Review for Sword Art Online Part 1

Introduction

I’m venturing out of my comfort zone again. I’ve never really got on with anime about role-playing games. There’s a distinction to be made here between anime about games, and anime based on games. There are plenty of anime, good anime, and even great anime that are based on games, and I have enjoyed shows like Clannad, Disgaea, Gungrave, Fate/Stay Night, Gunparade March, Steins;Gate, Tsukihime, Utawarerumono and many others. And there are plenty of anime out there that, while they aren’t based on games, certainly have gaming roots, or pay homage to games, shows like Elemental Gelade and Gestalt. But by and large, these are stories that are set in the game universe, and don’t get at all meta about it, unless of course they’re winking at the audience.

It’s anime about videogames, especially role playing games that I have shied away from in my time watching this medium. But there is no avoiding Sword Art Online, which has been hailed as the biggest thing since the last biggest thing, the anime to revolutionise the medium, a masterpiece of originality, a show that will break out of its niche and attract fans like never before. The first time I heard of it was when it streamed on Crunchyroll. I read the synopsis and instantly thought of the .hack franchise. So much for originality! Then again, the first time I read about .hack, I thought of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoons I watched as a kid, the last time I actually enjoyed an animation about a role playing game. Maybe it’s time to give this genre another spin.

In the year 2022, Kayaba Akihiko revolutionised the world of gaming by creating the Nerve Gear interface and a genuine virtual environment, the most realistic virtual reality system ever created. The first few attempts to take advantage of the system weren’t great, but that was before Kayaba Akihiko released his own game, Sword Art Online. After a period of beta testing, the first 10,000 copies of the game sold out immediately.


Kirito was one of the lucky beta-testers, and he’s also one of the lucky ones to snag a copy of the game, and he thinks that he’s got a heads up on all the other noobs that will be playing the game from scratch. He gets comfortable, puts on the headset, and enters the world of Aincrad to play Sword Art Online, a revolutionary new massively multi-player online role playing game, which emphasises weapons skills and does away with the magic element. It isn’t long before his skills and sureness are noticed by a new player to the game, and Kirito winds up spending his first few hours teaching Klein the basics. But when the real world calls in the form of hunger, the two find an unexpected problem. The log-out button is missing!

The 10,000 players are all transported to a Colosseum where the figure of the creator, Kayaba Akihiko appears. The game has suddenly turned dangerously real. No one can log out. The only way to escape the game is to beat all 100 levels. If anyone from the outside tries to remove the Nerve Gear interface, the headset will emit a burst of microwave radiation that will kill the player, and even as they learn of this, it transpires that over 200 players have already died in this way. They’re all going to have to play their way out of the game, and it also is revealed that if they die in the game, they’ll die in the real world too. It’s no longer a role playing game, it’s a full on survival game, and as Kirito learns, being a beta tester is no advantage when the rules have been changed.

The first 7 episodes of Sword Art Online are presented on this dual layer Blu-ray from Manga Entertainment. On day of release, you’ll be able to buy it as DVD only, or Blu-ray DVD combi pack.

1. The World of Swords
2. Beater
3. The Red-Nosed Reindeer
4. The Black Swordsman
5. A Crime Within the Walls
6. Illusory Avenger
7. The Temperature of the Heart

Picture

Aniplex US threw everything at Sword Art Online, including disc real estate. They actually put their seven episodes on 2 discs in their limited edition release, whereas Manga Entertainment put them on just one dual layer disc. Still, Manga Entertainment’s release looks pretty fine at 1.78:1 widescreen 1080p. The image is clear and sharp throughout, with the minimum of digital banding and no compression visible to these eyes at any rate.

Sword Art Online has had some serious effort put into its animation. The character designs may be pretty generic for anime, but they are consistent throughout and animated exceptionally well, particularly in the action sequences. There is a lot of detail to the characters and especially the costumes, but the real value comes in this anime’s world design, which given the RPG connection, is rich, lush, and vivid. There is a lot of colour and depth to the backgrounds, and the animation makes strong use of light and shadow detail to establish mood.

The images used in this review are sourced from the PR, and aren’t necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound

You have the choice between PCM 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese with optional translated subtitles, and a player forced signs track. You’ll only see the single subtitle track if you use your player’s remote to access the options, but turn it off, and the signs only track appears as default. This boils down to it being impossible to watch the image without any captioning at all, which is a tad disappointing. This appears to be a Manga authored disc, and so you get the old problem of an inability to show more than one subtitle caption at a time. When you get a confluence of dialogue and on screen text to be translated, the captions flick by at an accelerated pace, and a fast finger on the pause button might be necessary to catch it all.


I went with the Japanese audio, and found it to be a decent enough experience, although the dialogue was a little low in the mix for my liking, especially in the earlier episodes. There was a tendency for speech to be drowned out by background music. Otherwise the actor performances were suited to the characters, and the action sequences were given fair treatment in stereo. I gave the dub a try and found it to be rather mediocre, unexceptional at best, clichéd at worst.

Extras

Sword Art Online’s UK Blu-ray release looks to be authored by Manga Entertainment in house. Certainly the subtitling issues are one tell-tale, the other being a lack of chaptering for the episodes; there’s no skipping credit sequences here. The disc boots up pretty quickly after a single Manga logo to an animated menu screen, and the only extras on the disc are the textless credit sequences.

