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Sword Art Online (TV).

Okay then, spoiler[why did the creator save them]?

There is just one thing I wanna point out about the SAO story, which is volume 1. The author states it in his notes that go alone with the volume as well. The fact is light novels have length limits and this greatly affected the story, which he admits was suppose to be much longer.

Thus we can assume had he not had these limitations the story would have been much more detailed and balanced. Having read the light novels after the anime started I have quite a lot of appreciation for how smooth the series actually went.

Well haters are probably still gonna hate, but at least try to take those points into consideration instead of just calling it bad writing!

Greggy wrote:

There is just one thing I wanna point out about the SAO story, which is volume 1. The author states it in his notes that go alone with the volume as well. The fact is light novels have length limits and this greatly affected the story, which he admits was suppose to be much longer. Thus we can assume had he not had these limitations the story would have been much more detailed and balanced. Having read the light novels after the anime started I have quite a lot of appreciation for how smooth the series actually went. Well haters are probably still gonna hate, but at least try to take those points into consideration instead of just calling it bad writing!

I have generally agreed with those who have complained about the writing. Yes, I understand that the source material was a light novel format and there are some restrictions, however as I have been saying all along there are just serious issues of character development in SAO. Maybe it is just because the author was still inexperienced when writing it - he wrote it to compete for the Dengeki Novel Prize, but apparently SAO was too long to enter at the time. However, if you compare SAO to Accel World which he wrote years later and actually WON the Dengeki Prize with, I think you can clearly see the growth in his ability to write a compelling character or two. The characters from Accel World are miles ahead of those from SAO as far as developing them into believable human beings who the audience can root for.

Also, as I said previously SAO didn't focus enough on a consistent story line and group of side characters who could be slowly developed over time along with the main characters. Instead, the story in SAO seemed very disjointed and most interaction with side characters was short and made them seem more like distractions from the author's laser focus on Kirito and Asuna. If he was going to so heavily focus the story on these two, he should have invested a LOT more time and effort developing them into amazing characters for the audience to fall in love with.

I don't think anybody in this thread has doubted SAO's popularity. Just like I don't think anybody has doubted the popularity of 50 Shades of Gray, the Twilight series, or the song Friday.

And yet despite all of the supposed writing problems (and I don't dispute that there are some), it's still the year's most popular new series - and by a wide margin, too, as I understand it.

And again I'll point out that 24-26 episode series mustering 50+ pages of responses puts them in rarefied air and we're now at 78 pages for just 14 episodes, or 5.5+ pages/episode and still climbing. (Only The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya now stands above it for 2 cour or less series on the first point or for any series on the second point, and that one had years to get that high.) That's a sure sign that it's continuing to be popular and effective despite all of its problems.

Similar to what Megiddo said, I am certainly not questioning the popularity of SAO. However, I would also submit that part of the reason that there is so much feedback on this particular show is that you have a core group of intense supporters/fans and a bunch of other people who think there are serious flaws, and the gulf between them is just so massive that each side is spending a lot of time arguing every single little point down to the most minute detail.

As far as the popularity of SAO, I rarely use popularity to analyze the merits of a particular show or other work.

And yet despite all of the supposed writing problems (and I don't dispute that there are some), it's still the year's most popular new series - and by a wide margin, too, as I understand it.

And again I'll point out that 24-26 episode series mustering 50+ pages of responses puts them in rarefied air and we're now at 78 pages for just 14 episodes, or 5.5+ pages/episode and still climbing. (Only The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya now stands above it for 2 cour or less series on the first point or for any series on the second point, and that one had years to get that high.) That's a sure sign that it's continuing to be popular and effective despite all of its problems.