sword art online 1, 2
Categories: episodic review, sword art online
Tagged: sword art online
14 Comments »
I’m quite a big fan of the Sword Art Online light novels. How well does the anime adapt it?
I’m quite a big fan of the Sword Art Online light novels. How well does the anime adapt it?
Not bad. The interesting thing about the light novels is that the first book features Asuna and Kirito is basically a huge buffet of surprises. It’s like going to a Chinese buffet and seeing frog legs… but they taste like sweat and sour pork. And the sweat and sour pork tastes like ice cream. And the ice cream, well, that’s a mystery. The second volume then goes back fills in side stories featuring Kirito’s harem. Based on the preview for episode three, it looks like the anime is going chronological.
The animation by A-1 is pretty good and on-par or better than Sunrise’s Accel World (with much better character design than Accel World), and the fight scenes are done quite well. I’m enjoying the weird sword art sound effects too. The background characters don’t move a lot, and the monsters could be a bit more detailed, but overall not bad animation.
Maybe it’s been a while, but I always thought Asuna and Kirito interacted (with admiring eyes instead of the hostility) like Kiritsugu and Saber until the later floors.
This dude is as annoying as the shrimp on Space Brothers. I hope he gets killed by one of those damn act 2 bees from Diablo 3. His logic of, “Hey, the beta testers [who cleared like 8 of 100 floors] are keeping secrets from us!” Really? This is like saying:
A. Kanako is keeping the secrets to living with an evil, masochist cross-dresser.
B. Shaq is keeping the secrets on making free throws.
C. The Office is keeping the secrets on how not the jump the shark. Repeatedly.
D. Horo~n is keeping the secrets on how to be modest.
Impresses cute girl with food loot– quickly alienates her with “I play way too much MMORPGs!” gibberish. Kirito, you’re a smooth man. Though with all the food and cooking talked about Sword Art Online, there was never a side story involving Iron Chef Aincrad, which would be awesome, but not as awesome as Iron Chef Westeros. But still quite awesome.
Best part of the first episode? When everyone reverts to their true image. Ouch. The sudden 70/30 cute fairy princess/male ratio suddenly turned into the world’s second greatest sausage fest (just a tad behind any IEEE symposium). I also like the added touch where the men who were using female avatars got stuck using female clothes. Classy.
(And how exactly do you calibrate a machine such that it scans your body? Do you rub the nerve gear all over your body as if it’s maple syrup? I mean, it’s a damn helmet. It would make a lot more sense if the thing had a camera or something on it.)
(Though I can already imagine the reviews for this game: “Got trapped inside, almost died, lots of bad tasting food, but still better than The Old Republic.”
Decent pacing, good animation, pulpy action, romance and harem elements, and light comedy makes Sword Art Online pretty much what I expected it to be. If you enjoyed the original light novels, this show should be a no-brainer.
14 Responses to “sword art online 1, 2”
Leave a Reply
IMO, it’s gonna be the next episode that makes or breaks it. The First Boss sidestory got compressed a bit, but was still salvageable, but if they try to fit Red Nosed Reindeer into a single episode, it’s gonna suck.
OMG DIABLO ACT 2 INFERNO WASPS. i know that feel. Jailer arcane molten horde invulnerable minions fast? blizzard biggest trolls
My friends and I would have made a living farming food quests while waiting for our Korean saviors to clear in 2 weeks.
It’s funny because a lot of folks are complaining about how episode two took out most of the character development from the light novels and the part that explained why Kirito did what he did at the end of the episode.
Have you read chapter 16.5? Here’s an excerpt from Baka Tsuki’s translation: “Two years worth of semen made a glopping noise as it flowed endlessly into Asuna.” Yep. I’m not sure what to think anymore. Should I be more surprised that the author actually wrote this or that the game has semen programmed in so that it builds up over time… or that it’s still at least slightly better than 50 Shades of Grey?
Gotta agree with Cube here, as far as I know, they’re only gonna run 12 episodes of this show, and that’s not nearly enough to capture everything. I can only hope that they do a good job with what they have, though, it is possible they’ll just get to a good stopping spot and continue based on the success or failure of DVDs.
Sweat…and sour pork?
Yours and other Blogger’s comments got me up to read the novels (completed around 2 volumes so far). It was really disappointing that the novels a non-chronological. That way I spoilered myself the whole Anime, but it was a good read.
I can really relate to the sausage festival here. In my physics course there are only around 10 girls on 150 boys, so I – exactly like in Sword Art Online – can “count all the female in my fingers” and know every girls face.
@rsy: Especially Chapter 16.5 was the best piece of text I read in a long time. It was really refreshing, because you never see this in Animes and in Hentais the love goes missing on the way.
Why are people saying this is only gonna be 12 eps? I haven’t seen a single piece of news saying this. ANN even seems to be going out of the way by saying it was a two-cour anime in every single news posting.
@TheSilverSky
It is confirmed for 2 cours, so at least 24 episodes. It’s likely that the SAO arc will take up half, though that’s not confirmed yet.
@rsy
Ch. 16.5 didn’t make it to the published novels, so don’t expect any hint of it in the anime either :P
Guess that’s two years of semen down the drain. :(
OVA special!
Screw you! I love The Old Republic!
Still, I was wondering when the PUGs would devolve into loot-stealing and either accusing each other of homosexuality or implying each other’s mothers were whores if they didn’t get the +10 Sword of Useless-Ten-Levels-Later.
Interestingly, I feel like this is like an anime about Diablo Hardcore Mode with a Matrix-y “The Brain dies” shtick attached. Which makes me feel giddy inside. Now if Kirito added some shades to his black trench coat, said “I know Kung Fu” in a think Russian accent and proceeded to fight only in bullet-time against glowing blue enemies that shit fireballs, fire chains, ice bombs and laser beams all at once this show would get an AAA+ from me.
@Auroth: Well fellow reader with an uncomfortably close name, if you’re enjoying the anime, I suggest reading the light novels. They’re over at baka-tsuki. The anime has been very well done so far, but feels compressed by comparison because a lot of the charm of the series, for me at least, was seeing the thought processes of the characters, especially Kirito because honestly he doesn’t talk much, but he thinks lots.
On another note, just read “Red-Nosed Reindeer” before watching the episode. They cut quite a bit out of that one. If I hadn’t just read the story, I started to wonder if I’d care much about the characters in the episode. I kind of liked the feel when reading the novels that we knew the end before we even read the story (Since the highlights of this story are mentioned in Vol. 1 as background for Kirito, but this story isn’t told until the Vol. 2 short story collection). I felt like the crystal scene at the end was pretty well done, but again, was there enough exposition for those who have only watched the anime to care, or does it just come across as poorly executed character motivation episode.