Sword Art Online... I mean, c'mon. Really?

[Scars Unseen]

Allow me to introduce you to something called Sturgeon's Law. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law] Anime isn't any more bad than anything else is when looked at as a whole.

...That doesn't really change anything though? A thing doesn't stop being bad just because other things are equally bad. And, yes, I realize I'm lumping Anime together because that's the thing I'm trying to criticize. Criticisms leveled at the cliches and flaws of a form of media as a whole are perfectly valid.

Except they aren't. Not in the way you are presenting them. You may as well try to say that network television is bad by pointing out how formulaic 80s sitcoms are. Your formula only works with battle shounens, which aren't even close to being the only type of anime out there, much less enough for your post to be representative of. Granted, other genres and demographic-foci can sometimes have their own formulas, but again, trying to blanket criticize an entire form of media is at best pointless and at worst a lazy fabrication.

Based on the type of criticism you are trying to use, here are other things that are, as you put it, "kind of bad."

movies
television
books
paintings
poetry
music
etc

You can take any medium, look at a subsection of it, and find commonly used formulae that can be criticized. That doesn't make that criticism valid for the medium as a whole. And even if you did have a valid criticism for a medium in general, it would be a pointless one, as any criticism that would qualify would be so weak as to be the very kind of criticism that Sturgeon's Law derides.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Son, you may wish to sit down for the massive bombshell imma bout to drop on you...

People. Can. Like. Different. Things. Than. You.

Holy shit balls I almost blew my own mind with that amazing logic. It's almost like people can like different things than you, with zero need to defend why they like it. This thread has no point, other than you to say "I think SAO is bad and everyone should know about it. Cause it's not like I'm the thousandth person on the internet to do so."

To be fair, debates on quality of shows is a healthy thing to encourage critical thought of anime

then again, I'm coming from the perspective of someone who dislikes SAO for a few reasons

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

]Eh, I just thought it was dumb fun.

The problems I hear people bring up over and over have never personally bothered me. In fact I mostly laugh with and embrace them.

I suppose with the right mindset, the issues make it more mockable than frustrating but I go into shows with full investment and with no sense of ironic enjoyment. If a show has faults, I will skewer the show for it.

 

[NiPah]

]Eh, I just thought it was dumb fun.

The problems I hear people bring up over and over have never personally bothered me. In fact I mostly laugh with and embrace them.

I suppose with the right mindset, the issues make it more mockable than frustrating but I go into shows with full investment and with no sense of ironic enjoyment. If a show has faults, I will skewer the show for it.

Damn dude, you make even the act of enjoying it seem painful. I'm interested though, what was a show you enjoy?

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

]Eh, I just thought it was dumb fun.

The problems I hear people bring up over and over have never personally bothered me. In fact I mostly laugh with and embrace them.

I suppose with the right mindset, the issues make it more mockable than frustrating but I go into shows with full investment and with no sense of ironic enjoyment. If a show has faults, I will skewer the show for it.

Damn dude, you make even the act of enjoying it seem painful. I'm interested though, what was a show you enjoy?

Fate/Zero, Psycho Pass, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Gundam Unicorn,

I don't see how being critical would make me less likely to enjoy stuff? enjoyment and critical thought aren't mutually exclusive

 

[Foolery]

The series began with an original idea.

What? You mean like Dot-Hack?

I rather like the show, actually. Not simply because of my love of Dot-Hack, but because it's entertaining in its own right. Your complaints should be directed at anime culture overall. You cannot blame any specific people, unless you'd like to attack all of Japan. And good luck with that. They've got a giant robot.

Hey, there's a game/anime series I kinda forgot about. That was actually a fun series. Not big on the show, but the games were alright. Maybe one too many releases, but they were episodic. Pretty neat stuff. MMORPG without the actually being online or multiplayer.

Anywho, Sword Art. It's meh. Some would call it garbage and they're not completely wrong. It has some redeeming qualities, but not really worth the watch, but hey, that's just my opinion. There's far better anime to be watching. Go watch Gangsta. or Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon, Mushi-shi, Jormungand, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.

 

[Falsename]

Son, you may wish to sit down for the massive bombshell imma bout to drop on you...

People. Can. Like. Different. Things. Than. You.

Holy shit balls I almost blew my own mind with that amazing logic. It's almost like people can like different things than you, with zero need to defend why they like it. This thread has no point, other than you to say "I think SAO is bad and everyone should know about it. Cause it's not like I'm the thousandth person on the internet to do so."

That doesn't make his criticism invalid. And he never said people couldn't like it. He simply stated the issues with the show. There's nothing wrong with valid criticism.

Also, he can't be that much younger then you that you get to call him "son." : P

Anyway, this is old news. SAO is bad. Most shonen/harem are bad. Do yourself a favor and skip them.

Except here's the thing, we've all heard pretty much this exact criticism again and again oh, and again. Each time it feels like the person saying is thinking they just dropped a bombshell of ungodly proportions on us. No, we know. We still like it with all its faults, most of which are valid. We just get sick of hearing it all constantly.

Soo, umm... thanks I guess, for thinking I'm godly. But I think you're seeing something that's not there.

