Forum - View topicREVIEW: Sword Art Online Blu-Ray 2
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marco_abreuu
Posts: 2 |
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[quote="normajean19"]
Yeah... that put more of a sour taste in my mouth than any of the plot issues. It just put a huge damper on the innocence and family feel of the honeymoon episodes. [/quote] Funny because i really liked it. I tired of this childish romance most animes have. A couple blushing to each other for 25 episodes without do nothing ? seriously ? At last SAO is more true to real life relationships. Sex happens very fast, thats normal, people are too used to romcons and shows where nothing happens in 25 episodes. Even so, they censored and cut out the sex implicit scene on episode 10 (yea, you can have sex in SAO, they cut of the part where they explain it ). But the honeymoon part let this fact more obvious. Yea, SAO is overrated but what sucess is not ? SnK deserves all his hype ? Madoka ? Steins Gate was the only show i watch that got the praise it deserved without being completely overrated and adored by a large group of people. And people are too harsh with SAO, better an overpowered protagonist than Shinji-likes or Shounen-likes who get his ass kicked all the fight, and get stronger and stronger each time they get up (masochism power ?). Im obviously talking about Fairy tail, One piece and stuff like that. SAO was a good show, not the best of all time and it have its problems but i really liked it (and a lot of people too as it became so famous). Good fights, nice soundtrack and a more close to real life romance that you will never find in any ther battle shounen anime (even romcons are kind slow with it). About Log Horizon, it would be destroid if anyone would make a harsh review like they make with SAO. Jokes all the time, childish, university people acting like teenagers and plushing each time they look to each other (is not surprise is being broadcast in an open channel at 11 am, it's pretty much a show for childrens). And more important, they went to a RPG without any explanation and don't give a shit about it, it's a fantasy without any explanation for the fantasy stuff ¬¬. (Sorry for my english, i can read just fine but ain't good with writing) |
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Fencedude5609
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They both deserve their success more than SAO does. |
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jymmy
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Interesting point. Shingeki no Kyojin was pretty good, but certainly overhyped. Madoka was hardly a unique deconstructive masterpiece, but it was a very good show, better than most, and probably deserves most of the praise it received. The difference between those shows and Sword Art Online is that they were good-to-great, whereas Sword Art Online was actually quite bad.
What are you talking about? It's not important at all what "type" of protagonist he is; the claim is that he is a badly written character, and that's all that matters. |
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Fencedude5609
Posts: 5088 |
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While I generally think that its never a good idea to have the protagonist of a story be the strongest character, it can be done well. Doing it well does not mean the character gets to literally pull new abilities out of his ass when it becomes necessary in order to win. |
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marco_abreuu
Posts: 2 |
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Thats your point of view. Most people are too centered in their on point of view and don't bother looking at any one else. SAO does a really good job with his slice of life/romance parts, but obviously if you don't like romance and want a Naruto(pure battle shounen) you will complain about it instead of praise it. The first climax is pretty much Matrix 1 end. The machine says to your brain you are dead, your brain deny it, the machine gets confused and your death is postponed for a few second. Of course Matrix explained it much much better (even so some people didn't get it), and in SAO case it got more obvious in the LN than in the anime. The question is why people started to call it a Deux Ex without even try to think in a logical explanation before hand. SAO is a sci-fi, not a fantasy, and so it works with concept of AI getting emotions, brains X machines, ect. I'm very aware of his problems and i would like a remake someday fixing some stuffs (E.G> if what happens with Kirito in the first climax happened with someone in a lower degre in a side storie the problem would be solved). But in the end every show have its problems (of course, some more than others). Code Geass and Angel Beats have a lot of problems in there execution and even so are super famous and adored. [quote="Fencedude5609"]
You should really hate SnK then, Eren already did it about 3 times (in the mangá). Last edited by marco_abreuu on Sun Dec 29, 2013 11:33 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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Why are people so obsessed with how much praise a show gets? "Overhyped" is arbitrary to the point of being meaningless, but even if people like the show they'll still spend all of their time talking about how people liked it too much and it wasn't THAT good, as though that's an important distinction to make at all. Nobody gives a shit if you liked a TV show slightly less than you perceive others to have liked it - it doesn't make you the calm cool level-headed one who's just above all those frothing fanboys. It isn't a substantive criticism, nor does it open the door to further discussion.
