I’ve never been sure if SAO would ever be one of the top animes again. In season one, it had a really nice beginning; however, as the story progresses, it suddenly became a harem. I believe that SAO season 1 had a lot of potential if they worked more on the storyline instead of “how cool Kirito is.” For me, it was super intriguing until the parts where it becomes a harem. In my opinion, I think that it would’ve been better if they had just stuck with KiritoXAsuna instead of ALL THE GIRLS.
But in the second season, I’ve always suspected that SAO would make a comeback with GGO. Perhaps it’s due to the amazing art and colors but never would I have known that it would have added ANOTHER girl to the harem. Although I have to admit that the anime had a great storyline and animation, the harem parts makes people lose interest. Thus, season 2 also “ended as a harem.”
Because I had experienced the first two seasons of SAO, I literally had no expectations of Alicization. Due to the fact of ending with a harem in both seasons, it made it lose its credibility of producing a good anime (for me of course!). It led me to have an impression that “SAO is only interesting in the first few episodes and will get boring later on” I also asked many other people and they seem to agree with me.
Having the mindset of “SAO is boring” led me think that all of the further seasons will be boring. To be honest, the only reason I watch SAO is because of Asuna or Kirito. However, to those who are reading this very long review of SAO, I strongly recommend you guys to give SAO another chance. Did I? Yes! And was it interesting? Absolutely!
I finally realized that I shouldn’t have judged Alicization based on the previous seasons. This time, it actually had a good great story! Back in season 1 and 2, many of the fights were meaningless. The animators just added fighting scenes to make the characters more appealing. However, in Alicization, the fight scenes helped the story progress and made sense. Therefore, Alicization is actually pretty good and I suggest that everyone should give it a shot.
Anime Critic 