Anime: Accel World

While probably everything is said and done when it comes to Accel World, I nevertheless want to give a quick review about this generally disappointing story mess.

Art & Animation: 8/10 - "Beauty does forgive intellectual shortcomings."

It sure does look nice! Animations are tidy, characters cutely drawn and the sceneries effortlessly hold up against other shounen-productions.

Sound: 8/10 - "I may have a nice voice..."

Good soundtrack and convincing performances in general. Like in my previous two reviews opening and ending themes are not taken into equasion.

Story: 4/10 - ... but when I open my mouth only garbage comes out."

I truly am a sucker for VR-plots and scenarios (such as L.A.I.N., ./hack, Log Horizon and of course Sword Art Online, for which I seem to be the only person here to have written a generally favorable review), so it didn't take Accel World long to grab my interest and suck me into its VR-abyss. Thanks to its nicely presented and executed premise about social isolation of the nerdiest of gamers Accel World seemingly lays an interesting foundation for the reminder of the show.
Sadly, the general feeling of otaku-euphoria fades more than quickly once the viewer realizes how incredibly dumb and nonsensical the plot turns out to be and how little emphasis is given to proper story development. While the first half of the show is somewhat predictable, yet tolerable, the latter half of the show, where an overly annoying antagonist (see below) and more nonesensical plot twists triumph over basic common sense, ruins every hope that a reasonable viewer still might have had. The script is simply garbage and culminates in a generally disappointing, out-of-context kind of ending that never does justice to its interesting concepts and ideas. Also, the slapstick is really, really bad in this one.

Character: 4/10 - "The good, the bad and the ugly. Mostly the bad."

All main characters are highly stereotypical and for the most part tolerable (except for the queen which makes no sense at all). The same can't be said about the few antagonists of the show who, in short, are an insult to basic human intelligence. I've rarely been annoyed as much by one particular character in an anime, so kudos I guess for that achievement.

Value: 5/10 - "08/15"

Okay to watch, okay to forget.

Enjoyment: 5/10

I liked the fights and I liked the general production values. Since I'm a true aficionado of the VRMMO-subgenre, it pains me to say that this show is so much worse than it could have been. In contrast to SAO this is certainly not worth "the hype", if that is even the right word for it. For fans of the genre it's worth a run, but that's about it.

Overall: 6 out of 10

2014-10-21 - Shadowbroker

Review
So, Accel World is the new hyped show of the last season as I was initially presented. It supposedly has an awesome videogame-based plot, with futuristic concepts of technology and daily life merged with internet. Hell, this is exactly what made Ghost in the Shell such a great show! A superb premise, a virtual world, always connected society, escapism, and lots of psychological questioning about how society could live up in a future where everyone is part of a big-powerful-world-wide network. Let's check this surely! I've even read about the protagonist being different! Wow! I'm definetly in... wait! wait! Same writer as Sword Art Online? Hm... suspicious. The staff has some people who worked in Code Geass and Guilty Crown? Well, Code Geass was certainly very good, but Guilty Crown was just a terrible rip-off overwhelmed by fanservice. What to expect here then?

I'll be quick: nothing. Don't expect anything. Accel World is the worst rip-off of good ideas in these last seasons as far as I'm concerned (altough I skipped most shows from 2010 and 2011). It tries to mix action with comedy, drama, ecchi, fake psychological play, romance, and everything else that could possible please horny teenagers. Sadly, it never succeeds in anything. It's animation is good, but even the art style is terrible and generic. A poor work by Sunrise, not a surprise considering Gundam AGE in this season as well.

Accel World is the tale of Arita Haruyuki, a coward, stupid, annoying, shy, egoist, jerk, and unrealistic boy who avoids reality at all costs because he is fat and bullied (oh, and not because of my early remarks about him). He is playing as a pig in a virtual game as he does everyday, fleeing from reality, when he meets the most popular cute chick in the school and she offers him a new game and the ability to nearly stop time. But to keep this he'll need to fight within the game.

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1. The Virtual World
   So, what about the virtual world and the game? Well, it can look complex at first, but is very very simple. In fact, is barely used by the show besides as an aesthetic stuff. Nothing about the network, futuristic society, problems born from such invasive technology... nothing about anything meaningful or deep is ever touched. The characters just log in the game, talk through their links while just standing motionless, do some fighting, and log out. There's nothing really special here besides the "accelerate" stuff, which is a very real-world-breaking stuff. A Time Stop spell? Wow, they created this and teenagers are using it pass tests and have fun with hot chicks? Seriously? With such technology the world would be a completely different place, but besides the virtual world, Accel World's setting looks pretty normal.
   
   Drugs? Addicting game?
   Every time Arita stops time (or accelerate his actions, whatever) he consumes one point. He starts with a limited amount of points, and to gain more he needs to defeat other players in the Burst Link game. Even if we ignore the fact that stupid teenagers have access to such technology, this is clearly a drug, an addiction. The show never even mentions this, it never try to discuss the fact that the whole Burst Link game is an addicting drug that is corrupting kids. The character needs to beat others to get his points, he doesn't earn more from doing something good, is just a reward for being good in the virtual combat. So, not only this shows gives a stupid message with the protagonist (see below), but also has a bad example of drugs-reward system that no one ever discuss in the show. It's not like I'm willing to discuss how bad or good drugs are, but if the show put such message in it, it needs to be explored, informed, or at least mentioned! But no, let's just go with fights and fanservice.
   
