It's pretty much obvious at this point that the director is trolling everyone.

He tries so much to showcase everything about the setting and fanservice that he ends up sacrificing all sense of pacing, plot and character development in the process.
Just because some side story in the novel takes place before the important stuff doesn't mean that it makes sense to shove it all in there before we've built an attachment to the characters and their situation.
Instead they had to ruin it all from the get-go by having our bipolar otaku Jesus just running around in completely unrelatable and disjointed situations and helping little girls who are all forced to fall in love with him. Did they really expect that I would care? I hope not.

The more time spent showing me this supposedly original setting that they're so proud of, the less I buy it, with all their cliche personality archetypes and roles. Why would these MMORPG players look and act like typical fantasy characters when their avatars are supposed to represent their real appearances? The merchants, blacksmiths and mercenaries are brawny middle-aged men, heroes and heroines are your typical good-looking and misunderstood teenagers and the villains are ugly psychopaths that's obviously out to murder everyone just because they can. This is the group of people who bought the game day one? As someone said: "SAO cheapens its own setting and turns it into a gimmick. It’s more an RPG than a story about people playing an RPG." There's also no sense of danger whatsoever in the show, despite the immediate threat constantly hanging over them, which I think is unforgivable when the premise initially showed some promise in that regard.

This post was edited by GuZ on Sep 26 2012 06:02am

My thoughts into words...^

You guys are going crazy, if you bitch about this show so much, then why do you watch it?
Just drop it already and you won't have to cry anymore. Just because a show isn't following the plot the whole time doesn't mean you should bitch about it.

what's the hell?!
Magikarp at the first time after what's this?§ GYARADOS I'M SURE§

This episode is canon as well.

I think the side stories coming first were better than just having them be a flashback.
1. It shows why he avoids joining a guild ever again, even as a solo player he will help those in need, and showing when and how he gets his second sword along with it probably being around the time he first got his dual blades skill and this also allowed for her to make an appearance where she wasn't in the novel as her side story came along in volume 2
2. some of those players do those kinda things cause it may be what they did back in the real world and there is much more to the villian than you seem to be thinking and if you go back to one of the side stories with the blacksmith i'm pretty sure she isn't a brawny middle-aged man
3. there is definitely going to be some danger once it gets to the 75th floor boss

it is following the plot the whole time. it is following every story from the light novels put in chronological order.

Yeah I was thinkin that too lol
blatant fan service

2 days

This post was edited by Mokuton on Sep 27 2012 08:11pm