Forum - View topicSword Art Online: What makes it SEEM so bad?
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18270 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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No, knowing that you haven't seen the Mother's Rosario arc (and thus weren't including it in your statement), clears things up entirely, as that is most definitely not about characters just dicking around in an MMO quest, even if it might look that way at first.
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Gatherum
 Posts: 773 Location: Aurora CO |
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Oh, wait. I honestly thought you were talking about a different show.
I just looked it up, but still can't remember: was it that arc involving their search for Excalibur or something? I'm going to level with you and say that if it is, I really don't remember enough about it to comment much, suffice it to say that I do remember not finding it terribly compelling, and it was most definitely the last arc of SAO I ever watched. I dropped the series afterwards. It wasn't an instantaneous thing done in disgust or spite or heavy disappointment, but one of those times wherein I just lost the motivation to continue. What I do remember is the Death Gun arc raising the stakes and the bar back up to pre-Aincrad levels, and Excalibur feeling very underwhelming as a result. |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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Yeah, the whole Excalibur thing was kinda "meh" but I got some laughs out of it from Kirito's reactions to Tonkii and Klein's spoiler["I
'm gonna hit on NPCs....OH NO, SHE TURNED INTO A DUDE. WRYYYYY. Oh well, I'll hit on another NPC"] 
(just get with Liz, Klein.) |
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Top Gun
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Those things tend to bug the hell out of me in live-action as well, so the medium doesn't really matter to me. Plus I honestly don't watch much (or really any) live-action TV in the first place, so clearly I'm missing a bunch of it going on. 
spoiler[I honestly forgot about the twins part, and about the exact four-month timeline, but the latter makes the whole affair even more egregious in my mind. If they caught the virus that quickly, then in what is essentially our present day, there's no reason that they couldn't have gotten everyone on the proper cocktail of retrovirals immediately and essentially indefinitely staved off progression to AIDS. I mean yes, HIV is a super-mutating bastard and there are always resistant strains and such, but for the whole family to wind up in that situation? That's really asking me to believe too much.]
I guess my problem was that, by that time in the series, I had lost any glimpse of investment in any of its characters, and being asked to wrap my brain around this ridiculously-implausible setup was beyond the last straw. I frankly didn't give a damn about how she and Asuna interacted. (To be honest, the only reason at all I was still watching was because it was on Toonami, and I've watched every anime airing on [as] for the better part of a decade.)
I'm sure I could dig through MAL and think about a number of plot points that have worked for me, but fortunately one comes immediately to mind: Cross Game. spoiler[Wakaba's death at the end of the very first episode is one of the most tragic things I've seen portrayed in any fictional medium. It's terrible, it's arbitrary, it's meaningless...and yet it works so goddamn well, because equally terrible, arbitrary, meaningless deaths happen every single day, and we've all experienced them at some point. Most importantly of all, it wasn't overwrought in the least: in fact one of the most remarkable things about that series is how matter-of-factly everyone's reactions to it were treated. When I hold that up to Yuuki's story in SAO, the latter isn't within the same ZIP code.]
I suppose you could view it in that light, but coupled with his benign treatment at the end of the first arc, and his outright active positive interference at the end of the second, it felt to me like the series was attempting to argue, "See, he wasn't really that bad!" And yeah, Mussolini made the trains run on time, but still.
I think what I'd consider the most damning example is that I flat-out can't think of any times that it WAS used memorably. In fact, if I hadn't known beforehand that Kaijura was responsible for the soundtrack, I never would have found it remarkable on my own, because there weren't any real instances which made me stop and say, "Ooh, this is a kickass track here!" Maybe the only time I can think of where I was honestly impressed by music usage was in the Calibur arc, but given that it was inconsequential filler I wasn't exactly too impressed. In contrast, though, Kaijura's work from .hack//SIGN still gives me chills.
I guess that's fair. Apparently I have more tolerance for angsty whiny teens than I do for teens who are inexplicably good at everything and have five girls falling over them for no particular reason. 
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18270 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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No, Mother's Rosario is the last arc of SAO II - episodes 18-24, to be precise. It's the arc where Asuna co-starred with new character Yuuki and Kirito was mostly just a minor supporting character.
Heartily seconded! I don't ship much, but these are probably the two anime characters who aren't portrayed as a potential couple whom I most want to see be a couple. EDIT: Added in the response below.
If you're giving equal treatment across the board on that then fair enough.
Sure, great choice, and if I had to pick between the two I'd choose CG's scene without a second thought. (But then, you're also talking about an episode that I picked as the single best series first episode that I've ever seen.) Still think you're underselling the merits of the Asuna/Yuuki content because you got hung up on the premise, though.
Nothing in those scenes ever redeemed or, to my mind, even softened him; to put it another way, just because he wasn't an over-the-top raving freak (like Sugou) doesn't mean that he wasn't still a monster. Besides, my impression of the stuff at the end of Fairy Dance was more that Kayaba (or his electronic ghost or whatever) helped Kirito because he'd taken a liking to Kirito and regarded VRMMOs as a baby that he wanted to see live - and who better to be the godfather for that? Definitely nothing less than selfish motives there, even if something better did come of it. |
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Chiibi
Posts: 4829 |
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WOW SERIOUSLY!? High-five me, bro!!! I thought I was the only one. Lmao. But yeah, they could be very cute together. Something about it makes sense! Time to see if there's any art on pixv....don't let me down, pixv.
