SAO

I know the consensus is that SAO is trash, but is there anyone here who actually likes the franchise?

Can you explain what aspects of SAO you enjoy?

No

The consensus is that it is fucking great, given its popularity and success. Only vocal hipsters and youtubers think otherwise

well memed

Sinon is the only redeeming thing about the show obviously

Fuck off.

I've read like 10 volumes and watched all the anime. I think is mostly trash. Only season 1 is somehow decent-mediocre tier. I think the best aspect of SAO is that it's a baby's first isekai/anime and mash a lot of stuff there. Great if you haven't watched more than 3 series. If you have, it's literally unbearable.

I enjoy it a lot. There's a lot of reasons but does it really matter?

"Hey Kii-boy, wanna /ss/?"

I'm dumbfounded with its popularity, I could barely finish it. I don't like to trash something only because it's popular, but this time I genuinely can't understand how this piece of shit is so universally liked.

I'm very interested in full-immersion VR technology is why I watched it initially.
Also while the original series is trash, the Progressive series is actually quite good.

Sinon bros ww@

Oh, look. It's worst girl.

here as usual

SAO is more worthy of its popularity than say, reddit:zero. Rings a bell? It is an isekai very overrated on neo Sup Forums.

Give the thread a couple of hours, let the resident SAOfags get in here and they'll explain why.

We're here.

I dunno fren, the resident saofags have school tomorrow

I'm already here desu

i enjoy the fact that kirito and asuna are a cute couple

Nope. Tell us more about this.

It's a guilty pleasure for me. I'm faggot who likes potato salad tropes like isekai and "If you die in the game, you die for real". I understand that it's a critically substance-less show with dogshit pacing and plotholes miles wide, but I found it to be a fun watch regardless.

It's a very good starter anime. The first season is good enough to warrant watching its last episode. The second season doesn't deserve the traffic created on piracy sites, and the third season is so contrived in order to have anything to do with the first two that I lost all interest.

The harem was silly and the antagonists are worse.
>CEO Idunno
>Misplaced Bastard
>Death Gun

On the plus side, the manga completely dodges most of this for the first arc.

Well fuck me, I forgot that there was a fourth season that I would only watch if I was being paid in titjobs and litcoin.

AIDSSSS

This is why people like the start of Alicization so much and are looking forward to it. It acts a lot like a complete reset that doesn't try too hard to attach itself to the previous arcs. Though they like the second half less because Kawahara really, REALLY isn't very good at writing good endings to his stories (as can be seen in earlier arcs through your own example of poorly motivated and conceptualized villains).

Also yes, the harem elements are completely pointless even more so than in other series and the series would be better if Asuna was the only one interested in Kirito romantically.

That's what makes the manga better. But its in no way perfect.

Is that so? I haven't even tried to watch Re:Zero, I've tasted enough isekai and the protagonist sounded so much like Kirito. Also, how can anyone seriously like that faggot enough to watch a series with him as the mc?

It's ok. If I had seen this 5 years ago I probably would have praised the show. But I'm very interested in the new GGO spin-off and Alicization.

I really enjoyed watching it the entire time they were in Aincrad. The 2nd cour was garbage. Gun Gale season was ok, got bored with the rest of season 2 but didn't necessarily hate it.
Objectively I know the MC is the fucking worst, most boring vanilla Gary Stu motherfucker in anime, but the fantasy of the first arc sucked me in, and I liked the supporting cast.

If I had written it, I would have included some kind of factional warfare and Lord of the Flies-esque society being built on the inside, and also followed a secondary protagonist on the outside, like a programmer who's working on solutions and solving the mystery of why they were trapped for the two years that it goes on. Basically like a political sci-fi fantasy epic instead of just "Kirito is MMO Jesus the Anime".
Should have stopped shortly after, though. No government recruiting Kirito seed world bullshit.

I enjoy the series.
It's just the timeskip that I dislike, because you jump from "oh wow, I'm stuck in a game" to "in a extremely high level player"

Because work is antithetical to escapism.
>but being special isn't

About to go to bed, but gotta rep my wife.

Lisbeth is literally my ideal gf
cause she reminds me alot about myself

Are you literally me?

also public service announcement that Sinon and Yuuki are also perfect and liking them means you are a wonderful person

Because it's a decently entertaining series even if it had parts that were slow, not fleshed out properly, or were just bad because the characters/drama just didn't work.
Aincrad was decent (Progressive manga is superior), GGO was good with Sinon ass.
Alicization is the best arc in my opinion and it escalates to stupid levels in a fun way.

