Strongly recommended. Watch at least up to episode 2 to make an opinion.

Written by kurosakiSIB22 on July 28, 2012 at 11:47 AM

Sword Art Online is the first anime to genuinely interest me in a long time. I'm not good at writing reviews, but I wanted to share this feeling anyway.

I think the main reason why the story seems so good is because many people play an MMORPG, and has found themselves wishing every once in a while that the virtual life would be the one they were living (i.e. the life being so adventurous, the goals being so simple and clear, the wears being so awesome, the feel of weapons in your hands, upgrades, etc...). SOA offers a story where the characters think the same as you, but with the difference that the virtual life does become their real life. A lot of us perhaps would think this as a blessing, contrarily to the characters who think this a curse. Well anyway, people recognize themselves in it and will like it although the concept has been applied before in a form or another (i.e. Greed Island arcs of Hunter X Hunter, and I understand from some reviews that Hack series too have the same concept, etc...).

The only sad thing about the show is that, after the excitement of the second episode which made me a confirmed fan, we suddenly discover in the third episode that the protagonist advanced pretty far towards his goal. So it leaves the feeling that this will be a short show of about 12 episodes, maybe 24 if we're lucky but I wouldn't count on it. And here I was hoping that with such a concept of 100 floors to clear in the virtual world, we could get the first excellent show making it to 50 episodes in a long time.

To summarize, I strongly recommend this show.