Sword Art Online Season 1 Review

2015-01-03 TheDragon

Jedite and I have been rediscovering Anime (having been fans in its US hayday with Pokemon and Sailor Moon) and, after friends recommended it, we started our journey with Sword Art Online. Jedite was a bit more enthusiastic about watching this at the start than I was. Captain Little Dude seemed to enjoy it in short bursts of 1.5 episodes at a time.

As with most Anime, you can tell it is going to be good by the opening credits (SPOILER ALERT: Awesome!).

As with any Anime, I recommend watching the English SUBTITLED version over the dubbed. I’m a purist at heart, but since I don’t know Japanese I end up reading the subtitles. I’m working on it (Thank you Rosetta Stone!). This review is for Season 1 only.

Sword Art Online

I was prepared to be bored during this one, but I was happily surprised. It took me a couple of episodes to get into it, but once I did I was hooked! Some of the episodes drag on and I felt others were not needed. The more I watched the more I wanted to play the game. I know they made a game for the PSP and the Vita, but they are in Japanese. No English translation or subtitles for the games. I wish they would make one for the PS3 and have it in English. I would even accept the game subtitled and the menus translated. I just want to play it! I felt they ended the series too soon. The game had 100 floors to explore and tons of story ideas they could follow. I felt they sped through the game too fast. The ending left me upset as well. Again, I felt like they dropped the ball. However, the manga only had two comics of Sword Art Online before they moved on to the other storylines.

Alfheim

I didn’t care for this storyline. I felt it was boring and towards the end it got a real “rape” feel to it. The bad guy got really creepy and all but raped Asuna in the game and threatened to, after he was finished, rape her comatose body in the real. Creepy. I like how they opened the show for more seasons in the future by introducing The World Seed. It didn’t lose me and it made me excited to see Sword Art Online II.