Absolutely awesome anime !! It has everything, a well told story, action, emotion and beautiful animations. Sounds and pictures are fitting well together. Every fan of MMOs and anime has to watch this. I'm very excited about the 2nd season.

Don't get fooled by the first episode. This show is pretty bad (at least if you expect quality writing out of it). The main problem for me was the lack of story. They setup a life or death siutation but instead of showing the players coping with it we get a timeskip and a chronological adaptation of the source material (light novels) which means lots of irrelevant side stories. The stakes are mainly ignored and hardly anyone works toward the goal of completing the game (clearing all 100 floors). When the SOA story arc comes to an end it is abrupt and makes no sense at all due plotarmor. The second arc is still airing but luckily it'll be over soon. All changes have been for the worse. Another issue are the characters; cardboard cutouts and personality changes on demand. Most of the women (or better girls) tend to exist to form a harem for our MC. Speaking of which, this show goes full-shonen as far as his powers go. It is ridiculous what he can pull off (getting his own skills in an mmo, hacking, highest leveled player in the game when all you see is him idlying and helping lowlevel players.. it get's even worse in the second arc). Given that it is an action show you would at least expect the fights to be good. Unfortunatly these are a letdown. The bossfights usually look rather bad. Not only because of the CGI but the way they animated it. There is hardly a battle choreography and they overuse still frames. You can literally see that the only things animated are the flashing lights which are supposed to represent sword strikes. Add to this the ever increasing fan-service, silly dialogue, unbelievable romance and countless things that make no sense. Due to reasons I cannot understand this show is popular and sells really well so a second season could happen.

It has been pretty good so far. The amount of accurate MMO references has been surprising as well.

This is a definite watch. First season was a little boring because of lack of Action Scenes but after that it was a impressive. Season 3 and 4 will definitely keep you on the edge. Plot, animation, story everything was top notch. Now, I am patiently waiting for the Second Cour of Season 4.

9.5/10 As a child, I've always found the concept of living in a game that revolves around sword and sorcery fascinating, so the main idea of this show has been appealing to me since the beginning. However, after watching the first few episodes, I was kind of disappointed: All I got to see was a person with an enigmatic character, who was completely over-leveled and wanted to rush through the game all by himself. Instead of showing captivating and engaging boss fights, all I got to see was the main character virtually one-hitting all the enemies because of his high level. Instead of gaining an insight into the main character's personality and background, I was merely left with a very vague impression of him. At that point, I was doubtful about whether it really is worth it continuing watching the show. Fortunately, I did continue watching the show, and I was glad to see that most of the aforementioned negative aspects didn't prevail throughout the show. Finally, we were introduced with a second main character and therefore also learned more about the sentimental side of Kirito. In the second part of the first season, we also got to understand his family life and relation to his sister better. And furthermore, boss fights no longer were finished in a matter of seconds; instead, we saw how many players work together to defeat the final enemy in bitter and long-running battles. This is when I started to really fall in love with this show. In conclusion, while the beginning of this show is rather poor, it gets better and better with each episode.