Sword Art Online: A Retrospective
Introduction:
I’ve recently gotten back into several series I used to be obsessed with as a child. Yu-Gi-Oh takes up space rent-free in my head, Super Smash Bros has returned to being my favorite relaxation game, and I’ve realized that Percy Jackson is still awesome. But the strongest of these hyperfixations is, without a doubt, Sword Art Online. Ever since the new Progressive movie, I’ve been constantly thinking about this franchise. Yes, I know that came out in December. No, I’m not mistaken.
For those that don’t know, Sword Art Online is a science-fiction franchise based on works written by Reki Kawahara. The story is set in the near future of 2022 (which was the near future when it was written; now it’s just the present day), focusing on thousands of gamers getting their hands on the hot new Virtual Reality Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (or VRMMORPG for short): the titular “Sword Art Online.”
This is a game like no other, for a few reasons. It sends neural signals directly to your brain, stimulating all five of your senses. Every smell, every touch, every sound and sight and taste, it’s all sent directly to your brain. The only problem? On the day the game launches, the 10,000 currently-online players are informed that if they die in the game, they die in real life, and there’s no way to log out. The only way out of this death game is to beat all 100 floors and all 100 bosses. Now it’s up to solo gamer Kirito, his friend Asuna, and a handful of companions to master the systems of SAO and free everyone.
Simply put, this was a brilliant premise, and SAO makes good use of this basic idea to explore a wide variety of genres and ideas. It seems like a standard fantasy anime, specifically of the “isekai” sub-genre; but all of the fantasy elements are rooted in virtual reality, which is more of a science-fiction subgenre. At its best, SAO can also comfortably be called a romance, showing how main characters Kirito and Asuna fall in love over the course of the death game; and it can just as easily be called a psychological thriller, exploring the trauma that comes with being trapped in a virtual death game for years on end.
For a while, SAO truly was the hottest new anime on the block.
But, things started to change. Cracks started to emerge in the story, the setting, the heroes and the villains. In a tale that should be familiar to any fans of Star Wars, SAO became more well-known for its wasted potential, acquiring a large collection of fans who were enthralled by the world but dissatisfied with the direction of the story.
In this essay, I’ll be going over my thoughts on the franchise as a whole, including the good, the bad, and how SAO’s roots lent itself to a bizarre, uneven story structure that compounded these problems.
Canon and Timeline:
First of all, I’m going to go through the major story arcs for this franchise, for those who are currently unfamiliar with the structure of SAO.
When considering both the web and light novels, we can divide this franchise into five main arcs, with a handful of side-stories.
The premise of thousands of teenagers being trapped in the titular Sword Art Online actually only applies to the first arc of the series. Given that SAO’s in-universe world is called “Aincrad,” this is merely dubbed the Aincrad arc. (Light Novel Volumes 1-2, 8).
In the next arc, Kirito and the rest of the cast have been freed from SAO. However, Asuna hasn’t woken up; her consciousness was transferred to a new virtual reality called “Alfheim Online,” and it’s up to Kirito and his sister to rescue her. This arc was called the Fairy Dance arc. (Light Novel Volumes 3-4).
The third arc focuses on Kirito investigating a murder in a science-fiction shooter VR called “Gun Gale Online,” with the help of a traumatized sniper named Sinon. This arc was called the Phantom Bullets arc. (Light Novel Volumes 5-6).
After this third arc, we had a couple of smaller story arcs focusing on Kirito and the gang post-Phantom Bullets
The Caliburn arc focuses on Kirito, now an active player of Alfheim Online in his free time, trying to acquire a legendary blade called “Caliburn.” (Light Novel Volume 8). (This volume notably includes a few other short stories set in Aincrad.)
The Mother’s Rosario arc shifts the focus to Asuna, as she befriends an incredibly skilled but mysterious swordswoman named Yuuki. (Light Novel Volume 7).