   Poor Script
   Guilty Crown came to mind while watching this. That show was the first time I forced myself to fully watch a show after failing dozens of other previous ones. There we had the most absurd amounts of coincidences, stupid events, and anything imaginable for the script to bring the desired outcome. The protagonist is facing a foe that he cannot overcome? Okay, let's give him a power up out of nowhere! He needs another cute girl? Let's throw one to him right away! Some character is struggling for motivation or lacks a reason to act? Nah, let's just make she magically find all the answers to her life and realize something completly bizarre so we can move the plot forward! Well.. this is exactly what happens in Accel World as well... the same terrible trash. You never have a preparation or hints about upcoming events, they pop just because they can.
   
   Fanservice
   Again, probably I'll need to let this kind of issue pass, because most shows today are so terrible overwhelmed by fanservice, shy girls, pants, everything that is perverted but childish and stupid. All of that with girls that look like 12-year olds, or at least act like those. Accel World is filled with this, mainly because there's not enough content story-wise to fill all the episodes, so be prepared.
   
   A fallen giant
   Sunrise has fallen low in terms of art direction here. This suffer from the same problems as Gundam AGE. Accel World can perform some pretty neat animation when it wants to, very fluid, nicely merged with backgrounds and CG elements, and an overall colorization that is fine. Sadly, the art style is simply terrible. I felt like I was watching Shakugan no Shana, or Haruhi, or Dragon Crisis, or Index, or anything released these last years. But I'm starting to let this pass, otherwise I won't be watching anime anymore. What I can't let slide is the protagonist design. What gives? I know he is supposed to be a chuby guy, but he doesn't fit in the show at all. He looks borrowed from a Cartoon Network show and not japanese animation! It's like they merged Zero no Tsukaima with Dexter's Laboratory, and that's terrible (not Dexter's Laboratory, I mean the combination). Aside from that we have some creepy mecha/robot design, they look awful, and unlike characters, they don't merge that nicely with the background and look very toyish. To make it even worse, this mecha/robot design is supposedly based on the "subconscious" of the characters that play them... this is what they wished? Wow, almost all the cast has very bad tastes I think.
   
   Your light novel cast
   I don't think there's much to say here. This is completely nuts. The protagonist destroys the show on its own. He is no different then previous ecchi protagonists, only more exaggerated. Making him fat is just a very clever trick for newcomers. There's no sense in his actions and consequences, he takes the dumb protagonist from ecchi shows to levels never thought before. He is dumb, selfish, his design doesn't fit the show, yet he gains power, is rewarded, and attract girls. He doesn't even evolve in the show, he remains the dumb guy for every episode, he doesn't even manage to truly understand the feelings of the girls around him.
   
   But not only that, the rest of the cast is terrible as well. The long-haired Shana... I mean, Kuroyuki-hime, the childhood friend with a crush, the newcomers, the loli among lolis, and even a fuc*ing maid. Yet this isn't a slice-of-life show or a character-drive tale, where we have episodes dedicated for each characters to develop them and their interactions with the protagonist, this is just an shounen action fest, full of nonsensical combats with badly designed robots/avatars/mechas/whatever, so the cast is strictly tied to their initial personalities and design, which means they are pretty much awful. They don't serve even as comical relief, they are just plain terrible fanservice casques.
   
   The Harem
   Arita starts as a pig. This was supposed to be a comical view of how low and stupid he was. That's ok, I would enjoy a show that makes jokes about the protagonist. But ha! We don't have jokes about him. The show tries to take him seriously when it's impossible to do so. What we have here is a terrible protagonist and all his actions brings consequences that doesn't make much sense. This appears to be the problem of the writer, as Kirito (from Sword Art Online) has this same issue. And yet another issue caused by this is that somehow, this ugly fat guy who always act as selfish, never care about the feelings of his friends, only yells and hides, and do nothing of substance, magically manages to attract all girls around him, and not any girl, the cute ones, even the most popular girl from school! Is this supposed to be a message to all chubby boys? A message telling that someday, the hot girl will just have a crush on you regardless of how ugly you are, how stupid you act, or how selfish you behave? Yeah? Nice message. I'll just stand here and wait to be overwhelmed by cute girls in my workplace as well!
   
   A two-hit combo
   Well... again (like in SAO), the author wastes a good premise in a bunch of pointless episodes filled with fanservice, gaming termination to attract unawares, a plot that makes no sense, and an execution that reforces a common thinking that many people outside japan share: cartoons are for kids, and animes are cartoons. Ah, and it doesn't give us a real ending as well, just an open finish for a very likeable second season of this stuff.
   