Kirito's not "inexplicably" good at "everything". *He is skilled at video games and technical things because he's been playing with computers and the like since he was five. *He knows some swordplay because he took kendou. Suguha still knocked him on his ass though IRL. *He can drive a motorcycle in GGO because he drives one IRL. I don't think he's particularly skilled at anything else? And the reasons five girls have for liking him are pretty understandable. I've said it before, but I would also fall for him in their situations. I'm a sucker for good-looking guys who help me with things. But let's take a look at each girl's crush: Asuna: because he protected her while she slept for several hours so she wouldn't get PKed. He also (without meaning to) taught her a whole new perspective on what it means to "live". He understands her and he provides a place for her. She didn't feel like she belonged anywhere until she met him. Silica: he saved her, she finds him comforting and feels secure with him, because he reminds her of her father whom she misses a lot. He helped her revive her pet Pina and she loves Pina deeply. So yeah, he's her hero. Lizbeth: could not honestly stand him at first....but then he saves her life and she learns he's a very caring person. Sinon: Had she not met Kirito, she would not have discovered her inner strength. Notice that she didn't seem to have feelings for him until AFTER they defeated Death Gun. Suguha: ..................yeah, she's the only one who doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It felt like "we need love triangle drama so let's make her have a crush on Kirito even though he chose a waifu". |
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Gatherum
Posts: 773 Location: Aurora CO |
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Ahh. That would explain it. I never got that far. Perhaps I ought to. Someday.
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Vaisaga
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While I think Klein might be a bit too old for her, I'm not actually against the idea.
She did love him as a brother initially, but then that brother element got removed (first by him shutting her out, and then by learning they weren't really siblings), leaving the love behind. |
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Cam0
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Yes! Liz is possibly my favourite female character in Sword Art Online and I always felt bad for Klein not having a girlfriend. Now I would agree with those who think that Asuna deteriorated over the course of the series however for very different reasons. I thought Asuna at the beginning was interesting. Mysterious girl who kicks ass and then a tsunderish iron lady who got into arguments with Kirito. After that she became this overly kind perfect girlfriend character. She lost most of that fiery personality she used to have. And that just made her.. dull in my opinion. As for Mother's Rosario (and everything that came after Gun Gale), I found it to be inferior to the action we used to have. I never cared for Yuuki despite the show's efforts and as I said before I found Asuna to be kind of uninteresting. So what came after GGO lacked a lot of the things I liked about Sword Art Online. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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Isn't Aincrad the first Sword Art Online story? |
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Chiibi
Posts: 4829 |
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I have noticed that Asuna's "fire" did die down quite a bit....but have you noticed how protective she is of her boyfriend? That part is kind of adorable. She's like Mama bear. Like when she confronted the man who sent Kirito into GGO; she just stomps over to him like "YOU WILL TELL ME WHERE HE IS AND WHAT IS GOING ON, RIGHT NOW." He even looked a little afraid of her.
So she hasn't lost all of her fire. You can see a spark in that moment.
Yeah, I mean it IS Japan so.... Liz is should be past 16 now so they could hypothetically get married. LOL
I just re-read Liz's story scene with being alone with Kirito in the dragon nest. It's honest to God, really touching.
Maybe I'm too much of a softie...but I got emotional just from reading this paragraph. 
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18270 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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According to one SAO Wiki I checked out (and it even has her measurements, so I'm sure it came from some official fan supplement), Lisbeth/Rika is 18 at the time of the Calibur arc. Klein is 26 at that point, so no problem there. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1781 Location: South America |
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Finished it today. It has good parts but overall starts to drag and by the second part, after Kirito gets out of the SAO, it gets really dull and bad, I began to stop caring about everything and I had to force myself to end it (because I am a completist).
Overall, it is certainly one of the weakest major hits in the medium. It features some good stuff in its first 14 episodes though. The writing is a bit that simplistic, in the beginning though it felt poetic, but by the end it felt plain and boring. Arid and lifeless (like some pretentious Iranian film), its drama felt very artificial by the end. Although up go episode 14 it was very fine series, but the other 10 episodes made it worse than Attack on Titan and Haruhi, the worst hit animes IMO. |
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Lobokendo
 Posts: 135 Location: Somewhere |
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After going over everything that has been discussed so far, I think that CrowLia had the best point I've heard for SAO. The attempted rape scenes with Asuna were definitely far too towards the fanservice side and including other such times like with Silica being grabbed by the plant, I think I would agree with it being kind of disgusting. I'm not saying that I myself felt that way as I watched those scenes, but in hindsight those were definitely questionable ways of depicting such serious situations.
Any other mentions of problems with SAO have mostly been covered by other kind responses so I won't go into those. I believe the reason why I may have overlooked such scenes would be in how I first experienced SAO, which was almost entirely the novels. I watched the first few episodes and was hooked so I read all of the novels before episode 5 of the first season was out. This leads me to believe that I was biased towards those later scenes with Sugou because I hadn't seen them as so terrible as I read the novels. Overall though this has been very informative. Hope to continue reading people's opinions here because I think everyone's input on this is great! |
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Chiibi
Posts: 4829 |
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I'm surprised "Silica and the plant" scene gets so much hate. In the novel, it just grabs her and turns her upside down until she slices it in half. Like, it's really no big deal. If the anime added more to that, that's A-1's fault...
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