Sword Art Online Review Part II: Characters

Part II: Characters

Introduction

Something that often comes under fire as one of the main sources of SAO's problems is the characters that make up its main cast. Now, a lot of these characters are perfectly fine. Some are even great in their own right and could easily uphold the story on their own. Too bad they have to share space with many that are boring one note ciphers, or worse, Gary Stu wish fulfillment inserts. And incest. Don't forget the incest.

The Good

Now before I get to one of the biggest complaints in the series, let me talk about what's good with the characters. To start, there's the character Agil. I enjoyed Agil when he was on screen. He kind of acted as a hub for the main character Kirito to get information and supplies from. He also seems to be one of the few people in the whole game with a level enough head to realize how fucking stupid ostracizing beta testers would be. I'll get to that more in the story.

Also there is Lisbeth. Lisbeth is one of the few female characters in this whole series who has balls, and not in the literal sense. That'd be weird. She is very brave in confrontation and even acts as a foil to the secondary protagonist, Asuna. She also is probably tied with the next character I'm about to talk about for being one of the most selfless people in the whole anime. In addition, she is also one of the few character who doesn't really engage in combat unless it's necessary. She doesn't give nearly as much of a crap about clearing and mostly just sticks to her job as a blacksmith. It's refreshing to see a character who isn't an über badass warrior and is content to fill a role and live in this world.

The co-best-person-next-to-the-dalai-lama alongside Lisbeth is Klein. Klein is one of the first characters we are introduced to. The moment you meet him, he has a sense of charisma that remains throughout his entire presence in the series. In my own opinion, Klein is who the protagonist of the show should have been. For one thing, he's much more balanced than the main character himself. Klein is good in a fight and one of the better warriors, but he never feels overpowered. He's still just an ordinary guy with a sword when you get down to it. Furthermore, the nice guy bit that feels schizophrenic at best when Kirito does it due to his antisocial spirit feels much more natural and genuine with Klein. I think the reason for this is that Klein, due to being a lot more social and being a good person mostly out of actual altruism and leadership, gives off the vibe that he actually cares about doing the right thing rather than doing it out of obligation. I'll talk more about why Klein would have been a great protagonist later in the Story section.

The Bad

So, let's get the elephant in the room out of the way. The biggest problem I have with this show is the main character, Kirito. Just about every bad thing in the show can be traced back to this commonality. Kirito is, for all intents and purposes, a better presented and deceptively written Gary Stu. SAO, in the experiences noted by me and friends hpwho have watched it, that usually you don't pick up on this immediately. I attribute it mostly to the overall good quality of the show's visual, audio, and thematic presentation, but we'll get to that in later sections.

Now, it is time for me personally to eat crow on this one. I admit, on first glance, Kirito was a well developed main character to me. He represented an example of the way you can make a character who is gifted at a craft and is mostly dedicated to perfecting that craft, transitioning from the lone antihero into a classical hero through the events of the game. However, on my second and especially third watch, three glaring issues destroyed my respect for his characterization.

#1 Who the fuck is Kirito?

First, there's his inconsistent personality. Kirito changes who he is so much that it's hard to get any sense of a distinct character arc. You see, a well defined character has a dynamic but focused character arc. They start out at Personality A and through the events of the story slowly morph into Personality B, adopting any quirks, tells, habits, or traits that transform him into B throughout the plot. A good example of this is Captain Walker, the main character of Spec Ops: The Line. Captain Walker starts out as the epitome of a Call of Duty protagonist, focused on Boy Scout, by the books, good ol American Apple pie style military action to protect freedom, and while I won't spoil how, the end of the story finds him transformed into a sociopathic war criminal who did unspeakable atrocities all out of the delusion that he needed to justify himself as a hero. Everything in Captain Walker's character arc moves gradually towards this endgame to turn him into that result.

Kirito on the other hand learns, forgets, and relearns the same lessons over and over again. Not only does he never truly grow as a character, but several times the writing doesn't decide what sort of character to make him out to be, ranging all at once from a super solemn badass to a scarred PTSD warrior, a cunning trickster, a regular ordinary guy, a beloved hero, a borderline vilified loner, and a caring altruist who is equal parts therapist and white knight (no pun intended). Now, one thing that actually succeeds in truly pissing me off is how die hard fans will claim this is showing Kirito has character development. However, as I said, a character arc has a key word on how it progresses: focused. It is a straight line bringing the character from Point A to Point B. It is not choosing several different Point A's to start from and never making any of them get any closer to Point B. Instead, we get a character who has six or seven different characters housed inside of him that pop in and out of being the dominant personality. Had they chosen one of these personalities and developed them it would have possibly made for a good protagonist, but as is he just seems like he belongs in a schizophrenic asylum.

