When I first started telling my friends I was interested in anime, I always heard nothing but good things about Sword Art Online. (SAO) After giving in, I was very disappointed. I remember hating it for it's inaccuracy and quitting halfway through the first season. After hearing someone I follow give crap to an anime they hated, I thought I'd try rewatching SAO and seeing why I hated it...

Two minutes in and I remember why.

The first opening scene tells that "in 2022, humanity has finally created a complete virtual environment." SAO first aired in 2012, so this was meant to be ten years from that date. Having people believe that a huge environment like this could be real in 10 years was very believable as the Oculus Rift had started it's crowdfunding around that same time. This is a very good start, as the environment looks beautiful and exciting, and I quickly wanted to learn more.

Now here is where I begin to sense trouble. The next scene involves our main character (Who is already a paper cut-out of, like, any boy character in an anime, same face and hair and all that) who is listening to a stream while reading a magazine about SAO. It is mentioned that the first release only gave out 10,000 beta keys. Now, this seems reasonable to my experience with actual beta key giveaways. For this review, I will be comparing SAO to Pirate101, a game I've had a lot of time to experience what a Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) does in beta. 10,000 beta keys seems reasonable. (By the way, unless you're blind, SAO is an MMO)

"The beta keys sold out online in seconds" wait, what? They sold the first batch of beta keys? Why? I know this shouldn't be a big deal, but why not give them to loyal fans of the company? Pirate101 beta keys were mostly given to random fans of Wizard101 and fans of the parent company of Kingsisle. This was to make sure these people be loyal, determined, and dedicated to bug testing the heck out of the game as that is essentially the point of a beta test, to find bugs that the creators may have missed and to give player feedback or critique. The keys were also handed out to big MMO review companies and fan sites so they could give their input of the future of the game and company behind it. They didn't sell them. (My brother would also like to make the point of selling 10,000 beta keys in seconds would have to have a really cheap cost for such a hyped game)

"Hardcore fans bought all the store copies" Since when were beta keys for an MMO sold...at stores? How do you get a hard copy of an MMO, especially at this point in the future? There's no point in selling hard copies of MMOs, especially selling beta keys. How many places sold these beta keys anyways? There's thousands upon thousands of game stores that sell games. Each store would have to hardly sell one single key to run out of keys around the globe. There's more stores than keys!

The next part of the scene, we see our main character put on the VR headset and jump into the game. (I'd like to point out that the helmet has a battery life even though it's plugged in. Where would they take this thing anyways?) This is the part that gripes me the most, at least to this point. As we see our character jump into the game, we see him get an option to use his character he used in the beta of the game. His character from beta! With any huge MMO, companies are almost required to do a mass character wipe when making the jump from beta to live! A character wipe means to erase everyone's data in the game to essentially start fresh. It's a thing MMO companies hate to do, but they must if they want to rid their final game of any sort of bug or exploits that were discovered, and to start everyone on the same clean slate. This is often why beta players are given their own time at launch to get ahead. Pirate101 gave every beta player a full week to get ahead of the impending crowd. It was essentially a 'thank you' to the beta testers for testing their game and providing feedback. A game as large as what SAO is meant to be, it's bound to have character wipes. The fact that it doesn't would definitely and automatically turn me away from this game as I would suspect the company to be really lazy to not do a mass character wipe. Shame on you Kayaba Akihiko, don't make games.

With the title card by, we get a scene of our character running through the town, "like he's been here before." With a quick stop and a fast agreement, our character decides to help Klein to learn the basics. Which is really not smart of Klein. Any good MMO would definitely have a tutorial, or at least explain "the basics." How would this 'Klein' guy not know the basics? I have to assume he was either to ignorant and skipped the tutorials, or SAO is just lacking an essential part of any game, a tutorial. Also, why would our character decide to help him anyways. In real life I could see this being helpful, but when I play with my own high level characters in an area of low level people, I constantly get swarmed by younglings who want me to mentor them without me getting anything in return. Call me selfish, but I don't want to help everybody! I want to play the game for myself.

Also, our character's name is Kirito. Eh, it's anime.

So what I'm getting from this essential 'viewer tutorial' scene is that you must make the "motion input" to make attacks, and the game will automatically align them for you if you are probably close. When you feel the skill begin to charge, you can unleash a "sword skill" which is the most unoriginal name for an MMO. This feels really easily comparative to World of Warcraft. (WoW) You do basic attacks and wait for the skill to charge to use. It's the easiest MMO gameplay to use, and thus Wow is often copied through a poorer version of their engaging gameplay. Because of this, I would excuse SAO for being another poor WoW clone. Another to throw on the pile.

I am glad they mention SAO is a game without magic though. Magic is so often use to excuse things the creators of MMOs want to have in their game without giving an explanation because it would be too difficult. I'm curious as to how truthful SAO is though.