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Comments
Oh man. This is my second try to watch a terrible anime. I've left Accel World in my pile, waiting for it to finish and watch it in a single go, but that proved to be impossible. In the end it took about three weeks of random sessions to watch it fully, and I can say that perhaps Guilty Crown has a worthy challenger. Accel World just mix everything that ruins a good show for me. It's flooded with nonsensical harem stuff, destroys a great initial idea, builds dozens of great possibilities but approaches only the most stupid ones, has a protagonist that is completely unbearable, shy girls, tsunderes, poor comedy, lame mecha design, horrible script coincidences, script immunity... nothing can be saved here. I'll admit I fast-forwarded a few episodes in the middle and late parts, something that is probably a first in all my years of watching good and shitty animes. Why is this thing hyped? Well... I'll be left with this question as I did with Haruhi Suzumiya, Soul Eater, Gurren Laggan, Sword Art Online, Clannad, etc. Unlike those shows I don't think I'll rewatch this to better understant the reasoning behind people liking it.

Just to inform people. I don't usually watch shows that don't amuse me in the first episodes, and before Guilty Crown I never even gave second chances to these shows. So there may be worse things than this around, but I probably haven't watched it fully.

Accel World is yet another series that starts strong but fails to muster enough momentum to keep going. There are definitely some good points to this show but equally many, if not more, negative points. If anything, the series generates some serious feelings from viewers if the other reviews are an indication of anything.

So what is it? It's a futuristic setting where a computer is essentially connected to your brain through a neck bracelet, think of Google's Project Glass except the glasses are in your mind. This allows everyone constant connections to the web and, importantly, the ability to "dive" into a virtual world- very similar to the Matrix but with a much less painful wireless connection. Our protagonist, being a South Park derivative character, isn't worth much in the real world and so has become an expert in the virtual world. He is soon approached by what must be one of the only reasons why I'd recommend watching this show, Kurohime, who offers him a chance to take the red pill.

I'm fascinated by futuristic, technology-centric settings, and this is no exception. However, this show is plagued by cheap plot tricks, a protagonist who makes Yukiteru from Mirai Nikki look like a hero, and arcs that are painful to watch and take forever to finish. If you're into fantasy/futuristic-based shonen action series, then this might be fun. If you're looking for serious relationships or a mature, well-executed storyline, this is not for you. If your willing to put up with the above shortcomings, welcome to the Accelerated World.

Animation:
The animation quality in Accel World is quite good. Colors are vibrant, battles are fast paced, and effects are everywhere. This isn't your run-of-the-mill cheap animation. I was very impressed with the innovative heads-up UIs though still question why one still needs to use their hands if it's all in ones brain. Overall, the series does a great job in immersing the viewer in very interesting environments. As for character designs, I guess the series was trying to be unique with piggy but... man is he an eyesore. And the thought that Kurohime would choose the lard-ball over everyone else... it's really setting some weird expectations for guys. Luckily, there are a wide variety of female characters to satisfy all fetishes ranging from tsunderes to bookworms and from lolis to maids. Despite the overwhelming amount of supporting characters, all the "important" ones are distinguishable.

As for battles, the majority of them take place in the virtual world so "pain" is felt though we are spared blood (though amputations, beheadings, etc. of metal frames is very common- think FMA). There are a lot of special moves and abilities so expect some pretty cool graphics. Choreography is good but not brilliant, ecchi is vaguely present though (luckily) not a key trait.

Sound:
Accel World uses some pretty nice electronic-based songs for the OP/EDs (including big names such as Kotoko and Altima (SNS Final anyone?). The BGM likewise follows this theme with some electronic themes as well; there are some gems hidden between the other more-forgettable tracks.

As for VA cast, I'm honestly surprised the protagonist of DxD could sound like such a wimp so I guess props to Yuuki Kaji for doing too good of a job. There are some pretty big names voicing some of the supporting roles but the real star is Sachika Misawa. If you haven't read her profile yet I recommend you do, she has amazing talent given her age.

Story:
Accel World has a pretty intricate story with a lot of details, you won't really fully understand the setting until you've finished half a dozen episodes. However, do be aware that this is not a finished product, while many plot elements are introduced many are not resolved. Yes, like Hagure this is another case of "wait till season 2 to find out".

However, Accel World does do a slightly better job of entertaining through the season. It starts out as a chaotic mess as Piggy's reality is completely turned upside down. Unfortunately, as things unravel, the series loses its pacing and decides to throw in random twists and inexplicable situations to keep the viewers interested (these fail miserably). This unfortunate turn is capped by a final arc so sour and off-putting that I really almost stopped watching. While there is a resolution, it is by no means satisfactory.

They really had a chance to make this one great, but unfortunately they did not deliver. Your only hope is to enjoy Kurohime. Hopefully we'll have better luck with Sword Art Online (by the same author).

Character:
This is a hard one as this series has some of the best characters I've seen a while, and a handful of the worst characters I've ever seen. Kurohime and the short but blissful appearances of Fuuko work magically to cancel out some of the tragically weak characters. Perhaps it's because these are really the only mature characters in an entire show filled with illogical, childish characters who hold on to pointlessly stupid ideologies. Really, if Japan continues to promote characters like Haruyuki... their youth really are doomed.

