Sword Art Online

[KrayZ33]

I've finally caught up and managed to suffer through this mess.
I even had to catch up on the last 2 seasons and rewatched the movie by accident again because I thought I didn't watch it yet.

The movie was the best thing about it all because it featured lots of Asuna hairstyles and casual clothing in the shortest amount of time.
And... that's basically what this franchise amounts too now. You get to see the most beautiful waifu of them all in different styles.
SAO-Saber(Alice) and Asuna are the only reason why I managed.

I didn't read the source material and I have no idea if it's actually done well in the LNs... but if it isn't, then I have no idea why this franchise gets so much attention.

In Alicization, we don't even get to see a single fight that was somewhat well animated, (even though this show always gets a high budget? At least that's what I thought) funnily enough, the "true" fights are featured in the openings and in the show itself it's almost comically poorly animated and boring.

I'm starting to wonder if I remember the original SAO (first half) wrong. It's not that I remember it to be as colourful as the latest Fate stuff, but I remembered it to be better.

I can't even begin and won't mention all the plotholes and follies I caught up on in detail but these last 2 episodes really took it to another level. I'm not sure if I should be sad or angry about this whole thing - I skipped most of it.
It feels like the setting itself is so much fun, but the whole thing smells so much like fanfiction and it oozes with 8th grade syndrome out of every corner of the story. It's impossible to like Kirito in this whole story... you just can't. The way the anime portrays him doesn't allow you too. I kept thinking "oh god, this is so bad..." - "yeah, of course dude" and was bitter throughout most of the time to the point were I felt ashamed that I kept watching and watching because "MAYBE the next episode will be different, after all *that* fight is coming up" or "MAYBE I get to see another Asuna-hairstyle next episode", just to suffer through another minute of another 2-3 frames per second fight.

So... did anyone read the novels? Maybe they explain and describes things better there? I won't doubt that it will still be all about Gary-Stu Kirito and his harem, but the last 3 cours introduced so many girls that I kept thinking "What's the point of her existence??". The novels must surely do a better job?

Alice is a character I can get behind from a storytelling point of view, the story is more about here than it is about anyone else since last season. I even thought that the conflict between Kirito's and Eugeo's version was interesting and managed to bring romance-drama to a harem show in which the lead already has his chosen one. Yet, the author decided it wasn't worth the trouble and created that ridicilous "lets exchange information about my Kirito" scenes.

But what about the long haired instructor in purple clothing? What the heck was that?
It just felt like the original source must have had like 2-3 volumes dedicated to that and the anime got through with it in 2 episodes by dragging out the unimportant parts in a poor attempt to create some worldbuilding (i.e. mentioning Eugeo's instructor etc.) before it got to the interesting part again where they became elite-students (4th + 5th seat or something)..that whole thing did mess up the power-level curve quite a bit too.

Gosh, I can already see that I accumilated so much bitterness and salt simply by looking at the wall of text I'm writing.. but still... I'm curious and keep thinking "THIS HAS TO GET BETTER, AT SOME POINT, PLEASE?"