Next scene, Kirito and Klein are having a heart to heart on a waterfall about the game and such, and Klein explains that he was one of the first lucky enough to get one of the 10,000 copies. But he's not a beta tester apparently. Either this show is lying to me, or I'm just confused, which I shouldn't be when watching a show. Klein then states how Kirito is one of the lucky 1,000 to get a beta key. For a beta test, 1,000 players is really small. I guess I can let it slide since this show has already presented unmatchable crap to me. Kirito states he made it to floor 8 in only a couple of months. Seems reasonable if he wasn't an active player, as I will assume. But this time it will only take him a single month. Kirito also explains in this story dump that SAO was all he thought about day and night. This is extremely relatable to me as Pirate101 was all I could think of throughout the entire beta test.

I really adore the end of this scene. Klein talks about how he must take a break to go eat, and talks about how Kirito should friend his friends he's meeting from another game so they can hang out. I love this, as this is the exact behavior I always find when I play MMOs. It's the most accurate thing in this show I've seen so far, but I have a feeling this'll probably be it. And then there is no button to log out. Dun dun duuuuun...

With a bit of a "This sucks" and all that, they finally discover that SAO is a really bad game if they can't log out of it. No emergency logout, can't access the game creators, nothing. Danger. Everyone is transported to some town square to hear an announcement and Kirito says "a forced teleport" like it's something that is normal in an MMO. It isn't by the way.

A blood creature rains from the broken sky and presents himself as Kayaba Akihiko, the creator of the game. This is where the big arc is presented. There is no logout button as the only way to log out is to beat the game. Removing the helmet from the outside will also kill the player. I guess the people on the outside had a warning though, so everything should be all cool 'cept for the few who ignored it. 213 players dead, both in real life, and in the fake/semireal world of Aincrad. Along with this danger, each character plays a sort of 'Nuzlocke' type of deal where once they die, they die. The end. At this point we also learn that there are 100 floors in this game, so Kirito only completed 2/25 of the game in his beta test. We also learn that "the beta testers never made it near that height"

What!? Are you crazy!? Why not!? What kind of a beta test wouldn't let players test the later levels of the game!? Those are generally where the most bugs show up! Who ever thought this game would have been good!? I would never play a game where none of the later levels of an MMO were tested. Why would I waste my time going into unexplored territory like that? Beta testing tests all parts of a game, not just a small portion. For whatever reason, this company somehow got enough hype to collect all these exciting players and post in livestreams and magazines but couldn't even beta test the late levels. Instant turn off for me. (Also a joke to people not being who they say they are over the internet. -_- It can apparently register your exact voice too, so that's a trans nightmare for a trans human like me)

We learn the evil guy's motivation was to...create a world to intervene with? What? What does that mean? And why? That's the saddest excuse for motivation I've ever seen. I could literally write a book and control that universe much better than this. It'd be much safer too. Kayaba then ends with "This is the end of the tutorial for the official Sword Art Online launch," so I guess that was the tutorial? What a crap tutorial. 0/10.

Kirito also admired Kayaba for some reason. Terrible business strategies would make me tell Kirito he's majorly wrong. I guess the resources are somehow limited, so it seems that all the enemies are also playing their own game of a Nuzlocke. Another poor design choice, especially for Kayaba's motivation. There's also the whole thing with Klein being set up from the beginning of the episode to be someone to represent Kirito's character as Kirito wants to travel with as few people as possible to be as efficient as possible. Before they leave each other though, Klein must tell Kirito how he is cute. I may actually approve of this. Gay relationships all the way! Kirito returns a compliment and runs.

After the credits with , at least what I think, a pretty good song, we learn that 2000 players die and the first floor has yet to be cleared. Kind of interesting seeming as Kirito had wished to reach floor 8 in a month, but I guess I can assume he is being more cautious. Limited supply and an immediate one-time death on the line would definitely slow players down I guess.

So after watching the first episode, I remember why I really hated this show. It was inaccurate. All the facts were wrong and unreal, and it was extremely lazy of A1 studio to pump this garbage out. Yes, A1, the critical company who always pumps trash must have gotten lucky with pumping out this glittery trashbag that people seem to love. I am a huge fan of MMOs and it is almost insulting what this show is teaching viewers about MMOs. I get that it's a show, but there should at least be a tiny bit more of realistic facts rather than saying it was the future. People like this show because they wish they could. They wish they could be in a game just like this. They wish they could fight alongside cute anime girls in too-tiny skirts. They wish they could be the hero they think they could be by somehow being one of the survivors to experience this insanely weird world. But it's bad. If this game was real, it would be panned before it even began it's beta key distribution. There's always going to be those poor suckers who buy those keys though. I don't understand why Kayaba can't be hunted down anyways. Just take him away and find a hacker to fix SAO. Unless this is explained in later episodes, I don't see why they can't do this.

In conclusion, this show is lazy. Minimum research has been done to figure out what an MMO actually is, and A1 is often know for simply pandering to what the audience wants to see. "I want to see videogames, but in a real life scenario! But there's got to be danger, so kill me if I die! I won't die though, because I'm the best!" It's a trash show and I would never ever recommend this show to anyone I didn't hate.

But I'm going to watch more. Because I hate myself. And I want to learn how to actually make a good show. This one isn't it, but I'll learn from mistakes.

Wish me luck, and tell me what you think of the show. For my sake, please try to keep spoilers to a minimum and only use facts presented in the first episode. I want to watch this in the position of a real viewer. So far though, I say 2.5/10.