The fourth main arc moves away from games but keeps the focus tightly on virtual realities. After an attempt on his life, an injured Kirito has his brain preserved in a fantasy world called “Underworld.” This is known as the Alicization arc, and it is by far the longest. (Light Novel Volumes 9-20).
The fifth and final story arc, which is currently ongoing, focuses on several major VRs all getting merged together. Dying in the game doesn’t result in death, but it does result in one’s data getting lost permanently. This is called the Unital Ring arc, as “Unital Ring” is the name of the new, amalgamated VR world. (Light Novel Volumes 21 and onwards.)
However, as a bit of a side project, Reki Kawahara has also been working on a series of novels called the Progressive series. This isn’t an arc in its own right, but more of an attempt to fill in the gaps of the original Aincrad arc. I’ll discuss this more in detail, but it’s worth noting that the Progressive series has a much better quality of writing, and it’s also quite long, with 8 volumes so far and counting.
SAO’s first novel was written in 2001 by a 26-year-old Reki Kawahara, who intended to submit it next year as part of the 2002 Dengeki Bunko Novel Prize. While the first novel was too long to be considered in the contest, Kawahara had so much fun writing it that he decided to post what he’d written so far as a web novel, and then continue that web novel with several sequels.
While the series managed to get popular as a web novel, which is pretty impressive given that web novels and MMOs weren’t nearly as popular in the early 2000s as they are now; the series really found its niche when the web novel got turned into light novels. For years, the light novels were more or less a 1-1 translation of the web novels (with a few minor changes) into a legitimately published format. It wasn’t until this fifth story arc, “Unital Ring,” that the light novels finally overtook the web novels.
Then, the series exploded in popularity in 2012, becoming nearly mainstream in the west with the release of the first season of the anime, simply called “Sword Art Online.” This covered the Aincrad arc and the Fairy Dance arc. The second season, which was weirdly called “Sword Art Online II,” covered the Phantom Bullet, Caliburn and Mother’s Rosario arcs. The third and fourth seasons, which are collectively called “Sword Art Online: Alicization,” covered the gigantic Alicization arc.
We’ve also received two movies: “Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale,” an original feature-length movie that serves as a side-story to the main canon; and “Aria of the Starless Night,” a film adaptation of the first Progressive novel.
Finally, we’re in store for a live-action Netflix adaptation of the Aincrad arc coming soon, and so far it looks like Laeta Kalogridis (creator of Altered Carbon) will be writing and producing it.
Now that I’ve given you a general run-through of the content and arcs in Sword Art, let’s look at the career of its creator.
Part 1: Reki Kawahara’s Career:
The biggest takeaway here is that Reki Kawahara is a simple man. He loves sci-fi, he loves virtual reality, and he loves Sword Art.
Like I said above, the first story of Sword Art Online (depicting the final days of Aincrad) was written in 2001 for a magazine submission, but Kawahara refrained from submitting it. He would spend the next few years honing his craft and writing more about what happened to Kirito and Asuna after SAO.
In 2008, he submitted Accel World to the same Dengeki Bunko magazine contest. This was a story set in a similar reality to SAO, with future arcs even implying that they’re in the same universe. Accel World is more focused on Augmented Reality than Virtual Reality, and it focuses on classmates Haru and Kuroyukihime as they compete in an AR battle royale.
Accel World won the grand prize in this contest, and it was published shortly after. It’s been in serialization ever since, with 25 volumes at the time of writing. Capitalizing on this success, Kawahara’s editor encouraged him to start cleaning up his SAO web novel and turn it into a light novel series of similar length.
For years, Kawahara’s main focus was writing Accel World and publishing what he’d already written for Sword Art Online. But in 2012, that changed: the first season of the SAO anime created a new demand for SAO content, which he was more than happy to fill with an all-new series, Sword Art Online Progressive. Again, this is an interquel / soft reboot / expanded retelling of the Aincrad arc.
Kawahara’s career is actually fairly easy to summarize, as he’s spent most of it simultaneously writing Sword Art, the Progressive sub-series and Accel World.
