Forum - View topicNEWS: Sword Art Online/Accel World's Kawahara to Print Absolute Solitude Novels
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Kalessin
 Posts: 931 |
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Wow. I'm surprised by all of the SAO hate in this thread. I thought that the anime was quite enjoyable and have been looking forward to Yen Press' release of the light novels. I'm not expecting Lord of the Rings here, but it was better than a lot of anime IMHO. I don't see why it's getting such a negative reaction in this thread. Maybe those who don't like it are reacting so strongly, because they're annoyed with how popular it is? I don't know. To each their own.
In any case, I hope that he doesn't stretch himself too thin here. 3-4 series at once seems like a lot based on what I know of other light novelists, but it's also true that light novels are ridiculously short compared to more normal novels (let alone to the 600+ pages that aren't uncommon in American Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels). However, I expect that the pace of the existing series will be reduced, as he'll be working on more of them, which could be a bit frustrating for fans of the existing series. But as long as the quality is decent and he lives long enough to finish them, I don't really mind. As an American fan, I'm lucky to get any of it a format that I can understand it anyway. So, I'll take what I can get. And thus far, what I've seen from him has been entertaining. I hope that that continues. |
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TUSF
Posts: 191 |
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It's not at all surprising. SAO has a negative reputation through-out the internet, because it was something that people didn't expect it to be. They thought it was going to be about progressing through Aincrad, but instead they got a love story, that happened to have a lot of action and adventure. And they didn't understand that SAO was written as a Love Story first, action-adventure second. (Additionally, SAO was written as a one-shot, but the author continued it, and filled in the 2 year time-skip with side-stories.) This, toppled with how the Author decided to throw in a bunch of cliches in his later side-stories, just added to some of the dislike to SAO for being cliche (despite the fact that there is a lot of other things that are more-so cliche) They also like to fault the main character, Kirito, for being too OP, but that applies to many Action-adventure stories. |
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jojothepunisher
 Posts: 799 |
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My thought exactly. I just hope that he take this business easy and take care of his health. The industry needs this guy to live. |
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Spotlesseden
Posts: 3514 Location: earth |
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The SAO hates iare similar to Kuroko's Basketball hates. "I don't like your work, I don't like how you got popular." SAO haters don't have the gut to do what the Kuroko's Basketball hater did. The other cliche anime doesn't get the hate because they are not popular. It has nothing with to do with cliche. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4575 |
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No, we hate it because it exhibits absolutely atrocious writing quality, rampant misogyny, and frequent outright creepiness. Whether the author was going for a love story or an action-adventure series, he dropped the ball spectacularly. |
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TUSF
Posts: 191 |
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Explain
Sugou is a misogynist. The villain. If you mean the story is misogynistic, I don't see how.
Explain.
He was ORIGINALLY going for a love-story, but then decided to expand on Action-Adventure, afterwards, through separate side-stories. This makes it difficult to adapt into an anime, because the different side-stories have different genre. As someone on another site put it, "It's like the author suddenly remembered all the cliches and tropes that normally go in Light Novels, and retroactively fit them in" |
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Top Gun
Posts: 4575 |
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Kirito's endless Gary Stu-isms aside, let's just take a little look at the finale of the Aincrad arc, shall we? spoiler[After the big tweest of the reveal of Heathcliff's true identity, Kirito's all set to die at his hands, but then Asuna manages to overcome a paralysis spell with no explanation, other than the power of love I suppose. She gets killed...but then comes back later, breaking all universe precedent, because reasons. Then Kirito proceeds to die too, except he comes back from the dead immediately and wins the day. And after all is said and done, the grand explanation by the main villain for why he started this whole death game was..."I don't remember." I don't think it's possible to teach writing that awful.] And don't get me started on the original basic premise of the show, the "trapped for two years by deadly microwave headsets" bit, which has technical holes one could drive a freight train through.
For one, pretty much every female character only exists to fall for Kirito in some capacity, instead of getting any sort of independent development. For another, Asuna started as a fairly-strong female character (clingy romance issues aside), but the second arc completely threw that in the crapper spoiler[and turned her into the very definition of a "damsel in distress.]
Uhh...Kirito's spoiler[cousin nee "sister"] wanting to jump his bones? Tentacle monsters groping little girls? The flat-out rapey-ness of the second arc? The series has managed to skeeve me the hell out on numerous occasions. Look, I have no issue if people garner some enjoyment out of the show, but you need to call a spade a spade here and acknowledge the massive issues it has. Its quality level vs. popularity is essentially the anime equivalent of the Bayformers movies...that's not company you want to be in. |
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TUSF
Posts: 191 |
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A good portion of the author's writing has to do with overcoming the limits imposed by a system. Additionally, the author has reused the concept of "Using willpower to overcome the system" multiple times, and even gave it a name. This is pretty consistent within his own worlds... spoiler[The "coming back to life part" was more-or-less anime-only, as in the Novel he didn't shatter into pieces at all. There's a bit more bs involved in that, but basically Kirito managed to stab Heathcliff before shattering into pieces.] As for the "technical holes," do explain. The story never said the machines would literally microwave your brain. Kirito merely pointed out that there's a powerful Microwave electromagnet, which is likely used to actually input information into your senses. However, a method of killing was never said, so the only hole is discretion.
