Sword Art Online, it rode the hype train all the way to infamy and while it still has its fair share of supporters and fans, insulting the show and pointing out its flaws has practically become a meme. Many of the criticisms are very, very valid. I despize what came after episode 14 with the power of a thousand suns. ESPECIALLY the second “Fairy” arc.
But, while that first half had its problems (no denying that), I still really liked it. I liked the world, I liked the characters (yes even Kirito) and I adored the soundtrack, and visuals. The background art was gorgeous dammit. I loved the relationship between Kirito and Asuna (even if I wish the show had let its female characters hold their own more and developed everyone better, including her) and I loved Yui. Now I havn’t seen it since it came out, and if I rewatched it today, I’d probably find a fair few flaws that I missed orginally, but I think I’d still very much enjoy those first fourteen episodes, even if I would have loved to see the concept and characters done better, I still like a lot of what we got. It was not perfect, not by a long shot but, ignoring the abominations that came after, it wasn’t terrible either. There were things to like, and I very much latched onto them.
Now that said, I was never really into the fandom beyond enjoying the inital 14 eps, and checking out one or two fics.
So what brought this on? Well I’ve been watching a bunch of anime reviews lately, and while I generally agree with a lot of the critisisms (and can ignore those I don’t, bc hey to each their own, I’m not really that invested anyway) there was one I saw yesterday that really annoyed the hell out of me. I’ve heard the argument before (and silently disagreed), but this guy was just condescending enough in his diatrebe that I felt compelled to counter, dammit!
So the argument is/was that a certain group of players would have never made the mistakes they did, because gamers would know better.
But here’s the thing, who says that EVERYONE in SAO were gamers? The idea that not a single nongamer would be drawn to the possiblities nervegear and SAO offered is rediculous.
I’d find it more unrealistic if plenty of people with zero gaming experience, and people with no knack for stategy, with zero survival instincs, people who just wanted to try this neat new tech, DIDN’T give it a go!
SAO wasn’t a traditional pc/gamiling console game that only appeals to a specific crowd for the most part. SAO would be more like Pokemon GO, atracting EVERYONE and their mother.
People playing pokemon go: a group got lost in a system of caves while playing Go (despite there obviously not being any cell reception in there so why would you do that jeez?!), a guy who was wanted by the police ended up getting caught bc he wandered into a freaking police station while focused on playing go, and so on (yes shit like that really happened look it up). Not everyone is very bright or properly aware of their surroundings or capable of thinking very far ahead and imagining potential consequences.
So I’m sorry but that is one SAO critisism on which I call bullshit.
See that’s the thing about a lot of hate for the series, it’s not based on any actual reality. Ignoring that all gamers make silly mistakes that cause them to die in any game they play for a minute.
Even for regular gamers full dive is a whole new animal, but many of the characters are shown to have either never played a game before or be completely green with MMO games in general. Asuna had never played video games before only putting on her brothers nervegear on launch day due to a whim. The whole reason Kirito puts all the blame on himself and a select few beta testers is because most of the Beta testers were complete gaming newbies before joining the beta.
Also as usual it ignores the time period the series was written in. When MMORPGs were in their infancy to begin with, and and were a niche industry. So yeah a game like SAO using a new technology like Nervegear would have attracted a ton of non-gamers which it’s stated to do.
So yeah that criticism is pretty bogus.
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