Why Sword Art Online is Mediocre: A Rigorous Beat-Down

That's right. I'm going to delay the other posts just so I can tell you guys why the likes of Sword Art Online and its implied sequel Accel World are bad series that should never have won over the amount of hype that it did.

Cry more fanboys.

Oh and also, no pics (except for the first) because...I have no reason to and I'm fucking lazy.

Meanwhile, unrelated pic of a series that's better than SAO

Before, I couldn't say jack shit about Sword Art Online. Why? Because I hadn't seen anything. I hadn't read the LN, nor the associated manga, and I didn't really have time to go through another bullshit Accel World. But since CrimsonMonarch was all like, "yo this series cray" I decided to read all of the translated LN (minus the side stories). So don't give me any of that "you don't know the plot" bullshit. I know the plot/world well enough...to hate it.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I didn't hate it from the beginning. I read the series and I was like, "Oh that's...frustratingly mediocre." Then I left it alone.

But it wouldn't leave me alone.

The anime club started watching it. Then people started squealing on the AnimeTake SAO download posts. Then on the AnimeTake download post for the UTW-subbed Little Busters, people started to post stuff like, "I hope this doesn't delay my SAO ep".

Really? The first Key Studio VN adaptation anime in four years (the most recent being Clannad: After Story in July 2009)...and...really? Uh...huh...what? "I hope this doesn't delay my SAO ep"?

Really?

So in lieu of me writing 1415186169 rambling paragraphs, I'm going to make this post very easy to decipher for you derping SAO fanboys/girls. I'm going to list the reasons as to why SAO is bad, then field pre-emptive questions after that. Here it goes.

OK I lied. Picture #2 of series better than SAO

1) Sword Art Online is not anywhere near significantly different from a standard sword & sorcery fantasy series.

Yes, I get the fact that Sword Art Online is a hyper-realistic game. It walks like a fantasy world, it talks like a fantasy world, and it quacks like a fantasy world, and so it must be a duck.

But then, what makes Sword Art Online a 'virtual world'? The fact that people (gasp) use items to heal themselves? The fact that there are shiny skills that people can learn? The fact that the main characters can use a Fallout console to check how shitty their swords are?

No. None of these are distinct from what can be possible in a fantasy setting and sure as hell don't make Sword Art Online a unique series. What makes a 'virtual/cyber world' different from a fantasy world is the constant/chronic awareness (no matter at what level) that what actions you're taking to do X in the virtual world goes through all these computing processes. What makes it different is that people can abuse these computing processes to the max. Which leads me to my next point...

2) The people associated with the games are apparently retarded, which requires way too much fucking suspension of disbelief.

Let me put it this way. DayZ is an open-world, zombie-survival mod for a 'military simulation'/FPS game called Arma 2. This mod was brought to its alpha stage by one man (Dean Hall). This game not only single-handedly tripled the sales of the original Arma 2 game (and ended up having people from the original company, Bohemia Interactive, work on it), but also is one of the prototypes for what people are calling the "emergent narrative" brand of games. 

And this is a mod. Not even by a guy particularly well-known for his intelligence in coding, or game design.

Another example: in a parkour-/action-style third-person shooter game called GunZ: The Duel, 99.99% of the mainstream strategies were based around a single glitch where a slash of a sword would cancel most given actions such as dashing or reloading.

A third example: the infamous Zezima in Runescape. This man had the sheer tenacity to max out skill levels in a stupidly short amount of time in a game where people get tired of using macros/bots because it takes way too fucking long. In fact, there are people like this in any competitive game - people that simply have the willpower and the patience to grind it out like a motherfucker and get to the absolute top.

I obviously shouldn't have to mention stuff like the existence of practice-intensive groups, such as Korean clans in Starcraft/Chinese clans in DotA 2, and simple prodigies at certain games due to their skill, such as as Vigoss and Flash. And I don't mean just simple 'experienced veterans that are good', I mean geniuses of their craft. These guys could master competitive tiddlywinks to such an extent that everyone else would give up, that's how good they are.

And the only analogue of cyber-interpersonal interactions really referenced in SAO is clanning/PK-ing/general douchebaggery? What is this nonsense?

3) The people outside of the games are apparently retarded, which requires way too much fucking suspension of disbelief.

Don't give me this bullshit about how the servers are packed away in another dimension. Somewhere, in a very public sector and very public headquarters, lies a bunch of hard drives containing the server info for SAO that are begging to be reformatted/destroyed. And remember, the majority of serious hackers/crackers/cybersecurity people/people involved at all with goddamn programming is outside the game. And pretty pissed off at the fact that many people (some which they may know) are in a coma due to this stupid thing. This means that yes, what they could do to the SAO server is the figurative equivalent of eight crazed Mexican kids over a soft pinata.

Let's say that the servers couldn't be destroyed because of that stupid EMP threat.

What is the EMP powered by? A huge battery that powers shit. Presumably it has some cord/power supply, else there would be nerds taking it outside and all over the place and awkwardly playing it in the middle of amusement parks or libraries or some shit. Why can't you cut the cord?

Let's say that the battery is powerful enough to last for one million years.

So the police isn't used to handling fragile material that needs to be disassembled/disabled? They can't break a simple battery/piece of machinery into pieces without cracking open the person's head like a watermelon? What the bullshit was all that bomb training for?

Let's say that the author claims that disconnecting from Nerve Gear in a non-conventional way (e.g.: disconnecting due to latency) causes a person to go into a vegetative state.

