Sword Art Online

Review by Jack

Published by: Aniplex

Produced by: A-1 Pictures

Staring: Bryce Papenbrook (Kirito) and Cherami Leigh (Asuna)

Directed by: Tomohiko

Number of Episodes: 25

Episode Length: 23 Minuets

Original Language: Japanese

Its 2022 and the highly anticipated game MMORPG Sword Art Online has just been sold out of its 10,000 copies. Players including Kirito a 14 year old video game wiz race to put on their Virtual Reality headset, the NerveGear to play. The NerveGear allows players to travel thousands of miles in the game and still be lying down in place on their beds. All 10,000 players race to log on and join this fantastic multiplayer fantasy RPG game, only once they are in, they find the game is missing one crucial element. A key feature every game needs. Sword Art Online does not have a way to log-out. And soon the players find out that this feature was not an accident, but was intentional. They only way to log-out and wake up their real bodies is to clear (win) all one hundred game levels. Death in Sword Art Online, means death in the real world too. Join Kirito in his fight to free the players and himself and to return to the normal world once more.

I have never watched Anime before. Unless you count Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon, but most don't. I really didn't think I would enjoy Anime or Sword Art Online, but surprisingly I did. I found the world amazing and even under the circumstances wished that I was also trapped in SAO and had to fight for my existence. The story really captivates you with a solo style player forced into teams and making friends when he usually doesn't. The graphics were okay, it was not live action show but it was better than Sponge Bob. But I do have one big thorn. Anyone who has seen SAO will get what I am saying and if you start the series also you will see. The episode in the middle that transitions the series (Different goal, different intro and outro music, etc.) felt like a cop-out to me. It cut the main goal in half, and it felt like the makers were like "Ug I am board of drawing the same scenes over and over again, lets just do a cop-out!" At least thats what it felt like to me, but you should still watch the series. Not only did I finish the series, but I binge¹ watched it to! I watched all twenty five episodes in two nights of pure watching.
I would recommend this series to...

Someone looking for a great Anime
Anyone who hasn't watched much or any Anime before
Fans of the book Eye of Minds by James Dashner
Anyone who enjoys binge watching
Anyone who enjoys video games and is fascinated by Virtual Reality

Thank you for reading! I chose to watch this series based on a friends recommendation. This series was originally aired in 2012 and is currently available on Netflix and Hulu. Thanks! Subscribe by email for weekly posts!

1 Binge-watching, also called binge-viewing, is the practice of watching television for longer time spans than usual, usually of a single television show. In a survey conducted by Netflix in February 2014, 73% of people define binge-watching as “watching between 2-6 episodes of the same TV show in one sitting.”^↩