At one point I was trying to get into anime and a friend described the premise of this which I thought sounded good enough. I told myself I liked it. Upon reflection, aside from a few legitimately good moments, it's trash. Real weird trash. Like a full size Statue of David made of Chef Boyardee cans filled with diapers, which is to say I'm not unhappy I saw it, but I think this may not be my genre of art...sword art...online. Wtf am I doing with my life. Shitty rambling reviews apparently.

I was pretty into what it was at first - in essence, a high fantasy take on The Matrix, with people trapped inside a digital World of Warcraft-esque virtual reality and a "if you die inside you die in real life" dynamic. Then the show rushes through that interesting setup and makes some... weird storytelling choices. Some really, really, really, really weird choices. Like... why?

I am basing this entirely off of the first season, and not the one where they're all fairies or whatever. Significant drop in quality at that point. I did like the premise of this a lot, and wish that first season was dragged out through multiple seasons with a slower build-up. And if they wanted to explore a bit afterwards, I think they could have done a better job with the fairy stuff.

Nobody told me, but this is a romantic story. You wouldn't guess that even based on the first few episodes. The romance starts very subtly and quietly develops until it dominates the plot. Very sneaky. Had I known that this is a romance, I might not have started watching it, but I am glad I did. Certainly THE BEST romance I have ever seen. You can never predict where the story will go next. Recommended to every anime fan. Also a good choice if you want something that's both light and exciting.

I liked the original, hated the follow up seasons. The rape subplot came out of nowhere and was unneeded, same with the incest

3 eps

Only watched the first series, nothing after

I know it's not especially good, I know there's a lot of male fantasy issues (lots of cleavage, ass shots & girls falling over the main character), but the show corrects some of those issues as it goes along. It's inconsistent with some odd story arcs, but the good bits are actually very good. The art is wonderful, the music is great, and the action sequences are sensational. It's a light fantasy anime, but sometimes that can be fun. Plus Asuna is lovely.

Couldn't finish the series. Premisse is nice, but too much nonsensical anime stereotype bullshit.

Stopped watching after what I consider the first season. You will know what I mean when you get there.

Essentially a rip-off of .Hack, but where the latter was boring this is just retarded. The protagonist is a laughable mary sue that is supported by a fairly dumb harem. The storytelling is often moronic and pretentious, even worse is that it's inconsistent and hard to break your suspension of disbelief for. I guess this might be a personal beef of mine, but I always hated the premise of series like this - if you die in the game, you die in real life! that trope has always been done poorly

It's good until the fairy part. All the stakes are lowered at that point and it loses what made it interesting at first.

Watched up to the end of the first season, with the fairy bullshit. Not as wretched as its reputation, just not very good either. Typical harem style anime with an over-idealized MC surrounded by hot girls who all want to fuck him almost immediately after meeting him. Plot and character motivations are illogical and don't make sense, in fact neither do the rules of the game itself. Some nice action and music though, whatever that's worth. Overall average at best, possibly below that.

Starts out so good, great even, but once you get past the halfway point, it kind of devolves... Still a lot of fun and it looks really awesome.