Sword Art Online Review

I’m not sure if I have mentioned this briefly in my blog or not, but this year, I have found a new love for anime.

Prior to this year, I had no idea what series I should start on or how it works or anything like that; however, I then got Netflix and watched Death Note (Review HERE) and have been trolling through their anime category since.

As a result of this, I found the series Sword Art Online, which my boyfriend and I were quick to demolish.

The story revolves around the lead character Kirito, who gets trapped in a virtual reality game called Sword Art Online. Within the first episode, a major plot twist is then revealed to him and his fellow gamers, which is that if you die in the game, you die in real life. On top of this, there is now way of logging out of the game, so they are all essentially trapped there until someone completes the final boss battle.

The entire concept of this fascinated me, as I love the idea of being trapped within a games world, and on top of this, the Sword Art Online universe is pretty badass. A lot of people would disagree with me here, as many of the anime know-it-all’s hated this series and regularly rip it to shreds. Hey ho, I’m just a little newb here though, so I would recommend people give it a watch.

I absolutely fell in love with Kirito, as I quite liked his loner and nihilistic nature. He refuses help a lot, which I know can usually get very irritating, but his own determination redeems him from this. He is also quick thinking and clearly good at gaming, which is something I appreciated. I couldn’t think of anything worse than watching this series if the lead character had never played a video game before in his life!

The soundtrack and artwork are both amazing within this series. I also liked the occasional plot twist that occurred, as I feel like it kept the shows momentum and avoided plot repetition. I particularly enjoyed the creativity that went behind creating the floor bosses. With that said, we don’t get to see many of the boss fights, which I thought was a shame. I would have liked to have seen more of these, but I guess that this did run the risk of dragging the series out maybe.

In fact, my only flaw with this series is the slight decline in quality when it gets to the second half of the series. To me, the second story arc was not as good or as well written as the SAO part of the series, but with that said, I still enjoyed it. I feel like some of the characters became a bit 2D within this plot though, which is a shame as I loved the variety of developed personality’s within the SAO series.

I know that to an anime know-it-all that my opinions are probably controversial and wrong; however, I’m not here to watch and review it in the style of an anime mastermind. I’m just a 19-year-old loser, who sits in her messy room and binge watches practically anything. As a result, I’ll give this series 3/5 eggs, as it was slightly above average, but I wouldn’t put it as the greatest series of all time.