To my knowledge, it was only recently that he started writing new stories in the Sword Art world that went beyond Alicization (with the aforementioned Unital Ring arc), and the only thing of note he’s written beyond this is The Isolator, a shorter, five-volume story about modern day superpowers.
I don’t want to make it sound like Kawahara is some kind of lazy writer for devoting most of his work to just a couple of main series. Far from it: I think anyone would have to be incredibly hard-working to publish 64 light novels across three different series in 12 years, all while working on the screenplays for three movies (Ordinal Scale, Progressive and Infinity Burst) on the side.
All in all, I’m glad that Kawahara has devoted so much of his life to Sword Art. It makes it all the more interesting to analyze, and all the more interesting to experience for yourself.
Part 2: The Good:
Nowadays, very few people talk about what made Sword Art the anime juggernaut of the 2010s, and that’s a shame. For everyone who discusses the good in Sword Art, there are at least five angry YouTubers discussing the bad.
And that’s not me trying to ignore the flaws and hate on people who put those flaws in the spotlight; after all, I’ll do the same myself in the section after this. But for now, I need to emphasize to any newcomers to the franchise what actually made this series (and the anime adaptation specifically) so captivating in the first place.
Of course, spoilers ahead for those who haven’t watched the Aincrad arc of the anime:
Obviously, there’s the premise. Like I said before, it’s goddamn brilliant, combining several different genres and flipping what should be a dream-come-true on its head. I’ve spoken before in some of my other essays about the power of juxtaposition in fiction to create drama, and Sword Art has this baked into its premise: the contrast between Aincrad’s limitless wonder versus the knowledge that death is permanent.
The stakes of SAO are absurd, and they create a constant sense of anxiety in early episodes. It’s much the same feeling someone might have in other “death game” narratives (Hunger Games, Battle Royale, Squid Game, etc.) but stretched out over multiple novels and half a season of television. This is yet another thing that was lost in the transition after Aincrad, and one of the reasons why most seasons lack that nail-biting suspense.
There’s a very active attempt by Reki Kawahara and the animation staff to make SAO feel like a game. This is due to a combination of sound design, gamer jargon, interesting UI and an emphasis on stats and leveling up.
The imagery of Aincrad is goddamn wonderful. If you were a little kid watching this for the first time in 2012, those images are baked into your mind forever: a tower split into 100 floors, a blue minotaur with a gigantic sword, a black-clad swordsman dual-wielding, a white fencer moving so fast she can barely be seen.
Sword Art touches on a unique dynamic not often seen in anime: having the main characters be a power couple that kick ass. Seriously, when was the last time your favorite anime couple was canon, hooked up 10 episodes into the show, and also fought together on a regular basis? (This is also why Asuna’s characterization post-Aincrad has been so poorly received, which I’ll get to later).
The franchise is a genuinely unique twist on the isekai genre. As I briefly touched on above, “isekai” is a subgenre of fantasy in Japanese fiction that involves the main character getting transported to a fantasy world. Sword Art stands out because there’s an entirely logical, scientific explanation for how the main characters got stuck there; and the main characters are actively trying to get back to the real world, as opposed to just being content with their new lives.
The music. GOD, the music. Like the franchise or not, Sword Art has some of the most iconic music I’ve ever heard from an anime, with many of its best tracks having left a permanent impact on the anime industry.
Above all else, what I think Sword Art has going for it is the quieter, character-driven moments. Granted, depending on how you feel about these kids, not every one of these moments are going to have the intended impact; but some of the series’ most iconic and rewatchable scenes are entirely character-driven moments.
Sachi’s final message.
Or basically all of Ep 3
Kirito’s time with Asuna at their cabin.
Kirito awakens in the hospital, hobbling off to find her.
His nervous breakdown in front of Suguha.
These sorts of moments are, for better or worse, burned into my brain. They’re what I usually think of when I contemplate this franchise, and they’re what allowed such a flawed series to acquire such a huge, passionate fanbase in 2012.