You’ll take a look at the US Limited Edition release from Aniplex, and weep at the sight of soundtrack CDs, bonus DVDs, booklets, illustrations, artboxes, audio commentaries, bonus animations and web previews. Then you’ll look at the price tag, close to £300 RRP for the series and breathe a sigh of relief. Then you’ll look at our UK release, and consider its RRP of £120 for 25 episodes on barebones discs, where the average 26 episode series on 4 Blu-ray discs in the UK will RRP for around £70, and you’ll have another cry.

Conclusion

Over-priced, over-rated, and over here! Sword Art Online may be the biggest thing to come out of the anime industry in the last few years, but as usual, the more a thing is hyped, the greater the scope there is for disappointment. Sword Art Online certainly has the production values to sell it. It’s got the big budget animation, it looks pretty as the proverbial peach, and the action sequences will elicit dumbfounded grins at the requisite points. And just like the big budget summer blockbusters with which it shares these traits, there’s nothing but cliché and recycled stories simmering away under that shiny lid. And for me, Sword Art Online has more than a few problems with pacing and character development as well, and one whopping great problem.

That problem can be described by what I call the Matrix test, and should be indicative of whether you will appreciate this show more than I. Given this show’s story about people trapped in an online game, it’s a pertinent analogy. When you watched the Matrix, was all that you cared about the computer generated world, did your attention stay riveted on Neo versus Agent Smith to the exclusion of all else? Or, did you devote equal attention to what was happening outside, in the real world, the travails of Dozer and Tank, as they tried to keep the Nebuchadnezzar safe from the machines and make it back to Zion? If you side towards the former, then you’ll be able to watch Sword Art Online without issue. If, like me you side towards the latter, then this show will probably be a total bust.

A brand new virtual reality game, ten thousand players, and the creator shows up to tell everyone that they are trapped inside, unable to escape unless they complete the game. And as this first collection shows, years pass as they try and make it to level 100 without being killed. That’s years in which their bodies are lying comatose in the real world, with VR gear strapped to their heads, irremovable lest the shock kills them. That’s two years in which no one thinks of finding the game creator in the real world, arresting him, and forcing him to safely shut down the game. That’s two years in which no enterprising hacker gets into the game and inserts a cheat code or something to help people escape. And Klein? He’s dead. He may be fighting away in the game, but in the real world, as he mentioned in episode one, he lives alone, no one to find him, or take care of him. Three days after he put on the headset, no matter what happened in the game, his body would have succumbed to thirst. Dead!


You see, that’s why I don’t like shows about RPGs, why I avoided the .hack franchise for as long as I could. Common sense gets in the way of any enjoyment I might have. In some cases the ambiguity of such a situation might be fun. It’s an interesting argument to have after watching the original Total Recall... was Quaid actually on Mars at the end, or did he wind up lobotomised? In this case, it isn’t so compelling, as Sword Art Online is really just a chance to have a dungeons and dragons story and give it a contemporary twist.

Another thing that I don’t appreciate about the show is the pacing. We’re just getting snippets of player Kirito’s life inside the game, with months passing between each episode. Each time we see him, he’s almost a different character, shaped by some major experiences in the interim that we never got to see. Other regular characters like Klein, and the bald guy flit in and out of the background of each episode, but the only linking character for the most part is Kirito, and each episode tells a different story, with a different set of guest characters. That’s with the exception of fellow player Asuna who gets introduced in episode 2, set up as a potential romantic interest for Kirito, and a character of some import, and is then forgotten completely until episode 5, when she starts recurring again and plays more of a significant part in the story.


The first episode sets up the premise, and the second is your typical battle against the end boss episode, which introduces Asuna, and also establishes that the rules of this world aren’t the rules that even the beta-testers signed up for, making the stakes equal for everyone. The third episode is the ‘Christmas episode’, if you call a zombie Santa Claus end of level boss suitably Christmassy. Six months into the game, Kirito gets put through an emotional wringer for twenty minutes. He’s all bright and perky for the next episode where he winds up helping a cute little girl and her mascot. The next two part story sees the return of Asuna, and sees the creators tire of the RPG format already, as they decide instead to have a detective story instead. Someone has apparently died in a safe zone, so Sherlock Kirito and Asuna Watson have to crack the case. This was my least favourite story in the show so far, but at least the one I enjoyed the most closed off the collection, in which Kirito has to help a blacksmith find a special kind of metal ore to make the ultimate sword. The blacksmith Lisabeth is an interesting character, and the relationship she has with Kirito is an entertaining one. This episode also showcases Sword Art Online’s spectacular production values, with some breathtaking sequences.

I did still find this first instalment of Sword Art Online to be a load of pretty nonsense though. Two years trapped in a video game! Since unplugging them would be fatal, that means that their video game consoles will have to be switched seamlessly to an uninterruptible power supply, and that they’ll have to have round the clock nursing care and medical supervision at home. That also means that they’ll have to have flawless broadband connections for years on end. I’m lucky if my broadband connection stays steady for over a month. Even the slightest bit of common sense kills Sword Art Online. It’s a daft anime!