Sword Art Online

[Ryllharu]

[HorribleSubs] Sword Art Online 12 [720p]




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Words cannot quite describe how horrible this series is, but I'm going to try. "Overhyped" doesn't quite excuse SAO anymore. It's not a matter of expectation versus "a sub-par adaptation". I can sincerely no longer fathom what led the novel readers to believe Sword Art Online is good. Don't get me wrong, I believe the author can write, Accel World proves that.

The problem is this: I can no longer sustain suspension of disbelief. I'm not sure that has ever happened to me before with anime, since I give it even more leeway than movies. Maybe at the often-terrible abrupt endings to series, but never in the middle. That is how terrible Sword Art Online is.


Let's take some highlights from this episode:

- Yui announces that she is a psychological sub-routine of the primary balancing system, intended to keep players sane while they enjoy SAO. How that is accomplished in the body of an 8 year old is beyond me.
- Oh, but the system that the creator has complete control over went rogue, and didn't allow it to run. While it is far more believable that he just blocked it from running for his own sadistic experiment, why the hell write a complicated psychoanalysis program if you ban it from running? Just make it equally sadistic for that end. You know, like Left4Dead's Director.

But it gets better:
- This psychological sub-routine is drawn to the blatantly disillusional, hero-complex exhibiting Kirito and his (now) hollow shell of a ultimate stereotypical heroine girlfriend/wife...and cites them as the two players in the game with..."normal parameters."

I had to pause the episode at that point and cackle maniacally. Kirito especially, but Asuna as well, are pretty obviously the single two most insane characters in the game. Kirito is happier here than in real life, and Asuna has announced the same. That alone isn't sane, and we've got plenty of other evidence that the two have substantial mental issues.

Then they try this:
- As Yui is being deleted, Asuna says, "I can't smile without you."

To the program she became a mother figure to literally 24 hours ago. What a lame-ass attempt at an emotional pull. It is utterly impossible to believe that she could have gotten that attached to Yui in less than a day, particularly if she is as "sane" as Yui claims the two of them are.

Then we round it all out with Kirito suddenly becoming an elite hacker on the game that he can barely even know how it functions (else they wouldn't actually be trapped here, would they?), much less be able to fire off such quick and bug-free code in milliseconds to not only convert Yui's program to an in-game item, also store her AI sub-routines within the data of his own NerveGear...the device that the creator continues to have complete access over.

But I could be wrong, Kirito clearly reverse engineered the NerveGear during beta testing and has complete access to its functions....right.




Without suspension of disbelief, it will be close to impossible to continue to enjoy this series. But I'm going to keep watching it so I can continue to point out how terrible it is.