As for development, there really isn't much as relationships are quickly established early in the series- and nothing much changes from that point on. I believe there's some point to the Brain Burst program, but no one will truly understand why until the next season. Until then, it's anyone's guess.

Value:
This show truly had some unique ideas (who wouldn't want superhero-like reflexes?), some of which break all know laws of physics; but those aside it's an intriguing watch that raises philosophical questions. Unfortunately, my thinking highs are almost always interrupted by the throbbing sense that everyone other than Kurohime is an absolute idiot. While some aspects of the show are truly memorable and interesting, there are others that I would rather never see again. Accel World is an interesting concept that ultimately fell victim to a fat piggy and poor execution. Here's to hoping for a better season two.

Accel World is a shounen fighting anime with futuristic VR fighting game setting. It also has light ecchi/harem elements.

Art & Animation: 8/10
The visuals, as for most 21st century animes, are the strongest point of the show. Character and background art is great, and fighting game world and characters are neatly designed too, yet only moderately well drawn and animated and lack the visual perfectionism this show's real world has. This is a letdown, as 60-70% of the events are spent in the gaming world. On the other hand, game world avatars' lower quality bar allows them for more movement while real world parts contain a lot of still slide scenes with talking that does not even involve moving mouth.
Because future.

+ Nice visuals
+ Superb real world character and background quality

- Virtual world more modest in animation quality
- More still images in real world scenes to make up for more work on them

Sound: 8/10
Fine, voice actors are okay, op songs are nice.

Story: 4/10
Okay, so the setting starts with introducing main hero in despair with a deus ex-able solution that could change his life - a game that alters real world time flow. However, there's danger involved if you want to have and use this cybernetic power, and that is the cruel ruleset of the game itself which puts you in a constant fight for power and survival in digital world.

The first few episodes are about this, and are decently interesting, yet the plot soon kills both of its adrenaline elements:

a) The game starts off as a battle royale for time stop points where dog eats dog, yet the danger is overridden asap by introducing safety pillows: main hero gets a hax ability, there turns out to be newbie friendly helpers who don't let anybody go out of points and there's even mobs who drop points instead of players.

b) - the game's power useage in real world is used ONLY for introduction of the story, despite the many interesting and dangerous ways it could be abused, and everyone concentrates on their in-game pvp drama instead.

Let me get this straight.
You're given a genuine ZA WARUDO power, yet it comes packaged with a MMO. What will you do with it? Steal all the muffins? Flip all skirts? Kill Jotaro?! Take over the world!?!? But of course not, you'll spend all your time playing the mumorpuger, cus it's a mumorpuger not taking away your real world time!!! ZOMG, right!? And that's what EVERYONE does with it, except for cheating with it during exams on a daily basis.



- - -

So the anime now starts to focus on pvp fights, yet there appears another problem: it's stuck between the cliches. Namely, shounen and ecchi. The show kinda features something original that would call for, say, not so stereotypical anime characters and behaviors, yet they are afraid to move away from them, thus leaving us with some hard to swallow plot twists and elements, for example:

-> Most of the mmo gamers in real life are all gorgeous girls. YEAH RIGHT. You'd wish.
-> Has harem elements like many of the girls flirting with the fat geek protagonist, even though it does not fit too well with the plot.
-> If the hero would win straight out, he ALWAYS will start to preach to opponent instead of making a last blow, thus creating unneeded critical situations all of the time. Many of the plot twists would not even happen if he or his best friend would just make another hit RIGHT AWAY and be done with it.

So, overall:

+ Has decent introduction
+ Course of events is logical, despite some plotholes

- Many minor plotholes regarding game world
- Unnecessary harem elements in some episodes
- Full of shounen cliches
- Most gamers are beautiful girls - as if. (similar problem in Sword Art Online as well)

Character: 7/10

I am not having trouble with characters as far as this anime goes. It is mostly because their actions and reasons behind them make sense, which sometimes might positively surprise you, considering that the show runs upon two generic cliches (again, those were shounen and ecchi.)

Hariyuki - The main character - fat geek with issues about his short height and girth. I found him to be a loveable protag, more than just for the fact that he's not just another brown spiky haired faceless guy. He's also more extravert compared to the usual Japanese protag, and his shyness with girls and not understanding how could anybody like him has a background to it.

Snow Princess - I guess she's attracted to the protag because of her own inferiority complex, as it's hinted she initially wasn't so good looking or popular, maybe even fat too at some point (tho it's never shown), thus seeing Hariyuki as the kind of man that her ugly "self" would deserve, and I think she's been rejecting good looking boys for the same reason. The "someone like me" thing is real and I've seen it happen in real life, also from personal experience in earlier years.

Hariyuki's best friends - Taku and Chiyu - both trustworthy companions in the end, however always staying outside the main spotlight. I would have wished for more character development there, as it was quite shallow, especially for Taku.

Little red-haired girl - forced character for the harem setting, I did not like that.

Antagonists - meh, cliche. Except for the last guy who was really a rotten soul. Kudos for whoever can design a bad guy so bad you wanna beat the shit out of him, it does not happen too often.