Part 2.5: The Influence on Isekai:
For all of these reasons and more, Sword Art took off in popularity. It’s no surprise that, because it was so different from standard isekai stories, it also became a trailblazer for future isekai stories. Since 2012, there have been tons of series that don’t just feature game-like worlds, but have the main characters actually exist within video games. Infinite Dendrogram, Yu-Gi-Oh VRAINS, Overlord and Bofuri are some of the immediate examples that come to mind.
Now, I’m not going to pretend that Sword Art is the only reason why this sort of VR premise took off. VR has been a staple of science-fiction for years, both in and out of the world of anime. Just look at movies and series like .Hack, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, Source Code, Code Lyoko and Log Horizon.
Hell, the only reason why SAO got published as a light novel in the first place was because of the runaway success of its sister-series, Accel World, yet another VR story set in the same universe, which predicted the battle royale genre of gaming in...2009? Damn. Okay, that’s just impressive.
But even if SAO wasn’t the only VR story of its time period, or even the best, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the most impactful. Like I emphasized before, SAO is a story about gamers, written by a gamer, for other gamers. The Aincrad inhabitants weren’t being used as batteries for machines, nor were they cyber-terrorists or skilled hackers. They were just kids trying to have fun, who ended up having to battle for their lives. (I’m sure a lot of us fantasized as kids about Pokemon being real, or seeing the worlds of Skyrim and Midgar with our own two eyes, so to see such a childish fantasy flipped into a horrific nightmare was gripping.)
And in a way, that makes complete sense. Isekai settings have always been inspired by video games, and this provided a perfect narrative explanation for authors to get even more explicit about their love for gaming without alienating their audience, which in-turn let future isekai authors reference video games even more. It’s brilliant!
Part 3: The Bad:
Obviously, I’m not going to give SAO nothing but praise. I mentioned earlier that it has quite a few problems that have hurt it’s reputation, and now, I’m going to discuss this more in-depth.
SAO has been mocked as something of a harem anime, and honestly, it’s not hard to see why. This is especially problematic in the anime: the serialized story about Asuna and Kirito’s relationship is often spliced with one-off stories about random side characters like Silica and Lizbeth. Even though Kirito and Asuna are unambiguously loyal to each other, many of these women are still in love with him. That’s...extremely weird, but it has nothing to do with his behavior, rather, it has everything to do with the behavior of his friends. Whether you think of his marriage to Asuna as figurative or literal, the dude’s married, yet the only reliable acquaintances in his life are lusting after him for years at a time.
This is not helped by the sexualization of the female cast, all of which are underage! Yay!
Going hand-in-hand with the treatment of the female cast, we also need to talk about the writing of our main character Kirito. He suffers from being an overpowered protagonist...or I guess it’s more accurate to say he has the perception of being overpowered. I’m a firm believer that this isn’t a real problem, especially because it mostly comes down to his reaction time, which is stated in-universe to be the reason he can also Dual Wield. Nonetheless, there are a few situations (hacking into Aincrad’s networks, killing Heathcliff after he already died, etc.) that suspend disbelief a bit too much.
Between this, the sexualization of the female cast and the pseudo-harem situation, SAO has the reputation of being nothing more than a male power fantasy anime, which certainly hurts its credibility.
SAO also suffers from a terminal case of Dragon Ball syndrome: fascinating characters are dropped as soon as their arcs are done, never to become relevant again. Even Asuna, the deuteragonist of the whole franchise, suffers from this. It stings the most as Kawahara got better and better at writing female characters (namely Sinon and Yuuki) who still became irrelevant as soon as their arcs ended. Though in Yuuki’s case, it’s cause she, well, fucking died.
There’s also a bit of a pacing issue, which again, becomes more obvious in the anime. I’ll talk about this more in the next section, but compared to all subsequent stories which usually cover a couple weeks, Aincrad covers two years, yet we only ever see bits and pieces of it. This constantly gives the impression that there was more story to be experienced there that we just didn’t get.