#2 OP main character is OP.

For reasons that are rarely explained, Kirito is literally one of the most powerful players in the entirety of the game. If I had a nickel for every time Kirito is the first to do X, the best at X, or has the most of X of all the players of the game, I'd be Jay Motherfucking Gatsby. Where Kirito any more overpowered as a character, I'd have to rename him Jesus's Better Brother and True Chosen One to Save All Mankind Kirito.

Now, overpowered characters are not always bad. Often times, characters that technically should be considered massively overpowered are adored completely in ironically by fanboys and casuals alike. Case in point: Goku. Goku is without a doubt one of the most powerful characters in popular fiction. On top of the strength to bench press planets, ability to fly and shoot energy beams equating to nuclear blasts from his fingers, teleport, upgrade to higher forms to enhance his power level, and even return from the dead, there is no doubt that Goku is insanely god tier. However, it works with Goku, largely because he is not meant to be a deep, interesting, complex character. He is a simple archetype of the embodiment of heroic justice, like a manga form of Superman. Dragonball Z understands that we are mostly there for the purpose of seeing Goku punch things in the face repeatedly rather than get in a deep character study, so it keeps it simple.

SAO, on the other hand, focuses mostly on out-of-action drama, meaning an already bland character (see #1 above) even more flat by replacing genuine character development by just throwing in more stuff to make him badass. The show takes. Kirito and his abilities and struggles far too seriously for him to be placed in the same bin as Goku and Superman, but is also too shallow to be compelling in the traditional style of emotionally investing in a character. Thus we get a character who is trying to hard to be perfect.

#3 Where my bitches at?

This is the complaint I hear most about Kirito and was something I picked up a bit on the first time I watched, though it become disturbingly evident with further rewatches. The first three episodes are nearly perfect, building upon one another in tone, atmosphere, and pacing. They paint the picture of a vast, living world that the series is dedicated to exploring and creating a more vivid image of. You get the sense that we're about to be taken on a vast, epic adventure with Kirito playing the part of a taciturn heroic warrior in the vein of Achilles and that it's going to be a grand quest to conquer the game.

This setup is completely crushed by the fact that the next five episodes have little to nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. Three of them are purely thin slice of life episodes and two are basically CSI Azeroth, which in spite of it being a murder mystery, is still just as thin. Now, I will give the murder mystery two parter a little bit of credit in that it at least gave us a bit more insight into this world and its inner workings- with the additional clause that admittedly the exposition it covered was already pretty much given to us earlier in Episode Four and while it is decent, it still isn't good enough to justify taking up two whole episodes in a fifteen episode arc.

The other three, however, are three of my most despised episodes in the entirety of the Aincrad arc, and it isn't just because they're inconsequential side stories that run the plot down a rabbit trail away from the conflict of the arc. I mean, I Hecate that too, but that isn't what pisses me off so much. What gets me is that the entirety of these three episodes is purely in order to build a harem for Kirito. The most shameless of these is the first one, containing what might be my least favorite character in the whole damn series other than Kirito: Silica.

Now, episode four is a waste in general anyways. Literally nothing happens throughout the episode that changes the status quo from the opening of the episode except that Kirito now has the token loli among his trophies. It wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't for the fact that literally- and I mean literally- all Silica ever does is complain, fawn over Kirito, get flustered, and get, I shit you not, nearly molested by several tentacle monsters from which mostly Kirito saves her from. That is all she does. Starting to see why I hate this character? I'm not usually one to go all social justice warrior, but there's having a preconceived notion of gender stereotypes, and then there's the mysoginistic treatment where all female characters either start out as just another piece of ass for Kirito to save so they can fall for him or have every single somewhat interesting fact about their character broken down until they fit into the former mold.

The latter happened to the character I commended above, Lisbeth. If you'll remember, I talked about how Lis was an interesting character who had a distinct personality and was fun to watch. This is whittled away, bit by bit, throughout her slice of life episode where her and Kirito go on a journey to find smithing supplies. Slowly her strong willed, brash charisma is drained until all she does is talk lovey dovey bullshit about Kirito. Also, bear in mind, these two episodes both last only about a day's worth in in-game time each, so an already awkward romance feels utterly forced.