+ Likeable protagonist
+ Several memorable characters
+ Some well designed bad guys
+ Characters make reasonable decisions and actions

- ...Except when in shounen battle
- Some cliche characters as well
- Not enough development for some characters

Value: 5/10

It's easy to watch it once but there's not much rewatch value, mostly because of the bland and unmemorable battles. Also no historical value.

Enjoyment: 7/10

I must say that Accel World holds enough entertainment value to be a likeable watch for many viewer generations, as it's not too offensive nor going that far with the few ecchi scenes. Yet the greatest flaw this anime holds is that it's BASED on combat, and there's a lot of it, but it's bland. The choreography is completely lacking.

Now, if we look at GOOD examples for shounen combat, there's plenty in non-filler Bleach, mostly earlier episodes, One Piece, even the good old Fist of the North Star. The old Jojo OVAs were awesome. Now that's thrill, now that's how you introduce bad guys, how you make feel for 'em. But Accel World is more like Gundam Unicorn in after Ep 1, just a lot of budget in animated shiny stuffs quickly twirling before your eyes but it's not as exciting as it could be.

Overall: 6.5
There's a lot of minor drawbacks but it's not bad. Chances are that if you like shounen or if you are into gaming, you might find yourself enjoying this anime. :smile:

Accel World presents an intriguing premise that expands to all sorts of metaphysical and psychological concepts regarding the meaning of life, and the pursuit of happiness. In the hands of an incompetent writer, though, it devolves into pandering videogame nerds while hardly offering scant substance of value. All you get is a mediocrity that doesn’t take itself seriously, contradicts its own themes mere minutes into the narrative, and wastes all its promising elements on superficial entertainment. Even worse than that, despite constantly claiming to be better than the author’s other work, Sword Art Online, it failed to garner the same widespread acclaim by the exact same demographic it panders to.

SCRIPT

The story unfolds in a future epoch where people are given neurolinks soon after they are born. With them they have wireless access to the internet for sending and receiving messages, keeping notes or looking for information without actually reading or writing anything on paper. Practically, they all have a virtual world in their heads, which appears as pop-up windows in front of them and only to them. You thought seeing a guy talking to thin air because he has a hands-free cell phone is weird? Wait to see a guy who seems to read and write while looking at seemingly nothing.

The protagonist is a dork whose is ridiculed and bullied by the other students for being short and fat. For that reason he finds comfort in an online game, where he constantly escapes from reality. His life takes a momentous turn when (drum roll for contrived twist) the hottest chick in school grants him access to a fighting game, where you can accelerate a thousand times faster than normal. At that game he has to prove his worth or be thrown out. The reward for the top players is to be in command of the online world, and possibly to find some sort of existentialist meaning behind its creation if you manage to reach the level cap. While this premise holds promise on paper, its execution completely fails at everything.

1. The setting of a wireless world, as elaborate as it seems at first, ends up being used only superficially.
- It’s there only for dressing up videogames. You hardly see them doing anything more than sending a few messages ethereally before they switch to options for playing videogames.
- It’s there for cheap erotic humour. For example there is the option to share private information and applications with others through short wired connections. In the hands of the makers though it became nothing more than a sleazy way for people to assume you have a girlfriend, or an excuse to drop on a girl like you are about to have sex with her.
- No elaboration is given regarding how they control what they say without talking. How do their inner thoughts don’t mix in with what they superficially want to say? If someone has impure thoughts for a girl (something the hero does) how does he filter it out when it’s close to telepathy?
- It ends up being an excuse to save money in animation. They just stand still without moving their mouths when they talk via linking instead of being in a cool virtual environment.
- There is absolutely no security against hacking in an otherwise hi-tech world where everybody has wireless access to it all the time. Many use the videogame to freeze normal time and cheat in school exams and sports by “checking out” the answers or the moves of the opponent. And nobody ever questions, doubts, looks into that, or has some sort of protection against such tactics.
- Basic uses of technology are never used despite the hi-tech setting. Recording discussions for example. It is so easy to do it today so it will be child’s play to do it in a few decades. If you can record a guy that is threatening you and you don’t do it, you are just not living in your era.

2. Information regarding exposition of setting and characters is offered through the most boring way imaginable, which is hardly acceptable with the technology they have in their hands.
The basic method all writers use in order to flesh out story and characters is to show them on screen whenever possible. If they are really lazy, they have a few characters sitting on a table and talking about stuff without ever showing us anything. In this anime they do the latter and they don’t even bother to move their mouths. It’s absurd to settle for that when they have the technology to show anything they want in their minds. They can easily show to someone flashbacks of their memories or they can replay recorded events. Instead of that they stand still like it’s a picture drama. As if that wasn’t enough, in the game they all wear helmets so you never know how they feel. They look like lifeless puppets instead of people.