The only characters that DO fall for him are Asuna, Lisbeth, and Suguha. The end of the second Arc, for one reason or another, decided to throw in Silica as part of that list, despite the fact that her side-story only had her admire him as a brother, so one would assume she probably developed feelings later on. Who knows, though. Asuna was of course the main-heroine, and Lisbeth was supposedly a close friend. While Liz did fall for him, she was more-so thrown in to craft his second sword, and I guess the author decided to play with that. The sister, Suguha clearly didn't WANT to be in love with Kirito. She wasn't actively pursuing him, and knew he would reject her. But all-in-all, the second arc of SAO is almost universally considered the shittiest arc.
So basically a personal preference against these sort of things? |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14761 |
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Well, people say that too much though, whether with J. K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, E. L. James, etc. |
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SpacemanHardy
Posts: 2509 |
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It's funny you should bring her up, as I was about to mention the exact same person. 
In my opinion, Kawahara basically did the exact same thing Stephanie Meyer did: He wrote a bad fanfic that just happened to become the next big thing and make millions. So yes, SAO is pretty much the Japanese equivalent of Twilight. It's bad, everyone knows it's bad, and yet it's still super popular and has it's legion of die-hard fans that will jump through fiery hoops to defend it. |
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TUSF
Posts: 191 |
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I like all these people talking about Kawahara as if they read any of his stuff, when they only saw a poorly done anime adaption.
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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I read the entire first volume of the SAO light novel.
It was awful. Pretty much one of the worst fantasy short stories that I have ever read. |
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CelestialEmpress
 Posts: 113 |
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I admit, all I know of Sword Art is the anime and the infamous terrible porn chapter, and I have absolutely no desire to see/read more. I literally cannot think of a single female character who isn't seen fawning over Kirito aside from his fake virtual daughter. And I'm sure they seriously considered adding her to the mix as well.
Being creeped out by clumsily-handled molestation isn't so much a personal preference as it is a basic human emotion. |
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Top Gun
Posts: 4575 |
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That's all well and good if you're writing in a purely-fantasy setting where the power of loooooove (as a friend of mine loves to call it) can save the day. SAO does not occupy that sort of setting: it's set in a near-future realistic sci-fi realm, and as such can be expected to maintain certain standards of plausibility and logic. The events of that episode throw both of those out the window, with absolutely no explanations given.
"Microwave electromagnet" not being a thing aside, you have to assume that it would have been intended as the means of killing: microwave + human tissue = bad times. But whatever the exact mechanism, let's run with it: how did whoever manufactured these things not notice that they could be used to sizzle someone's brain? Hell, how did a brain-controlling VR device like that ever make it through any sort of electronics regulatory board in the first place, especially without some sort of manual override? Were we supposed to believe that a single man constructed an entire MMORPG, something that would take a team of dozens if not hundreds in real life, AND engineered the NerveGear hardware? How was it that nobody else had access to the game's source code and noticed things like the removal of the logout feature? And we're somehow supposed to buy that over the course of two years, nobody figured out how to disable these things without killing the player? (I can think of two or three plausible methods right off the top of my head.) All of these thoughts crossed my mind during the first episode or two, and the fact that none of them resolved smacked of an author who hadn't put nearly enough thought into the basic setting of his story.
I think you could probably throw Sachi in there too, which definitely pushes the number into harem territory. I mean I don't have a huge issue if you have a few people be interested in him at different times, but you start running into problems when it's primarily those attractions that define said characters. Even with Asuna, you have her say, "If you die, I'll kill myself," which is...not really the portrayal of a healthy relationship.
If by "personal preference" you mean "commonly-accepted standards of decency and/or basic respect for women," then yes, I suppose you could call it that.
This really is the perfect comparison, and in both cases it boggles my mind how someone can consume them with a straight face and view them as quality works. Hell, SAO isn't even good as far as fanfiction is concerned: that infamous "missing chapter" is some pretty godawful smut. |
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Mister Ryan Andrews
 Posts: 219 |
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I haven't seen the anime yet, but my girlfriend adores it and said it was her favorite anime of the season. Is this one of those Dragon's Crown/Bayonetta things where a small minority of people on the internet bash it for being 'sexist' or whatever and focus on that more than anything else? Some of these posters make it sound like it is.
Is this your first anime or something? Japanese media's is pretty open about sex and stuff. Wanting to bone your cousins pops up a lot even in kids shows... and complaining about tentacle monsters in 2014 seems so passe. |
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