But it seems like in every discussion of everything that becomes even kinda popular, people just sit around and argue about how much is the appropriate level of enjoyment for something, like there's an objective bar for that and if you go over it then oh no you liked it too much!! NOOOOO!!. Now we're getting into phrases like "overhated", something I've seen pop up more often on the forums, once again as though "well it's okay for people to dislike the show this much but this much is going too far!!" is reasonable or can even be remotely agreed upon by any group of people. Discussion of whether or not something is 'overhyped' or 'deserved the amount of love it got' is meaningless and almost always driven by the participants' desire to seem like the most level-headed wise person in the room, which is just narcissism. |
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Penguin_Factory
 Posts: 732 Location: Ireland |
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They're operating in an imaginary world where we're not just giving our subjective opinion on media and there are some objectively "true" facts that can be arrived at. Of course what they think are objective facts are really just their own opinions, so anyone who disagrees with them is "wrong" and must be corrected in the same way that someone who claims the Earth is flat should be corrected. |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Endless, relentless praise for something you don't have any interest in can eventually start to feel annoying and distracting. Like if every time you want to visit an anime website, you have to sit through a Viagra ad. This was my problem with Attack on Titan; I'm sick of zombies to begin with and The Really Huge Walking Dead didn't seem like any great new paradigm, but for several months it was all anyone in the community talked about. Drove me nuts. I kinda-sorta liked the show once I wasn't being commanded to every 5 seconds. So yeah, I felt like complaining that it was overhyped, and did so. It's also alienating--it's not fun when everyone you know loves something, and you don't. If they can't participate in praising a thing, but feel like they have to join in somehow, people will rant about it instead because it's hard to be positive about something when you never wanted to think about it in the first place. And there's the hipstery angle: there's only so much hype to go around, and if it's all going towards something you don't like while the things you do like get no attention, it seems unfair. "Underrated shows" discussions are probably a more productive way to fight this, but it's only natural for people to want to dig into the popular shows at the same time. I guess you could write all that off as narcissism if you really wanted to, but only by assuming that large numbers of differently-opinioned humans can interact without friction and without losing diversity and individuality, and that people only go against the flow to be contrarian. SAO has yet another sort of problem, where most of the "overhyped" complainers think that it doesn't deserve to be popular because they find it offensive(ly sexist), and don't want it to reinforce backwards stereotypes. Whether the show actually does that is...complicated, but I'm certainly not going to say it's dumb for people to criticize its popularity for that reason. |
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FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
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The concept you are trying to equate are significantly different in there approach, AoT still plays closer to the shonen action rules than a zombie flick, hell even Walking Dead does not present itself in the same manner as Night of the Living Dead. It is akin to saying that Sailor Moon and Madoka Magica are effectively the same thing because they have magical girls. It is similarly annoying when people try to compare SAO with Log Horizon, there executions are greatly different and the surface concept of being "locked in the game" becomes minor in both narratives cases. |
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Kougeru
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I'm surprised the price wasn't listed as a huge negative...because that's the real reason why MOST people are not going to ever buy this.
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KENZICHI
 Posts: 1117 |
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I really wanted to like SAO. I really did, but it just was not interesting and frankly I didn't know what was going on during the first half. The pacing wasn't good at all. When I tuned in to watch on Toonami I felt like I missed an episode because they just jumped into a whole new story without any back story. I couldn't grow to like any of the characters because it was so rushed. KiritoxAsuna I couldn't even enjoy because I felt like it happened too fast with no explanation. I just couldn't like anyone on an emotional level. That's my problem with SAO.