The games are good too, especially the ones that don't force you to play Kirito.
I love my donut, aho-sys, and gun-fus.

I always liked the settings of SAO, even ALfheim arc, the plot mighta tanked in that arc but the world it was set in was still interesting. Its also got good action and i've watched shows for that alone so I can't complain.

The games are my favorite part of the franchise

The games are fun and waifus.

Excellent taste, fellow Lisbros

...

>sinon
>Liz
>yuuki
Patrician taste gentlemen

No one likes SAO openly unless you're nipponese.

Reminder:
>next game is OS
>donut steel reintroduced
>the game now features an actually thorough relationship system
>kirito is already married to Asuna so the only obstacle for our Donut is gone
>actually romantic content and interaction routes with all of the cast (except for asuna and Jesus kun)
>said content unlocks gradually as you build up the relationship with a certain character
>endgame is marriage

would pay big money

>except for Jesus kun
Why even bother?

People would still complain about
>hurr muh kirito harem

I started off hating this show but over time it's become one of my favourite series I like to have fun with. The first arc is trash with stupid time skips and a horribly done romance with 2 card board cutout characters. The second arc was a marginal improvement with better characterisation on Kirito which the show desperately needed along with introducing a decent heroine to replace Asuna for the arc. On the whole the first season is sub par. Second season is when the show got its shit together, fleshing out Kirito's character a lot more with nuance and depth than before while giving us Sinon, the best girl in the entire series. Excalibur arc actually showed that the anime was willing to have a bit of fun and Mother's Rosario is an all round well told emotional story about a dying girl. Ordinal Scale is alright. Not the best the series has to offer but not the worst either.

The video games is basically where this series shines the brightest which comfy character interactions and events while giving much needed screentime to many of its supporting cast. Gameplay wise they aren't the best RPGs you'll find, but each of them, even Lost Song, has something of value to enjoy.

Basically, Sword Art Online started off on an extremely bad foot, but over time has become a genuinely good series well worth the investment.

The Sup Forums consensus is that is shit.
The real consensus is that first arc is good, second arc is meh, third arc is DAT ASS and fourth arc is shit.

By fourth do you mean Mother's Rosario?
I wouldn't put it below ALO really.

>cant handle the truth
SAO is great as evident by its success. Most plotholes people bitch about arent even plotholes and have very good answers. Of you hate it so be it, but theres no need to be autistic about hating it.

> asking Sup Forums to give a serious non-sheep like opinion

Are you serious? Sup Forums fags are worse than hipsters, they hate anything that is popular regardless of the quality or not; even if they unironically liked it beforehand.

As for myself yes I do like it, mostly for the feels it has.

tl;dr:
Yes for feels and I hate Sup Forums's sheep

The girls are hot
The action scenes are pretty good
The girls are likable (like Asuna and Yuuki)
The OPs and EDs are god-tier

Miyuki Sawashiro.

You should read some of the non-bait SAO threads in the Archives. Reception to the series is fairly positive in those threads.

If a competent script or world was given the SAO treatment, we'd have the next great classic show.

The problem of course, is that no matter how excellent their execution is, you can't fix a fundamentally broken setting and plot: SAO fails from research and plotting failures all the way back in the original work.

If a competent writer was given the SAO treatment, we'd have at the very least an AOTS contender on our hands.

Of course, that assumes we'll ever see the unicorn that is a well written story with mass appeal.

Its the gameverse im more attarcted too. The girls say cute things, but the game flesh out the points they introduce better than the canon does. Though, Reki is rectifying that has he gets better and with Progressive.

>Can't romance Kirito
You had one job

I wish i had a script or sixth sense that would tell me when you guys post. I like not being the only Yuuki/Sinon/Lis guy.
Argo guy is okay in my book as well.

>I know that the consensus is
Half of SAO threads start out in this vein and you niggers bite the bait every
fucking
time

They always get good later on though thanks to newfags bumping saying how much they hate SAO.

Reki would lynch everyone at Bandai Namco before he would let anyone ruin his OTP

Yuuki is a literal miracle!

Why is this miracle so lewd?

She wants to live life to the fullest and experience many joy's

>Jesus kun
There's no fucking point then

What do you SAOfags think of Fatal Bullet?

