A Slightly Biased Review of Sword Art Online

The short: Sword Art Online is an anime series and a multi-volume set of light novels that I found entirely enjoyable.  I lost a good deal of sleep in order to find out what would happen next to Kirito, the main character, and I was rooting for his success far before the end of the first novel.  From a gamer's point of view I enjoyed most parts of the series, however a few plot devices later in the series did aggravate me.  As the translated light novels can be found for free and the anime can be watched in entirety for free on crunchyroll (with ads, unfortunately) its hard to find a reason not to give Sword Art Online a shot.

So give it a shot.

Offical Sword Art Online Cover Art, Image Taken from Crunchyroll

The long:
I recently sat down to begin watching a new anime I heard about called Sword Art Online... and then I didn't stop.  Now the fact is it takes quite a bit for me to actually want to marathon an anime.  I'm not huge on them and it's only because of my recent subscription to crunchyroll (due mostly to SAO, or Sword Art Online) that I've begun actually seeking out anime to watch.  As with all good things, my discovery of Sword Art Online has a story attached.

Our story begins last summer when my friend Frank brought up SAO for the first time.  He told me of a book he was reading that was actually a translation of a light novel from Japan.  He only gave me a very general rundown of a plot, but even the vague description stuck with me.

He said something similar to "The book is set in the near future.  Full virtual reality had been invented and with its invention came the demand for a Virtual Reality Massively Multilayer Online, or VRMMO, game (think virtual reality World of Warcraft if you aren't a heavy gamer).  A VRMMO is announced and it's titled "Sword Art Online," however when the players log on in the first day they realize they can't log out.  The creator then tells the players that they will not be able to log out unless they defeat all 100 levels of the game.  He also says that if the players die in the game they will be killed in real life."

That's it.  That's the premise to SAO, but oh man is it a juicy one. Now while I remember that conversation, especially the "What would you do in that situation?" discussion that followed, I didn't really seek out this book.  I don't know why, we had just never brought up SAO again after that.

Skip half a year and we come to last month.  After hearing about SAO, the anime this time, from a few friend and other internet people, I decided I was interested.  My friend Frank sent me to a link where I could find the translated light novels (there's about 10 of em) and away I read!

I know this is a review of the anime, but I do have to say that the light novels are pretty cool too.  I usually rate books on how much sleep they make me lose and SAO made me miss a whole night of quality sleep over Christmas break, so I give it a "Gosh I'm tired."

Now the light novels are structured a bit weird, with the main story of the actual game Sword Art Online filling the pages of the first two light novels, side stories that occurred during the first two filling the third light novel and other things, which I'm not going mention for the sake of spoilers, filling the third and fourth light novels.

After killing the first two light novels in two relatively sleepless nights I decided I wanted to give the anime a go.  If the books kept me up reading than the anime kept me up watching and helped things tie together a lot more.  I personally enjoyed the anime more than the light novels, if anything because they put the side stories from volume 3 in the place they belong chronologically so the story seemed to flow better.  My friend complained that this caused the main story to feel rush but I disagree.  I don't think anyone who watches the anime without reading the light novels would even notice.

As I want to avoid giving away too many details I think I'll stop this 'review' here.  The first paragraph is really everything you need to know.  If anything I would say you should give episode 1 a chance while you can still watch it for free or crunchyroll.  Here's that link again ;)