But the worst crime wasn't performed to Lisbeth (although it is bullshit that we don't see her again in the series accept a few throw away, one line scenes where she- you guessed it- obsesses over Kirito). The character who got the worst of this was our secondary protagonist herself, Asuna.

Now, to be completely honest, even in her introduction before Reki Kawahara could fuck her character up too much, I still wasn't a huge fan of Asuna. She was still a good enough character, and compared to many of the weaker members of the main cast she was great, but I just didn't have as much magnetism as I experienced with the characters I mentioned in The Good. That said, she was still well written as a semi mysterious, quiet, cloaked figure. We didn't even see her face until the near end of the episode where she is introduced. She had an air of subtlety about her and seemed like she would serve as a foil to. Kirito, being a character who seemed to have similarities to him while exhibiting more of a classic heroine to juxtapose Kirito's brooding antihero.

However, the fact that she has to tie all of her character piece by piece to simply being Kirito's main harem girl and waifu turns her just as inconsistent as him. Sometimes she's this badass warrior chick, sometimes she's simply a fru fru girl who just cooks and such, sometimes she's a tortured soul looking for a strong shoulder to rest against. As I said with Kirito's inconsistency, this doesn't mean she is a deep character. It means she's several different characters that the writers couldn't decide between, giving her no true progression. The all time low point is in the Fairy Dance Arc after the Aincrad Arc is wrapped up where the awesome fighter who was the second strongest player in the entirety of Aincrad is insultingly demoted to just being another Princess Peach style damsel in distress.

I could talk about the other two pieces of harem bait introduced in the Fairy Dance Arc, but they're so incredibly flat and have so little effect on the plot that I can sum their entire essence up in these few words: anthro cat girl and big breasted rip off of Galadriel.

So, that's the three reasons I hate Kirito and why he is likely the epicenter for what is wrong with this anime. Now, are there other bad things with the characters? Of course. The two villains aren't very complex or well written, one being an older man so apparently senile that he literally forgot why he became the villain and the other being your generic bratty sleazeball who just whines on and on about his god complex. The rest of the minor characters of the series are also very one note, and in true Gary Stu fashion, almost every player sides with and agrees with Kirito, in spite of it established that he's an outcast loner due to him being a solo player, and any characters who dare to challenge or defy him are usually dealt a heavy helping of karmic backlash for snubbing the chosen one. I could go on, but I think I nailed what I needed to on bad about the characters.

The Ugly

So, the strangest thing with the characters in SAO that I noticed is likely not only deciding to show Kirito's sister, Sugu, but also to make her an instrumental character in the Fairy Dance Arc.

I really debated with myself on whether to include this in my harem rant a moment ago in the bad or not, but ultimately decided to wait to bring it up here. Firstly, the relationship the two characters bear in general is strange, as I was lost in the amount of times he kept calling her sister, then cousin, then saying he was adopted. I needed the fucking wiki to solidly explain this one to me. Basically, Kirito is actually Sugu's blood relative, her cousin on his mother's side. His parents died somehow in a way that is never even touched on, and Sugu's mother adopted Kirito, barely a toddler at the time.

Now, the thing is, Sugu has actually had the hots for Kirito for a while. Cause, you know, this harem needs a sis on stereotype or else we won't get bingo. This starts a really strange, shoehorned subplot to the already absurdly melodramatic Fairy Dance Arc where Sugu constantly debates whether or not Kirito loves her while completely aware she's in the losing end of a love triangle between her, Kirito, and the still comatose Asuna (if you want to get accurate, it's more like a love heptagon due to other harem participants, but we'll keep it to the three for now.)

You remember back when Twilight was a relevant thing to bash? You remember how those with a functional brain who weren't teenage girls or disturbingly into it middle aged women knew from the start exactly how this was going to go down, with them wasting three books with teen angst drama antics before of course the irritatingly whiny leading man gets the girl (big fucking shock given he's the leading man) and the shirtless Neanderthal is the odd man out? Well, imagine that with different genders. Kirito is the paper thin Gary Stu love interest who has no reason to be so sought after by these girls just as Bella was in the Twilight series, Asuna would be the Edward of this triangle given the substantial lead she has and that she is obviously the one the story writer is pushing Kirito towards, and Sugu is the Jacob who the story is trying way too hard to make us believe has a chance, especially when the level of obsession is almost creepy. Come to think of it, the Fairy Dance Arc doe play out very much like a Twilight story, just with the veneer of SAO's aesthetic.

