridged series reincarnation is somehow better than the original, the writing is okay at best and laughable at worst, and the animation quality is inconsistent across the board, ranging from visually impressive to early-lunch-break lazy.

And had this article been one of my regular reviews, I’d be ready to strap SAO to the sacrificial table and begin the chanting, but I’m not going to this time.

In fact, I’m actually going to recommend that you see it.

First things first: When I say you should watch SAO, I mean to say I’m only recommending the first season. SAO II is exponentially more malignant than its predecessor could ever hope to be. While Season 1 actually serves a purpose for today’s talk, Season 2 is not interested in even trying to be engaging or even just being okay. Maybe the visuals are still impressive, and…fine, but Season 1 already established that the art direction was competent, so you’d hope the sequel would do more. And no, no it doesn’t. Putting aside the flimsy plot and uninteresting universe, there’s nothing to recommend here at all. Sinon was probably the only thing that could have possibly saved it from being horrendous, but because SAO is part harem anime and Kirito is pretty much Jesus, she quickly merges with the amorphous and indistinct grey blob that is the rest of the supporting cast.

It’s just an absolute mess I can’t properly dissect without digressing more than I already have.

“That’s all well and good, SnYves, but as I understand it you apparently think both seasons are utter crap, and the sequel just happens to be worse. If the first season is still awful, why are you telling me to go see it?”

Because, on a base level, SAO doesn’t look like a bad series at all. I’ll admit, when I first watched it, I thought it was actually kinda competent. Granted, that was only for the Eincrad arc and whatever goodwill it had with me was squandered by the time we were wrapping up Alfheim (those who’ve seen the series know exactly what scene I’m referring to here), but I didn’t hate it back then either.

It was only when I brushed the dust off and put it back on a few months later that I realized that SAO was not a good series and was probably not recovering anytime in the near future. Not with Season 2, probably not with Season 3, and definitely not with a live-action Western adaptation (gag).

And yet, despite the fact this series is despised by many anime lovers, SAO is managing an almost five-star rating on Netflix (admittedly from people who don’t watch anime nearly as much as me) and a 7.8 on MyAnimeList (evidence I find nowhere near as dismissible). And if this show is as bad and meaningless as some people claim it is, then there’s no way in hell it would be pulling those numbers.

There has to be some reason why this got a third season. There has to be some reason I saw Kirito and Asuna cosplay at Wasabi a couple weeks ago. There has to be something a significant part of the anime community is seeing in this series that is warranting the critical reception.

So why is SAO in such good standing despite the negative criticism and detraction? I feel like the best way to answer that is to actually look at what the series does well. So…

Ah! Stop right there! I know exactly what you’re about to say. I still do not like SAO. For every thing it does correctly, there are no less than five other things it screws up. Go watch the Gun Gale Online OP for further evidence. I’m not here to argue that. I could write a novel explaining every little thing SAO does wrong, mismanages, or just outright ignores, but that’s not the point of this article. There is a large number of people who believe this is a good show. I am not one of them. But it would be closed-minded and very shallow of me as a critic to not try and understand where they’re coming from. So, if you’ll excuse me, back to my original question: what does SAO do that warrants the praise it receives?

To start off, and this is going to be a very subjective point, SAO has some impressive visuals. As to what exactly the series does with those visuals is a different matter entirely, but the character designs, monsters, weapons, and visual effects by themselves are pretty cool and, for some, iconic. Some of my readers may know the name Shinichiro Kashiwada as the producer for Irregular at Magic High School and Madoka Magica, and for you it shouldn’t be too surprising he helped out with SAO as well. While I might not have the highest opinion of the series as a whole, it’s clear that SAO knows how to put its money on the screen.

Let me put it like this: if you were completely new to anime, and I put on a three-minute clip of SAO completely out of context and without telling you anything about the series, at the very least you would probably agree that it looked pretty. And if cool graphics are what you watch anime for, character and plot development aside, then honestly, I think you could do way worse. There is effort present in every frame; the animators, art directors, and producers were clearly trying their hardest to make SAO look like a high-value production. Between the detailed panoramic shots and the flashy and stylized combat visuals, you would be hard-pressed to call SAO an ugly show on that basis alone.