3. Shitty plot twists and asspulls.
- Imagine being able to reach to an epiphany without any sort of foreshadowing or deduction procedure. The fat guy magically knows the real reason the girl chose him for the game or finds out who the other stalking player is with absolutely no explanation. And that black king chick just has a hunch that by destroying the virtual world she will find the meaning of life. They jump to conclusions!
- Things suddenly happen for the sake of happening like a guy you barely saw in the show trying to kill you out of nowhere with a car, but after the accident nobody cares about that. Or being thrown 6 floors down by an attack and all by accident you end up in a room where an important person is in.
- Sudden power ups exactly when you need them, and being miraculously saved at the last second by someone else? Bring it on. Screw tactics.

4. Fillers.
Because that is what you resort to when you don’t have enough material to fill a full season. And make sure to add as much fan service as possible before you throw in a convenient solution as well as amnesia. This way you can make it seem like it never happened.

CAST

5. The protagonist takes the dorkness of his stereotype to a whole new level.
- Rather than recycle yet another iteration of Generic Slim Japanese Guy, this one is very short and very fat. A typical show would use this body type for a comic relief character but in this case the comic relief “is” the main hero. As original as that sounds, he is still a big failure of a protagonist and barely more interesting than all the rest of his brood.
- He looks like a meatball with eyes and a mouth, and the only one who is so cartoony compared to all other characters. Even his virtual avatar is a goofy little pig. He is always scared, crying, yelling, and running away like a total pussy. He also hates reality and escapes it by playing videogames. He is always passive to everything that happens. He never takes initiative and only runs after people who force upon him their issues. That makes him even lamer. Even the videogame was forced upon him by a hot chick. Thanks for not trying to do something yourself, dork. Just wait for an unrealistic harem girl to jump in your life to give you a shot at it. The only people who may like such lame attitude are those who are fat, gamers, and cry-babies. The rest will hate everything about him right away.
- And despite all this dorkness, he has a dozen hot chicks being madly interested in him. And typically, he is crying and yelling and running around panicked. Instead of appreciating their kindness he is acting like a complete jerk or is completely oblivious to the feelings of a girl. What is so attractive that makes him so hot to all the girls? The answer is nothing; he is wishful thinking for all the losers out there who want a lame guy who gets all the girls without doing anything to deserve it. This also trashes the whole theme of the show, since it makes reality to feel like a stupid harem videogame when it’s supposed to be about a guy hating reality for being too harsh. It would be fine if he would get all the girls in a virtual game where he is doing everything right. Instead of that you get a worthless fat jerk who has his own harem in real life just because.

6. The far-fetched presentation goes on by having the person who gave him access to the game being the most beautiful girl in the school. Her motivations make absolutely no sense.
As expected from the people who offered us porn dolls such as Inori and C.C., characters who get rewritten anyway it suits the plot every 2 episodes, we get this bimbo with an equally slutty uniform and a brain that is virtual. Meaning, it doesn’t really exist.
- She has the hots for the protagonist because he is very good at videogames. Ok, don’t mind at all how he is crying all the time like a girl and looks like a meatball with eyes.
- She wastes who knows how many months in trying to be one of the top players in the game and when the rest ask for a truce she just backstabs them all and runs away because she felt like it.
- She has this hunch that if she gets to meet the secret developer of the game, the meaning of life will be revealed to her. Just because of a hunch! It’s just a videogame you dumb broad; there is nothing more to it!
- She has another hunch that another player is going to blackmail her in the game. For that reason she is running away from a guy with half her levels when she can otherwise smash him to bits. She instead uses the protagonist to go spy on someone she can simply confront herself.
- She constantly risks her well-being to protect the protagonist. Although it can be excused as being in love with him, she never seems to have enough speed or power to save both of them and just deliberately lets herself get the hit intended for the other guy. That is a direct contradiction of her supposed vigilance.
- Later in the story she just turns into a walking wet dream by being just a bimbo in a swimsuit who doesn’t even fight anymore.

7. And then we have the other chick in the show, who is the typical childhood friend who has the hots for you but you don’t get it. She makes no sense either.
- Was she born with that damn head accessory? She always has it on, no matter where she is, what she wears, or how old she becomes.
- She is so in love with the dork hero to the point of making his best friend her boyfriend.
- She goes berserk after she sees him with another girl, although she cheats on him with his best friend.
- She acts like a complete slut to him, as if she wants to make him horny and jealous. But at the same time, she only sees him as a friend. Make up your mind, bitch!
- She goes completely insane after she finds out her love interests exploited her, and trashed her trust and feelings. But she forgives them immediately after they buy her some ice cream. Cheap slut!
- Later on she betrays them all by getting high because of how important she becomes in the game. She even teams up with their worst enemy for not much of a reason. Cow!
- And then double crosses even their worst enemy without telling her friends beforehand, so they can at least prepare better. And they just forgive her. Right…

8. And then we have the token loli of the show; an elementary kid which also makes no sense.
- She organizes this really complicating, time-consuming, high-failure-probability, effort-costly plan, where she pretends to be the protagonist’s cousin, fakes his mother’s messages, and is even willing to seduce him, bathe with him, and even take his virginity. The pretext for her elaborate ruse? Just so she can ask him to help her beat a cosmic threat in the game. DUH!
- What does anyone think would have happened if she had revealed a cosmic threat is about to destroy the virtual world? He would have agreed to help her without this convoluted plan, just for the sake of protecting the virtual world he loves to escape to.
- Later on she is revealed to have a superpower she keeps secret from everyone. Technically an asspull, since she never used it while her life was threatened. She otherwise had no trouble to teach it to others when the show was in need of a power up. Because of this secret, her actions up to that point made no sense.

