Sword Art Online 1-14
So I guess I’ll just put down my thoughts
about this fir
st major arc. Seems like everything has already been resolved so I wonder what I’m going to see next as there’s still a b
unch of episodes left. Ki
nda makes me anxious as it looks like we’re going to be
outside of the g
aming world.
Anyhow, the first arc of Sword Art Online has everything I wanted out of a
show about a boy trapped in a video game, not that I care much about the genre, I still have to watch Log Horizon after all before I can call myself a
"connioisseur of the trapped in a MMO genre but at the end of the day SAO delivered on my expectations and even succeed it on some places.
I guess the “expe
ctations” part may be the most important reason why I enjoyed this first half of the show. Every show, at least in my opinion, requires a different mind-set that’s probably based on what you want to get out of the show. If I’d watch Non Non Biyori for example I just want to relax and want to see some children playing around in the field and if I watch something li
ke Perfect Blue I’m going to take it a lot more seriou
sly and want to see some solid writing.
Like I said, SAO is about a boy who’s trapped in a MMO, a stupid concept to the core and as such, I’m just going to sit back and laugh at all the dumb stuff. For the rest this is probably what I’d want from a show like this:
- Some cool exploration of the MMO world.
- Monsters getting destroyed
- The main character acting like a hero/nice guy
This first half delivered on all of these, using the classic villain of the week format to explore a new concept of the game every episode, they even went the extra mile with neat little things like the part where Kirito hit the wall and a tooltip popped up. The concept of “sleep PK’ing” is also both hilarious and rather surprisingly clever at the same time, while it’s silly it’s still some cool world-building that shows that someone bothered thinking about this MMO world (for better or worse). I can always appreciate that.
I guess some people could think that the writing is bad since it features a lot of “give a bullshit reason to get Kirito from point A to B” a nice example would be the Minotaur fight where the soldiers are hell bent of charging themselves into their demise. At the end of the day it’s really not something that bothers me, I just laugh at how dumb it is and then get hyped when Kirito goes on to play the hero. The ends justify the means I guess.
I should mention that the whole army thing gets cleared up later on when apparently the soldiers are sent there as a political moves. It kinda leads me to think that the writer is aware of how ridiculous most of his little plots are but just rolls with it and gives a passable reason as to why it happens (remember when Kirito had to turn his TP crystals in for a trust exercise).
Some of the previous episodes also are nicely woven into the later episodes. Even if half of them are flashbacks to Kirito seeing his buddies die in the anti-crystal room. It works well enough to establish that Kirito actually wants fuck up the bad guys this time around. Basic motivations like this are all I’m looking for as anything more would get in the way of the juicy parts of the show. The reappearing characters are also awesome whenever they turn up. The Blacksmith and Klein with the boys are all good additions to the cast.
In short, these episodes of SAO were (dumb) fun, I was either laughing at some of the stupid stuff or genuinely excited by cool fights, the characters were also endearing with some sweet moments here and there.
My opinion of SAO basically boils down these words of wisdom:
It's OK, if I looked at/watched everything with a jaded and cynical view I would come to the same conclusions.]
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I wonder how they’ll fuck it up in these last episodes because I’m pretty sure they’re going to fuck it up in these last episodes. There's only one way to find out I guess.