To branch off of that, despite the show’s numerous shortcomings, it still somehow manages to leave a good first impression. Well, for the first couple of episodes at any rate; really, the show doesn’t start showing cracks until the end of Episode 2. Up to that point, SAO definitely looks and feels like it’s going to be a good show. The whole “if you die in the game, you die in real life” premise isn’t exactly the most unique thing out there, and I’ve seen multiple ways that setup can be mishandled (Stay Alive). Usually the big loophole writers have trouble answering is, “If the game can kill you, why do you keep playing it?” It’s a pretty obvious question, and in answering it writers have to think up some very convoluted scenarios where “something bad” happens if you don’t keep playing.

Kinda silly.

SAO gets that out of the way pronto by just having Kayaba come in during the first episode and say that the players are trapped right to their faces. Bam. No convoluted setup, no idiocy on behalf of the players' part, and this issue never has to be brought up ever again. It’s a variation on the “transported to another world” genre, but SAO had to take the extra step to cover the obvious plot hole before pushing towards the main event. And if the rest of the series lived up to what the first episode indirectly promised, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have to write this article.

Yet, even with those two very powerful forces working in its favor, SAO still manages to drop the ball. While I can understand why the show’s popularity is as high as it is, substantially there isn’t anything special about it. The positives it exhibits in the first thirty minutes are quickly blacked out by plot, pacing and character development issues the series just can’t seem to escape.

Which brings me to the main reason why we should all sit down and put on SAO: it is a case study in how bad aspects of an anime can overshadow and overwhelm the good.

Remember a little while ago when I was praising the show’s art style and how it looks really awesome when nothing needs to be animated? Well, as many of the show’s detractors will point out (myself included), the animation quality shown varies so wildly it can be hard to take in at some points. When the animation is on point and actually looks halfway decent, it enhances the scenery and makes the visual aspects of the show stand out even more. But those points are so few and far between that instead we have to watch the show when it’s not at its best on the animation front, and when that happens we get a sub par experience. The pictures on screen are moving, but they’re moving in such an incoherent and choppy fashion that it can be hard to focus on the detail and effort present in each frame.

Similarly, even though the show’s plot looks promising, by the end of Episode 2 we’ve become so detached from the characters and their decisions that it becomes hard to relate to them. Assuming that you didn’t see the cracks showing by the end of that episode, Episode 3 ends with (light-to-moderate spoilers) the slaughter of his guild, The Black Cats. And sure, that’s an emotional moment for Kirito and provides another reason on his emo checklist to never group up with people, but that emotional impact for the viewer just isn’t present. Considering Kirito is the only character we’ve known for longer than 15 minutes, and his guildies' personalities are so homogenized I couldn’t tell you a single defining characteristic about any of them, when they all fall in the dungeon it’s hard not to feel apathetic or just indifferent about the incident.

Yeah, sorry there, Sachi. I get that you’re dead and all, but Nina Tucker you are not.

Now, are all of those good reasons to dislike the show? Sure they are. They are valid, objective criticisms. Does that mean it’s the worst show to ever come across the face of existence?

If you think so, then that’s perfectly fine too!

But if you’re going to say that, you should know that there are people on the other half of the spectrum who will claim the exact opposite thing. And instead of picking at the shortcomings of SAO, they’d rather hold up its positives and praise the series for the things it does well. What I see as a badly written and occasionally bland show others see as a beautiful, well-designed visual stunner. Again, I might not understand it, but that’s kinda the point.

Nobody’s going to interpret two things the same way when it comes to art. We are all going to have differing opinions and tastes in comics, games, TV shows, literature, and yes, especially anime. The only constant is that we all have to experience something before we can create a well-informed and decisive opinion on it.

You’ll never know what that opinion is if you never try it.

Next time: Enter Li’l Slugger!