REVIEW FOR SWORD ART ONLINE

 
Sword Art Online Part 1
Released By: Manga Entertainment
Rating: 15
Running Time: 175 Mins
Audio: English & Japanese DD 2.0
Release Date: 16/12/2013
Reviewed By: Sandra Scholes

If I didn't mention it before, anime spends a lot of time set in the future whether near or advanced. In this animes case humans have made a virtual environment called Sword Art Online, or as the players refer to it, SAO for short and fans were eager to queue up for a copy while a mere thousand lucky people got to beta test it before it went on sale, but what awaits fans of this newly anticipated game?

Kirito wanders around the game's realistic environment while another player, Kline recognises him as being one of the beta testers for the game. Kirito happily agrees to show him around the game teaching him how to fight the various animals that can serve to give him points when he discovers he can't log out of the game. At first Kline thinks it's all part of the game, but Kirito thinks otherwise. When all the gamers are sent back to the beginning of the game using a forced teleport, Kirito knows something is very wrong about the game, especially as Kayaba Akihito, the game's Project Director announces that he is the reason they can't log out.

It's not like there aren't loads of anime out there like this one, but what sets this apart from most of them is that it makes you think. Kirito believes that his life in the virtual world is more real than in real-life, but now that he and his new friend are stuck in the virtual one, he forgets what will eventually happen to his real body if no one can get to him from the outside world to help him get the head gear off. The sinister part of this anime is when Akihito tells shocked gamers that the game was designed to lock them out of the real world and, if they or anyone else tries to take off their headgear, a transmitter inside the nerve gear will discharge a microwave signal into their skulls destroying their brains and ending their lives.

As everyone is now stuck in the game, the object  is for them to get through 99 levels in order to reach the hundredth level and fight the games end of level boss. If at any point they get to zero hit power they will automatically die in the game and the real world. At the start of episode one we see Kirito in his room before he logs onto the game where he cuts his thumb on his magazine and it bleeds, proving that what Akihito said is the cruel truth as later in the first episode he is seen to bleed in the game as well.



Bonus Material: Text-less Opening and Closing Animations.

Verdict: Sword Art Online has to be seen to be believed.