Fair enough, i retract my previous statement.
At this point, i'm not sure how much better it's going to get. We are getting back to the main storyline because they've pretty much ran out of side-story. It's too little too late because if most of the watcher of the anime feels the same way you do about Kirito then the next few episodes might not have any impact at all. Best case scenario is they'll redeem Kirito's character.I will admit I am still watching it to figure out why it is so popular. I'm being patient, but it is wearing very thin. Sword Art has been only barely better than The Sacred Blacksmith as mentioned above, and the uniform insistence that it gets better is the only thing keeping me watching.