SAO’s most egregious sin seems to be under-developing its best ideas, which is probably because it was planned as a single novel and not an epic, grand narrative. Ask any SAO fan, and they’ll have a list a mile long of the brilliant concepts that were never elaborated on.
Unique Skills were a fascinating idea...and we only saw two out of ten.
Kirito’s social awkwardness in the real world would have served as an interesting contrast to his confidence in Aincrad. Shame that this never really went anywhere, and this emotionally-stunted shut-in gamer managed to also be a charismatic chick-magnet in the real world, too.
The cast dealing with their trauma and adjusting to the real world would’ve been a perfect direction post-Aincrad, but this goldmine of drama (and comedy) was never used. Sure, there are a couple scenes of Kirito trying to sheath a bamboo sword on his back, and they’re going to a special school for SAO survivors, but that’s barely anything in the grand scheme of things. I mean, just imagine it!
Kirito and Asuna waking up in the middle of the night, haunted by dreams of their own deaths.
Asuna tapping food with a knife in her kitchen, expecting it to just cut itself.
All of them aren’t used to, well, actually getting sweaty and dirty throughout the day. The concept of showering as a daily thing is foreign. Their families have to remind them to brush their teeth and put on deodorant.
They always try to open up their menus when they wake up.
All of the main characters have such bad muscle atrophy that they need crutches just to walk for weeks on end.
I don’t think I even need to say this, but almost all of them went through puberty while in VR...like, c’mon. There’s got to be some kind of comedy you can pull from that.
You get the picture. This shit writes itself.
Part 4: The “Aincrad Dilemma”:
I just addressed a lot of problems in the previous section, but if I really had to boil it down, I’d say the issues with Reki Kawahara and his Sword Art Online franchise are twofold:
First, the series peaked with the first story arc. Aincrad had it all: an incredible premise, a sweet romance that tugs at my heartstrings, amazing fights, high stakes, jaw-dropping fights, you name it. This is the most popular arc of SAO, but it’s hard to enjoy it fully on a rewatch or reread because it’s also the most inconsistent.
Second, all attempts to replicate the magic of Aincrad have fallen flat, either because they focused on unimaginative, uninteresting environments; the stakes weren’t as high; or both.
You might have noticed before that when I was describing the Light Novel’s, I wrote that the Aincrad arc was in Volumes 1, 2 and 8. The reason for this odd structuring decision has to do with Kawahara’s initial choice to write SAO as a novel set during the final days of Aincrad. Essentially, when the first story begins, Kirito and Asuna have already been stuck in this death game for two years. Everything that happens in that first novel (their marriage, the fight with Gleam Eyes, the reveal of Dual Wielding, Heathcliff’s betrayal) happens at a ridiculously brisk pace, all to give the idea that this is a story about two people during the last days of this death game.
But, like I said, the story got popular and Kawahara was having fun writing it. So he would later write several side-stories that attempted to flesh out the setting. The second Volume consists entirely of these side stories, and two-thirds of Volume 8 is devoted to exploring more of Aincrad’s world.
The problem with this technique becomes most apparent when we look at the anime. By the time the anime was released, the entire Aincrad arc had more or less been released, either as light novels, web novels or side-stories. The anime attempts to take all of that content and arrange it in chronological order, and the result is…messy, to say the least.
It’s hard to explain until you actually watch it, but certain episodes, characters and plotlines just feel distinctly out of place. Put simply, it just doesn’t work.
The first several episodes are all very episodic, skipping weeks or months between episodes to give a sense of time passing, but they don’t work super well together as an actual narrative. Episode 3 is one of the show’s best, a tragedy that ends with Kirito having a mental breakdown because of his dead best friend. Episode 4 depicts him as an overconfident jokester, seemingly unaffected by the trauma he endured only a couple of months ago. By the time we get to about episode 8 or so, the story catches up to the first novel, and everything becomes very serialized, and despite not appearing for entire episodes, Asuna suddenly goes back to being a major character. And before we know it, it’s all over.
