sword art online

Written by sleepyrounin on August 19, 2013 at 1:00 PM

pros
+ fast and furious first arc
+ interesting side characters
+ pretty good animation and classic music
cons
- jumpy first arc with plot holes, and don't get me started on that second arc
- stereotypical main character
- a helluva lot of bugs

conclusion: here i go, with the most overhyped anime of the past year. heck, it wasn't even so bad back when it started, fast and furious, reminding me a bit much of .hack and hxh greed island, but at least good. the animation's up-to-date, never mind a good couple bugs (background animation, frames); the music is yuki kajiura so no more needs to be said about it; and where the storyline jumped around from sidetrack to sidetrack far too much for my taste, at least the side characters were quite interesting. then that arc finished at around half of the anime, and it started going downhill. the first arc had left rather huge plot holes, and if that wasn't bad enough, the second arc became far too predictable and un-developed for my liking. most side characters were barely seen again; the online world (though new, since it had changed halfway through) never got explored much; and it became increasingly more obvious just how stereotypical and unrealistic, a.k.a. unrelatable, the protagonist was. and his rather unbelievable love life doesn't exactly help.
it's entertaining sure enough if you care more about action and animation than about plot, since the action is there and very in-game-ish. nevertheless, if story is the focus of your reviews, or would be right that if you ever got around to writing a review, i can't recommend this one.

peace.