So yeah, I was bored and decided to watch
Sword Art Online, going in completely blind other than seeing the name a bunch and hearing that it was pretty popular.
And at first I loved it! A deconstruction of ever present MMO tropes with some "
people die when they are killed" shenanigans to raise the stakes was a great premise, and I really enjoyed the first few episodes. It was a perfect whirlwind of enjoyable action scenes, nerdy in-jokes and perfect fodder for some "what if this happened
for real?" navel-gazing.
Even when Asuna came back in the show and the relationship drama kicked into high gear, I was still really into it. It's only after they got 'married' that things started to turn sour. Something about those episodes sucked all the good feels out of the show and just left some melodramatic mess. The Game Clear out of nowhere didn't help either, leaving a bunch of in-game plot points hanging.
And this post-game arc
sucks. A second game?
A RESCUE ARC?! ugh...
I'll keep watching though, like the fool that I am.