This reveals the biggest problem with the Aincrad arc. Despite it’s absolutely insane potential, it lived up to barely any of that potential, because the entire story is built on the bones of a short novel Kawahara wrote in freaking 2001.
All of the world-building, the secondary cast and the backstory for Kirito and Asuna was written after the main story in Aincrad had already ended. It’s an unfortunate reality that happens with many authors who want to keep writing in a universe where they’ve already resolved the main conflict: it feels like trying to stick puzzle pieces together that don’t quite fit.
-----
During those side stories, that’s where a lot of the franchise’s biggest problems come up.
Oh, the sexualization of female characters? Yeah, it was annoying to do with Asuna in the original novel, but it’s more obvious (and creepy) here.
Kirito having a pseudo-harem? Yeah, that’s definitely more obvious here, considering almost every side story involves the introduction of a female character who’s madly in love with him.
Kirito being an overpowered male fantasy? Absolutely. The infamous scene where he regenerates health faster than he’s attacked only occurs in “The Black Swordsman,” and he slays a fucking dragon in “Warmth of the Heart.”
The secondary cast being underutilized? Well, obviously. Bear in mind, the first light novel Kawahara wrote for Dengeki Bunko in 2001 was essentially a romantic action story about Kirito and Asuna. Characters like Klein, Lizbeth and Silica were specifically created for those short stories I mentioned earlier, so of course they had almost no narrative role in the future stories!
All of that being said, I genuinely think Aincrad could’ve worked either way: either highly serialized or episodic.
If it was the former, Aincrad would have been a multi-season behemoth of a story. Picture it: epic boss fights, warfare between different guilds, interlaced with a look at what all of their families are doing in the real world. I personally would’ve loved to see something an Evangelion-esque focus on character psychology, pitting an increasingly neurotic, lonely Kirito with a frustrated, battle-hardened Asuna.
Alternatively, Sword Art could’ve been its generation's Cowboy BeBop: an atmospheric, episodic science-fiction tale about a swordsman clad in black who’s devoted himself to clearing this virtual world of evil and finding his way home, all while making a surprising number of companions along the way.
Kawahara’s first jab at Aincrad feels more like the first, but his subsequent short stories (involving Sachi, Silica, Lizbeth and Yui) feel more like the second, resulting in an uncomfortable disconnect when the anime tried to piece it together as one narrative. And that’s where Progressive comes into play.
Part 4.5: Acknowledging Progressive:
Many of the biggest problems with Aincrad are acknowledged in Progressive, if not outright fixed. It's an attempt to find that happy middle-ground between serialized and episodic storytelling, which it does by explaining what went on during the early floors of Aincrad. In this regard, it feels like the “missing link,” the glue that can hold the otherwise disconnected Aincrad arc together. Maybe this is just my own bias talking, because I got into this franchise after the Progressive novels started coming out, but I ache for new content in this subseries. Without them, I can’t help but feel like we’re missing out on crucial emotional context for Kirito and Asuna’s relationship later down the line.
That’s not to say what we have now is a perfect solution. Progressive still feels like a band-aid on a larger, fundamental problem with Sword Art Online, by which I mean it still has to play by the rules of and conform to the canon Reki Kawahara started establishing in 2001.
That’s a shame, because honestly, I think this whole light novel sub-series would be much better if it was an outright reboot. For those that ship Kirisuna, you might be catching onto what I’m talking about.
Kawahara’s skills as a writer grew massively between 2001 to 2012, and they’ve grown even more between 2012 (when he wrote the first Progressive volume) and now. I think this is most noticeable in his ability to create natural chemistry between a younger Kirito and Asuna. This is Progressive’s biggest strength, bar none, and it manages to totally sell me on a friendship between these two isolated, traumatized, lonely teenagers.