VISUAL AESTHETICS

9. Not even the videogame, the very main attraction of the whole show, is impressive.
Despite trying to look all cool and dangerous, in practice it is quite silly and hardly exciting.
- You do not choose your looks or abilities. I am not kidding, you enter the game and it chooses for you, supposedly based on your subconscious preferences. Although in theory this way you get what suits you best, you still feel like you don’t have a choice. So what if you subconsciously like horns and giant swords? What if you like to look and fight entirely different for a change? You can’t! The game doesn’t even allow you to customize your avatar; you are forever stuck with the exact same shape and abilities. For how long can you keep playing a game where you have no freedom in customization and every battle always has the exact same procedure? There is absolutely no appeal in that, no person in real life would play it for more than a few days before getting bored and giving up.
- The game is supposed to be doing all that so you can focus on what you are better inclined at; meaning it helps you improve at what you excel at. So what happens if you don’t want to excel in what you are good at? What if you want to improve in something you really suck at, just so you can be versatile instead of a narrowed specialist? The game doesn’t let you do that.
- Regardless of what your abilities are, you should still be able to realize what your potential is. You just need to experiment on your own and find what you like by yourself instead of having your role imposed on you. Or at least to try something new just for the sake of doing something different. The game doesn’t let you do that.
- But let’s take an ideal situation where you get what you deserve and have no complaints about it. It still sucks. Seriously, is the hero’s avatar supposed to look awesome? He looks like a stupid faceless robot. In a similar fashion, almost every single avatar in this show looks lame. I would never agree to play a game that forces me to look like a clown or a little girl, even if deep inside that is how I like to look. What if I am a dick with everyone in real life and that is how I should look in the game? Would anyone dare to play a game looking like that even if that is what his subconscious is all about?
- Furthermore, the animators hardly care to give interesting robotic shapes to minor characters. So imagine how terrible it looks to have the main characters looking bad and everybody else looking horribly simplistic.
- Let’s take again an ideal situation where you look as you like and have the abilities you love. There is still no justification to why the game is kept secret from the rest of the world. What harm would it do if it were public?
- The excuse for why it’s kept a secret all this time is because the losing players get amnesia and forget the whole thing. They expect you to believe none of the hundreds of players who were kicked out of the game had any problems with entire years suddenly being erased from their memories. Their personalities change entirely and they don’t remember what they were doing all this time, but that is somehow not suspicious.
- How about the fact that in order to get in the game a player needs to yell “Burst Link”? For 15 years nobody suspected anything while every day thousands of kids yell those words a dozen times per day for no apparent reason.
- There is no strategy in battles. It all comes down to the usual stuff we see in shounen; the protagonist getting his ass served on a plate, yet magically finds a new super move in the last second just for the sake of winning. He finds enough willpower to magically heal his wounds, throws out a friendship monologue, and his enemies all of a sudden realize their mistakes and become his allies. In the meantime, game mechanics mean absolutely nothing.
- They also do a shitty job at showing field tactics. Supposed each character has elements that make him stronger or weaker against certain attacks. It makes no sense how you can find means to nullify them. Imagine for example an electric attack that keeps you pinned to the ground. You can cancel it by simply stuffing your hand in the ground and “grounding” the electricity. That is pure bullshit if you are already lying on the floor.
- There is no power balance either as all duels are unfair from the start. The players have life bars that show how much damage they receive from an attack and if you pay attention, it is completely croc. The enemies do extremely small amounts of damage to the hero, even when they have far more levels and attack points than him. But as soon as he gets to the offence? He hits them a couple of times and they are defeated in one second, even when they have been hitting him for around a hundred times. Many times a normal attack will even do far more damage than a super attack.
- Heck, why are we even talking about fairness when the hero is the only one who can fly, a power nobody else in the game is allowed to use? He is the only one who can travel so fast and avoid all land obstacles, thus having an unfair advantage over anyone else who needs to walk towards somewhere.
- There is an extremely easy way to cheat in levelling up. You can just have your friends allowing you to defeat them without fighting back. You cycle like that each day and freely get points without ever fighting. I bet a pop idol can get to level 10 in a few minutes by using this method. Yet they try to convince us it is very hard and nobody wants to risk going to the level cap.
- There is another hole in the rules. A player must fight whoever challenges him without being able to refuse. What the hell does that mean; you are forced to fight whoever feels like it? What if you are not in a mood to fight? What if they gang up on you? What if you are asleep? How is this even called a game if you are forced to play it even if you don’t want to?
- There is even more injustice if you think how there isn’t any restriction to the level of the players that fight. A level 1 can freely fight a level 9. What if you are constantly challenged by high levelled players? What if you are high level and feel like becoming a player killer? Who is going to stop you? There are no moderators in this game!
- And for crying out loud, they have guild wars every week where all players must compete at arranged hours. After the Black King returns to the game, there should be thousands of players going after her territory, since she is the most hated person in the game. And yet she casually expands her territory even when her guild is made up of only three low level people! Where are the other kings to attack her if they know where she is and when she fights?
- Speaking of territories, the game world is separated into sections, each one ruled by a top rank player. The totally fake thing here is how each one of these leaders is called a king, named after the prime colour of his avatar. So you have the red kind, the blue king, and so on. Are we really supposed to believe they all just happened to have a different prime colour? There is only one top player for each one! And even if it was a coincidence, at one point one of the kings gets defeated and replaced by another top player who just so happens to have the EXACT same colour. This is no longer luck; it is damn fake. And no, as I said they can’t customize their avatars so they can’t recolor their avatars to match their king status. Oh, and another thing; every leader is called a king, even if “he” is a “she”. The lead girl for example is called Black King. Chauvinistic bullshit or what?
- Not even the whole acceleration thing makes any sense. If time moves a thousand times faster in the gaming world, it means that you can miss a lot of events just by going for lunch. Yet nothing seems to ever change in there, even if a cosmic horror is on the loose and kills players for 3000 gaming days.
- There are also lots of scenes where the characters will be waiting in the real world for an opponent of theirs to make his move. For example, they may intend to ambush him after he gets off the train. Why the devil would they do that when it will cost them years in gaming time? They could just go into videogame mode and wait a few seconds for him to not be careful. For the same reason, they don’t need to say or do anything in the real world; they can just be in the game all the time and talk all they like without wasting much time at all. And you also see at one time the videogame version of the train moving at a normal speed, when it should be running as fast as light if it corresponds to the real thing.
- As if the game balance wasn’t broken enough, later on they trash it even further by introducing a reality alteration technique that allows you to do all sorts of hax things that are otherwise impossible to perform. Effectively, there are no limitations after this and everybody can do anything he likes regardless of his statistics or elements.

