Mini Anime Review - Sword Art Online (Arc One)

SAO, many people's favorite anime, and many people's 100% worst anime of all time. This divide in opinion is often due to the differing quality and story between the first two Arcs of the first series; episodes 1-14 taking place in the titular Sword Art Online VRMMORPG, and then moving on to the ALfheim Online for the remainder of the season. 

Arc 1 is often seen very highly in the anime community, taking place within an escapeless MMO where you die in real life if you should fall in the game, due to the tense situations and deaths of countless players/people as the episodes progress. In true video game fashion the way to win is to travel from level one (the bottom of this wedding cake world) all the way to the Ruby Palace on level 100 to get home, -insert Wizard of Oz reference here-.

As you would imagine in a death game there are both friendly folk to assist our main star Kirito along the way, as well as bloodthirsty goons (many of which not accepting that the game had even started actually killing people).
Our main star Kirito is undeniably a Mary Stu, one of the biggest ever to be seen in anime; from his massive unintentional harem of every girl he spends more than 2 minutes talking to (one which has the least hostility in compared to shows actually based around harems), and his godlike control of the game world around him.
Sidenote; at least in the Arc it is ALMOST tolerable, as most of his power comes from his near game breaking quest abuse grinding and his advanced knowledge of the game from the Beta gameplay he partook in.

This near cheating level of "skill"(for want of a better word) earns him the in game name of "Beater".

Despite his solo experience of the game for the most part there are a number of recurring characters through out, from his day one friend Klein (right), whom he meets a fair few times after their initial separation, and more importantly his love interest Asuna(left). Asuna is a cause of much controversy in the series, but as this is strictly covering arc 1 many flaws aren't present. 

She is a strong, confident female character who has little need for Kirito in terms of fights, even going on to save him multiple times. However after a certain point she becomes somewhat distracted by her love for Kirito and, despite remaining cool in battle can be a little annoyingly emotional outside it, massively contrasts against Kirito's near disability when it comes to showing or taking romantic expressions. 

There is a small cast of female semi-love interests who each have an episode to themselves, but on the whole fade into redundancy. The only other character of note is Kirito and Asuna's adopted daughter, a glitch in the SAO system in the body of a small girl. Easily the most likable of any cast member (other than Klein of course), due to her ability to be a cute small child, without ever seeming annoying, at least from my perspective. Her introduction also brings about a very pleasing Mother and Father development in Kirito's romance development; while I do not like the fact the romance is here in this series i appreciate that it is done a lot less painfully than many actual romance shows.

Despite the shows very very strong beginning, I find, the plot becomes a little clogged, partly due to massive time skips at points and over focusing on some time periods, and partly due to the massive out of ass turn-a-rounds Kirito manages to pull time and time again. 
However I have two major MAJOR problems with arc one. WHY THE F*** DID THIS EVEN HAPPEN?! AND WHY WAS THAT RANDOM REVIVAL THING A LOST PLOT POINT?!

In case you wonder what i am referring to, the Divine Stone of Returning Soulm, which Kirito wastes a whole episode trying to gain, only to find he can't use it to bring back his lover/guildmate, ending with it being given to Klein, which makes you think "Maybe it will come back to be used at the very end! Maybe it is important later". No. In the show we never see this again. So why bother showing us them getting it?!  The episode's one defining lesson is "Even the revival items can't bring back the dead", which is a totally pointless lesson, as only a total retard could think that an in game item could un-fry their brain in real life. Maybe the year Kirito spends out of school had a much worse effect than we thought.

Eventually the "team" escape after Kirito 110% "Mary Stu"s his victory, and so their life of VR torture is over, they can move on with their lives, and i am sure after the life scarring experience they have had with video games they will never go to back to VRMMORPGs again anytime in the future ........... ANYWAY! This show has amazing visuals and a great sound track, one worth looking into even if you are not a fan of the show itself, just for tracks like "Crossing Fields".



Rating - 
Looks - 4.5/5
Sound -4.1/5
Plot - 2.9/5
Characters - 1.5/5
Overall - 13/20