But, it’s also Progressive’s biggest weakness: because Kawahara has so effortlessly sold me on their relationship, I hate the fact I have to wait for two years to pass in-universe before they can actually act on their feelings. Considering these novels have been coming out since I was 10 and they haven’t even reached Floor 9, who the fuck knows when that’s gonna be! Godammit, I just want Kirito and Asuna to hook up already!
Part 5: The “Sequel Dilemma”:
The problems I mentioned with Aincrad’s subsequent materials (that is to say: short stories like “The Black Swordsman” and “Warm of the Heart”) are magnified in the volumes set right after Aincrad. It seems like Kawahara developed some really bad habits while working on those short stories, and they bled into his next two works: the Fairy Dance arc and the Phantom Bullet arc.
In many ways, these stories are treated similar to the short stories from Volumes 2 and 8. They introduce elements never brought up again. They both relegate Asuna to a minor role to free up the spotlight for a new female deuteragonist who’s in love with Kirito, and every other side character from Aincrad is left in the dust.
I’d argue that the Fairy Dance arc is even worse than the side stories, and that’s mainly because of the change in setting. Like I said before, Aincrad is an incredible world, with great imagery, compelling boss designs and a very unique aesthetic. Switching that out for the fairy-inhabited world of Alfheim just feels like a step down in all the wrong ways.
It’s also in the transition into this new VR that Kirito’s natural talent starts raising eyebrows. Like I said, I have no problem accepting that he has fast reflexes, but the scene where he turns into a Gleam Eyes copy and starts laying waste to the Salamanders after being in ALO for all of two days always rubs me the wrong way.
That brings me to the final problem with the post-Aincrad sequels: none of them have the stakes of Aincrad. This is not an original take, but I’ll repeat it again: no SAO story has gripped me in the same way as Aincrad, because none of them feel as urgent or dreadful as Aincrad. Without that constant risk of death, ALO just fell flat.
Now, all that being said, I should clarify something: GGO is not nearly as bad of an arc as ALO. In fact, I found myself quite enjoying it. While it still has some of the same problems as ALO, they aren’t quite as drastic:
The female deuteragonist? Sure, Sinon is no Asuna, but she’s still compelling in her own way. She has one of the best arcs on the show, and part of that has to do with the fact her actual feelings about Kirito are ambiguous until the very end, allowing her to feel like less of a “side chick” and more of her own person.
Kirito’s overpowered nature? Completely justifiable. He’s not actually overpowered, it’s just that he’s using Aincrad-esque strategies and quick reflexes to take everyone else off guard. The one time he fights someone who’s also from Aincrad, he’s toast.
The setting? Well, it’s no Aincrad, but GGO actually looks rad as hell, and it makes me glad that Sword Art Online: Gun Gale Online Alternative exists. (Great show, go fucking watch it right now. I swear to god, go watch it.)
The stakes? Again, it’s no Aincrad, but the fact that Kirito is investigating a murder-mystery helps to bring back some of that classic SAO magic and make you fear for his life at times. Though, I still maintain that the method by which Death Gun killed people was underwhelming as hell.
----
Now, I have not read the Underworld or Unital Ring arcs, so I can’t say much about those. But from what I’ve heard, both have significantly better writing, and the general consensus about Unital Ring is that it feels vastly different because it doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously.
That makes complete sense. Underworld was a story arc written back in the mid-2000s, and it was the last story arc written as a web novel. Unital Ring is basically the first time Kawahara tried to move the timeline forward in over 10 years, and now that he doesn’t have to just clean up what he wrote earlier, it makes sense that he’d do something a bit more lighthearted.
I think that’s a good direction for the series. Kawahara can’t replicate the life-or-death stakes of Aincrad, so he shouldn’t try.
...But even with that being said, every time I read about Underworld and Unital Ring, I can’t help but shake the feeling that they’re just living in the shadow of the series’ first arc. Perhaps my feelings about that will change once I give them both a shot, but I’m not holding my breath.
Part 6: Solution?
