Skeezix’s Anime in Review
I Can’t Stand Sword Art Online
Sometimes, things come along in life that disappoint us. High school probably wasn’t as cool as you thought it would be. Learning to drive turned out to be a lot less like Mario Kart than you might have hoped. And, of course, my parents had to watch me grow up and become who I am today.
But none of that even compares to how disappointed I was by Sword Art Online.
Some anime squeaks by mainly on its concept. For example, Death Note never quite tops its first few episodes in terms of quality, but by then a viewer will be invested enough in the whole police manhunt plotline that they won’t give up on it. One Punch Man, of course, spoils, right there in the name, the fact that Saitama has no chance whatsoever of losing, but it’s funny enough that you don’t really need that dramatic tension.
But a good concept isn’t enough on its own. If an anime has no other redeeming qualities, no interesting characters, no unexpected plot points, no clever dialogue, then, even if the concept is really good, the whole project will never really get off the ground. And, honestly, Sword Art Online had a really good concept. The concept was so good, in fact, that it gave me high expectations for the rest of the anime — expectations that, as it turned out, couldn’t possibly be met.
That concept — oh-we’re-trapped-in-a-video-game — wasn’t original. Oh-we’re-trapped-in-an-MMO might have been? It hardly matters; either way, the anime captures the viewer’s imagination in the first episode. The beautiful artstyle (the single best thing about Sword Art Online) and vivid world draw our imagination into the story: What could be out there? Where will Kirito go, and what will he do?
What I expected, after that excellent beginning, was a fighting anime like Bleach or Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. The plot would revolve around defeating AI enemies and evil players, and on the side Kirito would gather an entertaining group of friends, including Klein and Asuna, who would help him and even have their own times to shine on occasion.
Instead, all of the buildup was immediately thrown in the garbage. Kirito, despite being a solo player in an MMORPG, is able to become a god for some reason — a transformation that we’re not privileged to see, because why on Earth would you want to know how that happened? Klein, who in the first episode was able to provide a sort of avatar for the viewer as a relatable guy who wanted to be Kirito’s friend, falls by the wayside, leaving no one to balance Kirito’s edginess and misanthropy. And it just gets worse from there.
After the first two episodes, the narrative direction falls off a cliff. No, scratch that: it falls off a goddamn mountain. There’s a peak in Nunavut — Mt. Thor — that has the highest vertical drop anywhere on Planet Earth. They flew this anime’s plot all the way up there from Japan to drop it off just so that it could fall further.
Instead of carrying on, building a strong cast of characters and introducing powerful enemies, the story now decides that it wants to be a slice-of-life/harem anime instead. Kirito travels through Aincrad, helping cute girls solve their problems while being an untouchable god. The third episode is the Christmas special. What the hell?
Also, Sword Art Online has a terrible problem with newly-introduced characters, which is that it kills them off or banishes them from the narrative in the very same episode. There are no characters that carry over from episode to episode except for Asuna and a few other minor ones. The issue with this is that the viewer can’t form a connection with anyone except Kirito, but only a lonely, angsty teenage boy with a power fantasy and a bad case of sexual frustration could possibly do that. Needless to say, I thought he was pretty cool a few years back.
Lastly, despite the fact that the first arc is only fourteen episodes long, there are so many different plot threads that they couldn’t possibly all be resolved. The only one that does get some kind of proper ending is the one with Yui, but since that sprouted off the bizarre “honeymoon” episode, I don’t think it really counts. The main storyline, on the other hand, ends at Level 75, not Level 100 (which is a bizarre choice; it’s not as if we really even saw levels 2–74, so why not just skip even more time?), with the most abrupt, cheap-feeling cop-out imaginable.
So much for the plot. As for the characters, well, it’s just as weak there. Kirito, as I outlined before, is a terrible, terrible protagonist with no motivation and no explanation given for his incredible power. You wonder why he doesn’t just beat the whole game by himself. The side characters are so forgettable in comparison that they’re barely worth mentioning, with a few exceptions.
It’s not worth differentiating between the harem anime girls that Kirito somehow charms. As a group, however, they’re utterly cringeworthy. Anime as a whole has a major problem with female characters being weak airheads with no motivation except to land a man, and Sword Art Online is no different. I ended up fast-forwarding through some of the filler episodes that they appeared in, just to not have to watch them talk.
Klein, Agil, and Heathcliff/Kayaba, the three side characters besides Asuna who get any real screen time, mainly just serve to show off how cool Kirito is. I discussed before how Klein felt like he should have had more relevance to Kirito’s storyline, and Agil seemed initially as though he was going to emerge as a leader amongst the players, but the anime missed those opportunities to bring them into the foreground. Kayaba, on the other hand, is a mess, with no clear motivation and no reason given for why he would throw away literally everything just to trap some people in a video game for a couple years. He’s not an interesting villain, because he’s not fun to hate — he’s just confusing.
Then there’s Asuna herself. While she’s a strong character who initially seems to compare to Kirito in terms of her power level and sword skills, later it becomes obvious that, of course, it’s no contest. She fades away into Kirito’s main squeeze, and many of the later scenes with her involve fanservice, including the cringeworthy butt shot that’s probably next to the dictionary entry for “objectification.” Sometimes, in an anime, you’ll be driven to watch by a desire to see a specific character grow, even if nothing else is grabbing you; for example, in Bleach, I got pretty attached to Renji and watched for longer than I wanted to see him shine. But because of its weak roster, Sword Art Online can’t offer viewers even that.
There are, as I write this, 86 episodes of Sword Art Online. I finished twelve of them. The fact that I got that far is down to a mixture of my continuing investment in the concept, my admiration for the artstyle, and, most importantly, a vague, futile hope that the package might, somehow, improve, which was dashed over and over again until I finally gave up, two episodes before the conclusion of the first arc. I would normally hesitate to write a review based on twelve episodes, but in this case, I saw all I needed to see.
And you know, it’s a shame. There’s a lot of bad anime out there. I watched Speed Racer as a kid. Garzey’s Wing exists. And you could always watch the American movie adaptation of Death Note or whatever. But most bad anime starts bad. Sword Art Online is so disappointing because it gives you hope, makes you believe that the show has a prayer of being any good, and then dashes that hope, over and over again, smashing it onto the rocks of despair.
As if to prove how solid the concept is, the Abridged version of Sword Art Online, done on YouTube by Something Witty Entertainment, is actually really good, especially once it gets warmed up. Using the same scenes and the same characters, the Something Witty team took something I couldn’t finish and turned it into something that I eagerly watch episodes of the moment they release. It’s incredible how much better Abridged is, and without making huge changes to the plot or setting! But this is all just adding insult to injury for the normal anime.
I have no clue why Sword Art Online is so popular. Maybe it gets better later, even though I hear the second arc is even worse. Maybe the light novels were really good. But I can’t recommend in good faith that anyone watches this utter train wreck. Unless you’re really into men in trench coats or something.
I give Sword Art Online one squeaky waifu out of five, or four if you watch the Abridged version.
Originally published at http://skeezixblogs.wordpress.com on June 11, 2020.