Another thing I found really strange is the main antagonist of the Fairy Dance Arc, Sugou Nobuyuki. Firstly, Sugou is an extremely coincidental character. You see, not only is he a corrupt businessman, but he also happens to be the head of R&D for Recto Progress Inc., the company that gained the defaulted property related to SAO, which happens to also be the company Asuna's father is CEO of, who happens to be the mentor of Sugou, who happens to have a creepy one sided crush on Asuna and happens to be holding her captive inside another VRMMORPG. You see what I mean? That's practically a game of mousetrap with the complex set of circumstances that had to align to create this situation.

Also, Sugou's motivation is just as peculiar. On the grand scale, he seeks to develop a way to control the mind via his VR experiments, although this is never really expounded upon and is mostly shoved aside. What endgame could be diabolical enough to eclipse that you may ask? He wants to marry Asuna. Yep. That is literally the entire overarching conflict of the Fairy Dance Arc. Sugou wants to forcibly marry Asuna while she's comatose and presumably take advantage of her. I'll touch more on this in the story part.

Conclusion

In short, the characters of SAO are probably it's second weakest link in overall quality. While some of them are genuinely interesting for their little exposure when they can just have a break to be themselves, they are often completely eclipsed by the camera focusing in on Kirito, an undercooked, oversold, cardboard, overpowered character that kills the good parts of any scene he's in.

It has occurred to me while writing this that Kirito is by and large an alicorn OC in his own bad fanfiction. Think about it. He's OP as fuck, is designed to try to look as badass as possible, never develops a distinct personality, let alone arc, is praised as the hero of the land, hardly ever fails by his own merits, and has every character of the opposite character ready to polish his sword at the first chance meeting.

Now, were I in Kawahara's place, I would have implemented a few relatively simple changes with the character dynamic. For instance, recasting Klein as the main protagonist would have already been a vast step in the right direction. Klein, even with relatively little screen time, has a unique and colorful personality. He is, for all intents and purposes, the closest I've seen a character balance being human with human short comings in skill, morality, temperament, etc. with archetypal heroic altruism like you see on the Saturday morning cartoons. He also is a natural leader, making for a more interesting dynamic as the charismatic battle captain rather than Kirito's played out Batman but not Batman routine, and since Klein is the head of a clearing guild, we might get to focus more on the conflict of seeing them survive on the front lines.

If there had to be a love interest (notice that it's singular, not plural), I'd say Lisbeth would be a good choice, and not just because it would be my favorite male character in the show with my favorite female character in the show. I'd imagine the two would have good chemistry. Klein is a typical clumsy crush, an anime stock character staple who has an infatuation with one girl or girls in general but is a bit goofy or dumbstruck in the presence of the girl(s). Compare that with Lisbeth's already displayed penchant for sarcastic wit and fucking with people. I could envision plenty of funny exchanges between the two. It'd be a much more organic, down to earth romance than Asuna and Kirito's attempts at being tear inducing.

As for. Kirito himself, I'm not sure if I'd get rid of him entirely. If I were to keep him, I'd see him working far better as a Gandalf like character. He'd work well as a powerful but rarely seen on screen character who sort of pops in and out as the plot demands. This would of course carry the danger of him becoming a living deus ex machina just for the sake of fixing plot holes, but I'd rather have an op, mysterious plot fixer that has very little screen time to an already shallow character that gets so overexposed in the series that he taints everything good in SAO that he touches.

Continued in Part III: The Story

Comments

[Derek Watterson]

I like your review, but now you've sparked the fire I first had to make a review all those months ago when it stopped airing on crunchyroll in subs.

So, yeah. I won't do it till I have a decent camera/mic so that it all looks nice, but its being written.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I would like you to know that the guys behind the anime based the anime after a series of light novels. Just, they skipped a lot, and they upped the pace way to much.

Still, I await the rest.

[Pirate Jesus]

2306853

Glad you liked the review since there's more to come soon.

I did know about the light novels, but I haven't read them, so for the purpose of the review I was going to stick to the anime since anything else would be me speculating.