So, we’ve established what SAO does well and what it does poorly. Much of the problems in its narrative, setting and characters stem from Kawahara’s inexperience as a writer, his lack of foresight in planning for this bigger narrative, the disconnect between episodic and serialized stories, and an undeveloped setting.
The solution, as I see it, is quite simple: reboot the franchise.
Now, I know that sounds drastic, but hear me out: Aincrad really did have the most potential of the franchise, but the limited scope Kawahara worked with and his unwillingness to deviate from that original canon meant that he could never live up to that potential.
The way I see it, for SAO to become something truly great, we have to change everything that held it back.
Increase the size of the supporting cast and develop them all. Put Agil, Silica, Lizbeth, the Moonlight Black Cats and Fuurinkazan in situations where they can actually do something. Have Yui stick around longer.
Worldbuild the fuck out of this place. Show us how each guild in Aincrad developed, what kind of economy they developed, what kind of cultural and social norms emerged in this virtual world.
Flesh out Unique Skills. Show us who ended up with <Darkness Blade> and <Infinite Spear>. And for the love of god, explain what they actually do!
Flesh out Kayaba’s motivations. Did he actually forget the real reason he made SAO, or was that a lie he told Kirito and Asuna? Did he see Aincrad as his blessing on the world, or was his obsession a curse? Is he a madman with a god complex, or simply a callous inventor who couldn’t consider the moral implications of what he was doing? Does he have any sympathy for the people he killed?
Future stories shouldn’t be afraid to give us the details we wanted more of. Who is Ashley? Who was the 50th floor boss that Kirito obtained <Elucidator> from? Where did Asuna get her sword from? Did Kizmel ever show up again?
Show what was going on in the real world during the SAO incident. Show us the Japanese government’s response. Show us what happened to Argus in the days and weeks after Kayaba’s announcement. Show us the programmers and developers of SAO, unaware of Kayaba’s plans and now wracked with remorse about their role in this death game.
In my humble opinion, any and all focus on the families of the main characters would increase the quality of the story tenfold. Was Suguha a nervous wreck, scared every day that her brother would die? Did Asuna’s brother feel guilty, knowing that he provided the mechanism for her imprisonment? Did Liz have a family waiting for her to wake up? Did Silica? Or Klein?
I’m aware this might be a controversial take (the video games have tried this to mixed success), but: don’t be afraid to change canon events and take the best characters from the sequels and plop them in Aincrad. What if Sinon was an archer in SAO? What if Eugeo and Alice were real-world friends who got mixed up in all this? What if Yuuki was a terminally ill front-liner? I mean, hell, we already know Eiji was in Aincrad, you might as well make him plot-relevant too! Did he resent Asuna for being stronger than him? Or did he look up to her and admire her strength?
And, above all else, create a more cohesive, epic narrative. Show us more boss fights, show us battles between each guild. Show the Black Cats and Fuurinkazan as not just random nobodies, but as warriors actually contributing to the battle on the front lines. And for the love of god, please show Lizbeth contributing to battles because holy hell her character is great and she deserves more screentime. This isn’t relevant, I just need more Lizbeth content injected directly into my bloodstream.
The best part? It looks like this is already happening. Not everything I just said, of course, but it looks like other minds all over the television and animation industries are coming to the same conclusions I have.
The Progressive movie has proved a willingness to diverge from canon when it creates a better story, as seen with Asuna’s extra screentime and the introduction of Misumi Tozawa, aka Mito. The Netflix series will almost certainly be about Aincrad, and Netflix adaptations are well-known for fleshing out the source material, for better or worse. With the director of Altered Carbon at the helm of that adaptation, this might be exactly what the franchise needs.
All in all, as much as I love this franchise, I know as well as anyone that Sword Art is a series that didn’t live up to its potential and moved on from its core premise too quickly. But through the Progressive light novels, the Progressive movies and the Netflix show, it’s been given more chances.
Here’s hoping they get it right.
Comments
Post a Comment