Good review though! |
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ChibiKangaroo
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I think my opinion on SAO has been aired many times but I have had a lot of time to think about the show since I first watched it and in retrospect, I will say this... it is not AS bad as I originally thought.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- I have to qualify my position a little bit, because there absolutely are some awful aspects of SAO that I simply cannot overlook. The marginalization of Asuna, starting in the first arc and amplified massively in the second arc, was depressing. The lack of a credible villain in either arc made the thrill and danger put forth in the plot feel completely hollow. (The first villain conveniently "forgot" why he even did the things he did, and the second villain spoiler[seemed to have no concrete evil plan... his entire plan seemed to just revolve around setting up some grand, dramatic scene for Asuna to be rescued by Kirito at the last second before being raped.]) Also, Kirito was very Gary Stu-ish - excessively powerful, super handsome, beloved by all the ladies, and a kind, helpful gentleman always looking to save a damsel in distress (except for that one instance where he "accidentally gropes Asuna's boobs") but he didn't connect emotionally with the audience except for at certain moments with his little sister in the second arc. Those moments when he was shown to be screwing up his relationship with his sister were the only times that I felt he was human, and the only times I felt anything emotionally towards him. At all other times during the show, he was simply the idealized boy that every boy wants to be and every girl wants to be with. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HOWEVER. With all that being said (and I did have some other smaller quibbles with the show), at the end of the day, SAO is best qualified as a sort of escapist fairy tale that really isn't supposed to work as a well written narrative or a relatable story with deep characters. The writing in SAO is often lackluster precisely because I don't think Reki was writing it as a fully thought out narrative. I think he was writing SAO as a kind of personal dream, one that is shared by many people around the world (hence the show's popularity). Personally, I am an RPG nut. I love MMORPGs and Dungeons and Dragons, and all of the fantasy trappings that are found in SAO. I played nearly all of the FF games, the Lunar games, the Breath of Fire games, the Tales games, etc. If I have a fantasy related dream, it might look somewhat like SAO. Artistically, SAO appeals to me greatly, with beautiful animation and awe inspiring vistas/backgrounds. Even as I was criticizing the obvious problems with the show, I did watch it from start to finish, tuning in almost every week. I think I may have given it a B- as my final grade. I can't remember for certain. If I was grading it purely in the context of this "dream" analysis, maybe I would give it a higher grade. Dreams often don't make sense. They often focus more on vibrant imagery and wish-fulfillment concepts. They contain idealized representations that can't relate to real life... I still think SAO is a poorly written anime story, but maybe it works well as a dream world for lovers of fantasy. |
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Kitsunelaine
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In my eyes, it's a Waifu Quest Wish Fulfillment Nerd story where Even The Totally-Not-Related-NotCousin Is A Love Interest. Kirito is not just "Gary-Stu-ish", he IS a Gary Stu, something for male viewers with power fantasies to project themselves onto. It doesn't help that every single woman introduced in the show goes through a phase where they want Kirito's D. This is the type of thing where it's pretty easy for viewers to go "I think Kirito would have been better off with X" because that's who THEY would want to end up with. The women characters are just check-lists of anime tropes without that much actual character to them beyond "Oh no she's my waifu and she's in danger do I like this girl more than the others". Even then, when he finally ends up with Asuna, Asuna becomes a damsel in distress when fighting and completely stops showing any signs of the character she had before and becomes Perfect Anime Waifu 01. I couldn't stomach about 70% of the first arc, to the point where I just stopped watching at Episode 15, right after the "My totally-not-cousin wants to bone me!" overtones. SAO plays like fanfiction of itself, and it loves to think that it's the best thing ever. It honestly feels like someone's Deviantart story. The *first draft* of someone's Deviantart story. So.. "Dream world for lovers of Fantasy" in this case reads more like "Generic Fantasy Wish Fulfillment World" to me, where people project themselves onto the main character and any sense of fulfillment watchers gain out of the show isn't out of the qualities of the show itself but the viewers projecting themselves onto Kirito. I think the ~base idea~ of SAO could work if it were better written, but... This show ain't. |
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Top Gun
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Even beyond the huge Gary Stu issues and rampant sexism (of course waifu Asuna is the world's most perfect sammich-maker), what bugged me like hell from the very first episode is how horribly-conceived the overall backstory to the series is. I'm a big believer in suspension of disbelief, and I can accept all sorts of goofy happenings if they work well in the context of a show's universe, but if you're going to tell a story set in the near-future real world and ground it in reality...well, you'd best make sure your story meshes with how real life actually works. There have to be 50 different reasons why the game's hardware would never fly (You're telling me no regulatory agencies had an issue with a freaking powerful microwave emitter being tied to people's heads? Or a full mind-control system without any fail-safe exit mode?), and I'd love to know how a single person codes an entire MMO engine from scratch, or at least manages to slip massive changes past everyone else on the team. And just off the top of my head, I can think of 4 or 5 good methods that would probably neutralize the stupid death-trap headgear, but we're somehow supposed to believe that in two years, no one's been able to work that out. When there's such awful world-building at the show's core, I was yanked completely out of the experience long before I started to worry about what the characters were doing.
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ShatteredWorld
 Posts: 265 Location: ATL |
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Yessir, because opinion = fact 
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