According to the LN, Nerve Gear was made way before SAO. There were plenty of small games made for it. And you're telling me that Nerve Gear...stayed fucked up enough until the opening of SAO? There was not one single incident that involved Nerve Gear fucking over somebody because they disconnected wrong, Terry Schiavo-style? Yeah, I'm betting the safety commissions liked that shit...

Sword Art Online doesn't take into account people being dumb. It doesn't take into account people being smart. It doesn't take into account people being proactive. And Kotaku is calling this series "smart"?

WHAT

ARE

YOU

GUYS

SMOKING?

P.S.: EMPs do nothing to the human body. Not even military-grade wide-scale ones. But we'll pretend like Star Wars works, because I'm not prepared to be that much of a party pooper.

4) A bitter-sweet first-arc ending is milked/abused/worked such that the rest of the arcs are repetitive bullshit with no solid conclusion.

Yay Kirito + Asuna marry each other! They have implied sex + a daughter! They live happily until they're called upon by duty to be winners at the game that they were winning at before! Then they kill the boss and kiss each other goodbye while looking out from a burning building self-destructing world. Aww how sentimental. I get that. I let myself get tugged around a bit by the ending too (because at least it was more subtle than Ano Hana).

Then it fell. Fell hard.

Why? The same bullshit. Kirito's trying to save Asuna or vice versa, and either way, Kirito ends up starting as a noob in an RPG. He trains. He gets awesome because he did kendo and he's determined, or some shit. Kirito checks his console. He confirms that he is, indeed, awesome. He faces up against an even more awesome boss. He gets his ass kicked around the stadium ring until 5 seconds before the match is over, when he pulls out his dick even more determination and defeats the boss with unforeseen powers. There is no deviance from this relatively specific plot path in the continuing arcs.

So is this supposed to be interesting, or a repeated highlight reel of why I quit MMORPGs? The same shit, re-masked with a different game/skill set doesn't make it a goddamn new arc. Just because Kirito flies around with dark bat-devil-demon-angel-fluffy wings instead of staying on the ground doesn't make it a new arc. The only thing that's even close to being new was the arc where the gang of criminals were going around killing bitches IRL in sync with somebody pretending to kill people online, and that doesn't even make sense because see my third point above.

Apparently in the future, nobody sets their goddamn home security alarms.

5) Anything that's not allowed by the game is magically allowed by 'determination' ==> magical computer fairies let the protagonist do shit.

I don't think I need to explain this. Accel World has this tiresome bullshit too, and it's just...sigh...

If you need to use a deus ex machina to conclude every goddamn arc that you've made, don't pretend to be anywhere near a good series. High School DxD does that, but it's supposed to be wacked up as fuck and doesn't give a shit about the legitimacy of the series, so awesome plot devices are allowed in HS DxD, especially when it's linked to humorous boob-grabbing. Sword Art Online...just no. 

6) Sword Art Online DOES NOT, in fact, have a "realistic economy/society" as the Kotaku article calls it. Get your heads out of your asses.

I'd like to see examples. Does it explain things like Spice and Wolf? Does it explain the art of combat? Of society? Does it go into detail about corrupted bureaucracy like Team Medical Dragon? Does it explain international economies/the rise of capitalism like Maoyuu Maou Yuusha?

I didn't think so.

-----

Now for the questions...

Why does Sword Art Online need to be realistic?

Because you guys are fucking praising it for being realistic. It's like me praising Hitler for saving lives. Furthermore, it's "supposed" to represent a "virtual world", not a "fantasy world", which means that - surprise! The realistic world outside of the interwebs still counts. And finally, because unless a story explicitly/implicitly declares that the main point of discussion should overrule realistic portrayals, realistic worlds should be at the very top of your list, because if the story's not making some conscious point, it's clearly going for world immersion. This also counts for characters - unless the story emphasizes having wacky characters doing wacky things, have realistic characters doing realistic things. Jesus.

In a sense, Sword Art Online isn't realistic at all. It's simply using stupid fanservice and psychological tricks to appeal to people reading this shit. You fuckers want to believe that it's realistic, because you desperately want something that relates more to what you guys do instead of getting a good story. See this for more information.

Why does Sword Art Online need to be good instead of relatively better than other series?

First, I never said it was better compared to other series. Second, I expect/want a high quality from whatever media I encounter, whether it's a mashup or a textbook on analytical chemistry. Thirdly, because it had better live up to the hype?

What about Accel World?

Fuck that series too, it falls into the same pitfalls as SAO but with different examples.

You just hated the ending, didn't you?

You mean the end of the first arc? I didn't see the anime, but I know what that ending is. Actually, I like bittersweet endings a lot, and that ending was my favorite part of the LN.

The rest was shit.

What other LN would you recommend over SAO, then?

If you want to see a legitimately cool action/harem/rom-com series where "determination wins over everything" and there are cool powers galore, check out High School DxD.

If you want to see people actually thinking about shit and being somewhat intelligent, try Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria.

Actually, I have a phobia of reading more than a paragraph of text a day. Can you recommend me some recent anime?

How about Little Busters!/Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, currently airing for the Fall 2012 season? Or maybe the recently completed Kokoro Connect/Hyouka combo.

Or just watch Hanasaku Iroha and/or Nichijou again. That's always a good decision.

U mad bro?

I won't be, as long as there aren't fucking retarded fanboys coming over and bitching and moaning about how Little Busters is delaying the SAO release.

What's that? Did you say something about how it's hard to emulate realistic character interactions in a series? I couldn't hear you over my Hyouka marathon.