Gameplay is fun
the character interaction took a step back from previous games which i'm not happy about
Kureha is best girl

SAO is one of the shows I don't even need to pretend to hate. It's genuinely garbage in every possible aspect. It would be as bad as it is even if had the best fanbase possible

Here's basically what SAO did wrong:
>leaving the death game. Literally the whole point of the show. Without the death game, it's just a bunch if randos running around playing video occasionally
>Not enough character deaths. You're in a death game, how are you going to tell me only 1 main-ish character is going to die
>MC considered the only person that could win the game, given his special skill of dual wielding, even though the game has 10 of these skills that only a single player can get
>heathcliff was a cool character, and it's gay that he was the villain. It would have been a nice contrast to see that kirito wasn't the most OP character in the game
>leaving the game on the 75th floor was asinine. The game was designed to clear all 100 floors to finish it. Heathcliff tells kirito that he was the only person with a skill that could defeat him. If kirito had lost, the game would have been over, since the only person with the necessary skill is dead. If he won, the game still would have been over. Why program 25 more floors if you were going to pull these shenanigans on the 75th floor?
>the AI child that they adopted was a waste of 5 episodes, and a stupid concept
>the harem was unnecessary
>kirito feels broken up about getting all these people killed in the dungeon, yet forgets about his own guild almost immediately

It really sucks since SAO had the potential to be fantastic. They could have been just reaching the 100th floor at this point if they just kept the stories in the first game. It would have been a long, but interesting story. Instead, the writer had to go all "what a twist!" on this series and fucked it all up

>there'll never be an SAO style game that's driven by a Donut Steel, with Persona style dating system where you'll be able to choose 1 guy/girl from the SAO universe and end up married to them by the end of the game.
Feels bad man.
Haremfags are actually subhumans.

Read Progressive.
It's basically the author going back and doing exatly what you're asking for. Re-writing the entire Aincrad arc fully fleshed out (each entire volume of the LN is about 1 floor).

Hopefully they'll get around to animating it in 4-5 years when they're done with the original series.

>the harem was unnecessary
opinion discarded

To begin with, this anime has an excellent story. But they failed to capitalise on it The SAO arc was not bad. In fact, it was pretty good. The romance in the middle was boring but the rest was good. But from the Alfheim Online arc, the story went downhill. It became difficult just to watch the anime.

>Aoi Eir doing the OP for AGGO

Oh shit, is she not a nutcase anymore?

It's a series that genuinely gets better the more of it you consume and it's worst sins are common to any harem anime.
The people who take offense are either people who idolize youtube personalities or people who think all harem anime would be better if they were the mc.

Core gameplay is good, but theres alot that could use some finetuning.

>In October 2016, following prolonged bouts of poor health, Aoi announced an indefinite hiatus from musical activities following a two-day concert at the Nippon Budokan in November 2016. In February 2018, it was announced that she will resume her activities in April 2018.
Probably something we should have seen coming.

>Enjoy
real black swordsman and cute grills.

Hopefully they use just her and LiSA for SAO. Really dont feel Luna Haruna's stuff.

I liked it because I didn't have baby's first isekai, it's popular so it must be saving anime/my favorite youtuber hates it expectations.

Theres something about Strea...

...

I mostly enjoy Kirito and Asuna being cute together

Its gettin a little hot.

What is her endgame?

The end of the game of course.

To give a very intimate hugs under the sheets with the lights off

the absolute mad woman

It's alright. Just edgy contrarians shitting on it to hide the fact they are new. If you think SAO is the worst anime ever it's quite obvious you haven't watched much anime.

Aaaaaaaa how should i respec my build? Sniper sway is killing me, and dualwielding SMGs is amazing. I also want that damn Dainsleif sword as a secondary.

i like Sinon
that's it

Reespectable opinion.

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bad influence

Can't argue with that

Funfact: This is when Cardinal made a copy of Yui and repurposed her into Premiere.
t. My dad works for SAO

Mother's Rosario was great in the anime, I think he's talking about Caliber.

As an SAOfag I really enjoy how Kirito is the viewer's insight into the worlds that Kawahara creates, especially the way they are described in the LNs. Seeing him grow as a writer throughout the books is pretty fun too. I'm also a big sucker for anime with the "willpower trumps everything" trope so theres that too. Also abec's art is fucking great.