I wasn't standing on a mountain proclaiming god's words in his dislike of an anime. I'm just voicing my opinion. Never said that anyone else should share it or that you're worse off for liking SAO.

So yeah, none of that was happening. I'd tell you to relax but we all know on the internet that has the exact opposite reaction.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

]Eh, I just thought it was dumb fun.

The problems I hear people bring up over and over have never personally bothered me. In fact I mostly laugh with and embrace them.

I suppose with the right mindset, the issues make it more mockable than frustrating but I go into shows with full investment and with no sense of ironic enjoyment. If a show has faults, I will skewer the show for it.

I don't know, I think there was enough stuff I genuinely liked in there that gave it a pass, at least for me. I think the acting, music, and visuals helped sell some of the more cliched scenes for me, and I like the show's atmosphere. The battles are cool, and I did like some of the characters. And in terms of OP main characters, I like Kirito better than, say, Inaho from Aldnoah.Zero, and could kinda relate to him in the sense that I like to play RPG games like Skyrim the same way: using cheats and exploits to be as OP as possible.

And like I said, everyone's problems with the show weren't my problems. I had problems with the pacing in the first half, as some parts felt too rushed and it skipped around too much. I would've liked to see more of them in Aincrad. It would've been better if the first half was extended into a full 25 episodes, and the second half was just a short 10 episode season. Some of the contrivances did get to me, but for the most part I just shrugged them off simply because I was having fun. And despite its problems, I did enjoy the second half, and I actually really, really liked the second season.

Also, I've seen far, far, FAR worse. When you've sat through things like School City Valanoir, SAO is the LEAST of your worries.

 

[Worgen]

Its a pretty bad anime and Digibro does a fantastic tear down of it.

 

[lucky_sharm]

Welcome to anime. No subtlety allowed, please check your willing suspension of disbelief at the door.

That's pretty unfair to anime, there's tons and tons of it out there that exist as superior properties compared to SAO.

But I guess that doesn't really say much considering SAO is basically the nadir of entertainment. The most that can be said about SAO is that it looks pretty and flashy, but look at it from any other angle and you'll see how painfully 2 dimensional it is.

I actually like a lot of anime series, but as a whole it tends to be formulaic, badly written and incredibly poorly paced.

Falsename's OP summed up one of my major complaints with anime: The badly written and repetitive dialogue (or, more often, internal monologue) where the characters go on and fucking on about shit that was painfully obvious to begin with. And it's all just the same fucking thing anyway. In fact, here. Let me show you how easy it is to write a climactic anime fight.

1. Put the protagonist in a room with an antagonist. The antagonist is too strong for the protagonist to beat ohhh noooo!

2. Show at least ten minutes of flashbacks explaining the antagonist's backstory and motivations, because you literally just pulled this character out of your ass and haven't had time to develop him/her but have to at least pretend you want the audience to relate to him/her.

3. Have the protagonist monologue internally about his own motivations that you've already established a hundred times. You can do this either while the protagonist and antagonist glare at each other, or while you're recycling a three frame loop of them trying to hit each other. If you're feeling REALLY ballsy, play the monologue over actual new footage of the fight!

4. Show at least 50 fucking reaction shots of the side characters whenever the protagonist or antagonist do a thing.

5. Have the protagonist and antagonist run at each other screaming and hit each other at the same time, and then do the thing where they're standing facing away from each other for a couple of minutes and then one of them falls. Then more reaction shots.

6. The protagonist wins because of the power of his/her determination to do the thing! Hooray!

There. You now know the formula behind every anime fight. Variables include the protagonist losing but then coming back stronger, the antagonist joining the protagonist's side, and the protagonist being sad the antognist died/lost because of whatever backstory you pulled out of your ass.

The moral of the story is, anime is kinda bad.

But again, there's a lot of anime that isn't anything like what you described above. If you'd like I can list them off for you.

 

[VanQ]

Its a pretty bad anime and Digibro does a fantastic tear down of it.

I watched that. He gets his facts wrong less than 5 mins into the first episode. And while he admits to it later, he continues to get his facts wrong constantly. Which is sad, because a lot of what he says about the show I do agree on, especially when he says that SAO is a love story set in a game, not an anime based on a game. I unfortunately can't recommend people watch them for the good stuff, because the misinformation and his determination to hate it just hit the wrong buttons for me.

 

[Worgen]

Its a pretty bad anime and Digibro does a fantastic tear down of it.

I watched that. He gets his facts wrong less than 5 mins into the first episode. And while he admits to it later, he continues to get his facts wrong constantly. Which is sad, because a lot of what he says about the show I do agree on, especially when he says that SAO is a love story set in a game, not an anime based on a game. I unfortunately can't recommend people watch them for the good stuff, because the misinformation and his determination to hate it just hit the wrong buttons for me.

He actually addresses that at the start of his sword art online 2 tear down, because every single fanboy of the series jumped on those minor issues.


I don't think its quite the 'the worst thing evar' he seems to but it is a pretty bad wish fulfillment anime that makes no damn sense and does nothing interesting with the whole being stuck in a game world premise. If you want a stuck in a game world anime that is actually quite good, but not as flashy as sword art, then look up Log Horizon.

