Trapped in a virtual gaming world for years, ten thousand players must survive or die.
What They Say:
In the near future, a Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG) called Sword Art Online has been released where players control their avatars with their bodies using a piece of technology called: Nerve Gear. One day, players discover they cannot log out, as the game creator is holding them captive unless they reach the 100th floor of the game’s tower and defeat the final boss. However, if they die in the game, they die in real life. Their struggle for survival starts now…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With a slew of summer shows that hit this past season, one that I ended up not taking on was Sword Art Online .Having been watching Accel World and getting that whole near future virtual gaming anime series thing there, I wasn’t too inclined to pick up another series of that nature even if it was from the same author. What a mistake that was, as I’ve gone through the first thirteen of the twenty-five episode run in the last two days. The series, from A-1 Pictures, is based on the light novel series by Reki Kawahara with illustrations by Abec. The novels began in 2009 and there are ten of them out so far as well se several manga iterations of different concepts, including a 4-koma book that has to be adorable.
Sword Art Online takes us to the world of 2022 where virtual reality gaming has hit a new threshold with some fantastically wonderful worlds that can now be created. A lot of this has come through the use of NerveGear products which provide for a full on connection to this world so you experience things in a great way when it comes to the visuals and touch interaction. While there have been some very popular games before, the latest one to arrive is Sword Art Online, which has a limited ten thousand copies edition starting things off after a beta period. Within that beta period, Kirito spent a lot of time in there and became quite familiar with the world. With the full release, everything’s reset and now it’s on to a much larger and more engaging world because of all of the other players. Not that he deals with the much since he’s a solo player.
The launch day for the game sets up things beautifully though as the ten thousand players get in, get gaming and enjoy the fun of it all, old and new alike. Unfortunately, something more sinister is going on as the games creator, Kayaba Akihiko, has designed things so that the players cannot remove their gear or logout of the game in any way. If the gear comes off in the real world, they die. If they die in the game, they die in the real world. And in an amusing twist, when Kayaba reveals all of this to the players in the Town of Beginning’s square, the program scans their real world faces and body types from the data entered and alters their in-game appearance to be the same thing. Suffice to say, there’s a few gender issues in there and not everyone is muscular or whisper thin.
What the players are challenged to is to climb the one hundred floors there are in the game, starting at level one where they are now, and face each of the bosses along the way. When they conquer the game, they’ll be able to return to reality. Knowing how the game works, Kirito ends up going off on his own in order to deal with character leveling and growth away from the mass of other players that will overeat the lower levels first. Being a beta player has given him an up on things, but there’s also a bit that has him labeled as a cheater, though I didn’t find that to be all that clear. The combination of those two things has him labeled as a beater, someone that the regular players dislike because he uses his knowledge and skills to advance quickly and on his own.
And that’s one of the things that really got me about the show as it dealt with the game angle. With everyone trapped inside, time does pass. In fact, over the first thirteen episodes, the real world progresses by about two years. Everyone inside the game has to live their full, daily lives and move forward. We don’t see all of it as it skips months at a time sometimes, but the growth is measurable by the positions we see them in, floor placement and other aspects. Giving us this passage of time keeps it from feeling too compressed by a huge amount. But it also shows us one of the really interesting parts in how the people in the game shift to almost forgetting about the real world at times and just living in this fantasy style game and doing what needs to be done to survive. There are things you have to ignore, such as how their bodies are being taken care of in the real world, but the majority of it is just fascinating to watch.
I also really liked that we see a good shift between groups being formed, guilds coming up and disappearing and the change in the dynamic from powerful players to those that want to just do the skill based gaming, such as smithing and so forth. We get the powerful players that take part on the front lines where they work to map out the areas, deal with the bosses and push them all along to higher levels. Each new jump in floor brings us a variety of new creatures and new lands that expands it beautifully. And I also really liked the use of the player killers in here, kept small but cunning and coming at unusual times, with the Laughing Coffin guild that factors into events. They don’t dominate but they have some very key moments.
Sword Art Online gives us a variety of stories as it moves forward with Kirito as its center, showing us different floors, ways of surviving and time spent both alone and with groups. His time with one guild reminds him why he typically plays alone. Another instance when things get higher has him forced into a guild. There are some very fun dungeons that are explored and the cast grows but isn’t always kept around. And characters do die. Several hundred died when the trouble started as they were forced out of their NerveGear and a few thousand more die in the years since from fighting the monsters, bosses and the Laughing Coffin group itself. It’s diverse and thoroughly engaging, especially if you’ve ever played games like this before. Having been a GM myself for an online game company, I know this touches on only so many things, but what it does do is to really make this work very well while keeping you engaged with it.
In Summary:
Sword Art Online really surprised me as I got into it because it wasn’t quite what I was expected based off the little that I had read. With some gorgeous designs and atmosphere to many of the levels, this is an exciting and fun show to watch, especially in marathon form as you see the time advance quickly and the changes are more apparent. With Kirito as a lead, we get the solo player done well without him being evil or completely antisocial. Introducing a lot of things along the way as players are spending years trapped in this virtual game, the adjustments are really fun to watch and it showcases a lot of options and growth. I’d certainly be interested in other aspects of this, such as whether people on the outside can watch what’s going on and some more nods towards the real world in general, but the focus here is on these players and what they have to do not only to survive but to win. With the first half out of the way, watching the show weekly from here on out will be hard but worth every waiting minute.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.