10. Fan service for the sake of shallow pandering and further trashing of the show.
Plot-wise useless bath scenes? Sure, why not? Girls with short skirts shamelessly flashing you their pantsu? Sure, bring it on. Accidentally tripping and falling on boobs? Sounds reasonable. Your parents leaving you alone for days with a cute kindergarten girl who is willing to fulfil all your wishes? Happens all the time. It’s not like this show is quality material or something. Also, videogame propaganda. The whole show stinks of a ridiculous ideology of the sorts of “You may be fat and worthless, but if you are good in videogames then hot chicks will love you.” It’s pathetic when you see him playing like a god compared to other players who in the real world are handsome and talented. “You may be better in everything than me but I own your ass in videogames.” And although a normal person would laugh at this statement, those charismatic people he taunts are actually taken aback by being bested in an unimportant videogame.

11. Completely immoral messages.
The game is not designed to help children reach the heights of their abilities, as it claims. In the contrary it turns them into merciless criminals and junkies.
- First of all it is a war game, so the goal is to exploit other players’ weaknesses. That takes away the emotional bond you can have with others. Instead of people you just see them as statistics. Even when you are forming teams, the leader is always the strongest and the others get roles like a meat tank or a healer. They are not people but machines. Furthermore, the leader of a guild has the ability to delete the account of anyone in his team, thus he feels like a tyrant instead of a noble leader.
- The game also gives you the privilege to use acceleration even outside the game, where you can abuse that power in any way you like, like cheating in tests and sports, or brainwashing people to do your biding. Hell, you can freeze time and go peep at the woman’s bathroom for all we know. These are things most of the players will definitely be doing since they are not responsible adults but immature teenagers.
- It is an addicting game. Since every time you use acceleration you spend one point, the game forces you to keep playing it, so you will keep having more points to cheat and sink deeper into deviance.
- It also turns you to a liar and a manipulator. Since the game is supposed to be kept a secret, you constantly need to lie or hide the truth from your family and friends. You are also taught to exploit people’s good intensions for your personal gain. Just think about every player in this show; they are constantly trying to trick you and take advantage of your kindness. So not only you manipulate others but you yourself become too suspicious of everybody else. Since you never know if the guy next to you is a player trying to trick you, you become angry and bitter with everybody. That is just mean and misanthropic.
- Finally, the show never tries to question the game’s motivation and inspiration. It doesn’t try to make you think this is wrong and never makes it look like it’s a bad thing. It almost presents it like it’s a natural thing and even tries to water it further down with fan service and people forgiving each other extremely easy despite getting backstabbed. The issue is still there and is hardly meant to make you think.

CONCLUSION

- A passable mediocrity for casual viewers with minimum demands and videogame dorks who want a world where the fat idiot gets all the glory for the lulz.
- Augmented reality has been presented in better ways in shows like Dennou Coil, and the SAO movie.
- People trying to escape reality in videogames has been done far better in Welcome to the NHK and SE Lain.
- The comedy and action aspects are quite typical and dull.