Here is a review of it by glass reflections

 

[sageoftruth]

Its a pretty bad anime and Digibro does a fantastic tear down of it.

Jesus! A whole hour!? Good thing it's a slow day today. I don't know if I should watch it, as something of that length must have spoilers. Then again, while I haven't seen it yet, I'm not sure if I ever will.

 

[Worgen]

Its a pretty bad anime and Digibro does a fantastic tear down of it.

Jesus! A whole hour!? Good thing it's a slow day today. I don't know if I should watch it, as something of that length must have spoilers. Then again, while I haven't seen it yet, I'm not sure if I ever will.

It does have spoilers, but considering the type of show it is, the plot is pretty obvious. Anyway, if you really don't want to know anything about it then don't watch, but its a pretty bad show about the only guy in a game that knows how to play game.

 

[sageoftruth]

Its a pretty bad anime and Digibro does a fantastic tear down of it.

Jesus! A whole hour!? Good thing it's a slow day today. I don't know if I should watch it, as something of that length must have spoilers. Then again, while I haven't seen it yet, I'm not sure if I ever will.

It does have spoilers, but considering the type of show it is, the plot is pretty obvious. Anyway, if you really don't want to know anything about it then don't watch, but its a pretty bad show about the only guy in a game that knows how to play game.

Already watching it. I do find it amusing how all the people who got trapped in the game were the ones who preordered it or jumped right in and played it at launch. It's like the overall premise is one big cautionary tale against preordering.

Also, while I haven't seen the actual show, I did see the abridged series. I'm surprised by how on-the-nose that abridged series was. It looks like lots of the humor wasn't just humor for humor's sake but instead, deliberate jabs at the show's flaws.

 

[Worgen]

Its a pretty bad anime and Digibro does a fantastic tear down of it.

Jesus! A whole hour!? Good thing it's a slow day today. I don't know if I should watch it, as something of that length must have spoilers. Then again, while I haven't seen it yet, I'm not sure if I ever will.

It does have spoilers, but considering the type of show it is, the plot is pretty obvious. Anyway, if you really don't want to know anything about it then don't watch, but its a pretty bad show about the only guy in a game that knows how to play game.

Already watching it. I do find it amusing how all the people who got trapped in the game were the ones who preordered it or jumped right in and played it at launch. It's like the overall premise is one big cautionary tale against preordering.

Also, while I haven't seen the actual show, I did see the abridged series. I'm surprised by how on-the-nose that abridged series was. It looks like lots of the humor wasn't just humor for humor's sake but instead, deliberate jabs at the show's flaws.

That's one of the reasons I use any sao thread as a means to advertise Log Horizon, its a much better "stuck in an mmo" show, people actually know how to play the game and its not some new comer. It's a game that's been around for years and years, just updated over and over to add new content and graphics, like what wow did. The main character in Log Horizon isn't even a dps class, hes a support, he helps people get kills but doesn't get them himself. His big skill is being a great tactician, he would be the kind of guild member who would be the one to figure out how to kill a boss then help position the people to do it. In sao, all the other plays are really dumb and don't know how the game works despite the fact that everyone there had to have pre-ordered it.

 

[happyninja42]

snip
TL;DR?
Sword Art Online is essentially the male gamer's version of Fifty Shades of Grey for Mums or Twilight for teenagers.

So then don't watch it anymore? You can let it go and it won't bother you any longer.

 

[Nazulu]

snip
TL;DR?
Sword Art Online is essentially the male gamer's version of Fifty Shades of Grey for Mums or Twilight for teenagers.

So then don't watch it anymore? You can let it go and it won't bother you any longer.

Yeah of course he can, because that's the reason that shuts down all criticism, right?

 

[happyninja42]

snip
TL;DR?
Sword Art Online is essentially the male gamer's version of Fifty Shades of Grey for Mums or Twilight for teenagers.

So then don't watch it anymore? You can let it go and it won't bother you any longer.

Yeah of course he can, because that's the reason that shuts down all criticism, right?

Yes you are right. It's the 100% sure way to end all criticism. Oh, I'm sorry, I was being sarcastic back at you.

My point is that if he finds the show so terrible, why keep watching it? He says the writing is horrible and cliche, the plot is pathetic, and the characters 1 dimensional. So why keep watching it then? Just stop, and he won't be so pissed anymore.

 

[Nazulu]

snip
TL;DR?
Sword Art Online is essentially the male gamer's version of Fifty Shades of Grey for Mums or Twilight for teenagers.

So then don't watch it anymore? You can let it go and it won't bother you any longer.

Yeah of course he can, because that's the reason that shuts down all criticism, right?

Yes you are right. It's the 100% sure way to end all criticism. Oh, I'm sorry, I was being sarcastic back at you.

My point is that if he finds the show so terrible, why keep watching it? He says the writing is horrible and cliche, the plot is pathetic, and the characters 1 dimensional. So why keep watching it then? Just stop, and he won't be so pissed anymore.

You were being sarcastic?

Anyway, to give a full critique you need to see most of whatever you're critiquing.