Critical Essay of A-1 Pictures in Context of SAO

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===== "Short Discussion on the Effect and Damage of SAO's Reputation after Two Seasons of Anime Adaptation" =====
======================== By 多明戈的枪械 on the SAO Bar of Baidu Tieba, posted 2016/04/16 ========================
================================ Roughly translated from Chinese by defan752 ====================================
================================= Link: http://tieba.baidu.com/p/4484121793 =====================================
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I've been part of the SAO community for more than 5 years now, from when it first entered China with no news at all, to its rising popularity and top place in "Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi!", to the intense flame wars after its anime adaptation, to its steady growing influence nowadays in the anime community, becoming a deciduous tree in the forest of Japanese animation (idiom for "one of the pillars of anime")
I have always maintained my own opinion:
SAO is one of the best as a light novel, not better than many others, but still superior to most lesser light novels of the same variety.
Yet the anime is third rate, with its quality below decent, earning ratings incongruent with its actual quality due to various reasons including fans of the original work, which are also the sources of the large amounts of criticism and ridicule that SAO has suffered. However it's not the worst, just a sub-par adaptation.
SAO as a series has not been in China for long, less than six years as of now, and before that, other than the translations over at Qingguo ("Light Novel Kingdom", now-defunct Chinese LN translation community), the light novel was only well known as a Taiwanese-published work here, and even though SAO fans like to harken back to 2002, even 2001, when SAO was submitted to the Dengeki Game Novel prize, back then, there was definitely no SAO readership in China.
When the first Kadokawa China version was published in 2011, "Sword Art Online" only held a thin presence in the light novel community. If one didn't follow LNs, very few people would know this work, and back then, anime adaptations of LNs had just barely started. Although the LN market rapidly expanded in China, it was merely a fledgling.

When I joined this community in 2011, there were fewer than 600 people here.
Compared to the roughly 700,000 people now in the SAO Bar, the SAO presence back then was rather insignificant.
A work like this was actually already #4 on that year's "Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi!", and the only work yet to be adapted into an anime out of the top ten; Kawahara Reki had already published the story on his own site for more than 9 years. In time the story had already entered UW, the LN had 8 volumes published, earned a die-hard following in Japan, and in the same year, sales had already neared the best-selling work back then: "A Certain Magical Index".
Even in the small kingdom of the LN community, SAO was, in reality, already at the top, the number one LN that didn't even have an anime.
SAO had already earned a name for itself in the LN community back then, with plenty of die-hard fans, and at the same time, in the Chinese community it could only remain an unpopular work with no news, unable to compete with any of the other already-adapted works.
This undoubtedly planted the seeds of the war between the SAO fans and haters after it received an anime. Its fanbase exploded in the months leading up to the anime; it was as if one could see SAO fans everywhere in the community, and at the same time, its unsatisfactory anime adaptation later dealt blows to its popularity and reputation.

Let's return to the beginning of October 2011. This, to many fans of the SAO LN, was a time of celebratory anticipation; in this time, SAO received 2 pieces of good news: first, it was first place in 2012's "Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi!" contest, and second, it would receive an anime adaptation.
At long last, SAO, once the only work in the top ten of the contest not to receive an anime adaptation, finally earned its own.
This was exciting news: the SAO Bar received congratulatory messages from communities all around, and I, as a moderator, was finally among the "lucky group", full of anticipation towards the SAO anime, even though very few LN adaptations before then deserved congratulations.
An anime adaptation back then, to a LN, equaled insane amounts of popularity increase, pretty much confirming huge increases in LN sales and the influence of the original work. Even the worst anime adaptation had that kind of magic.
Besides, the studio responsible for the anime adaptation was not JC Staff, notorious in those days as an "Shredder of Original Works", but the relatively young A-1 Pictures. Although slightly apprehensive, everyone took the good news with happiness.
In regards to A-1 Pictures, I've already said too much about them, to the point that I no longer want to waste my energy criticizing this studio's numerous shortcomings, low frame count, slideshow fights.
Actually, before SAO started, there was a little preview of the soundtrack, but it didn't seem like much.
Before the SAO anime aired, the studio put out 2 PVs as usual, and the first PV involved Kirito looking up at the reaper-like Kayaba Akihiko in the plaza for the first time. The environmental design and coloring in the video was greatly disappointing, but the worst had to be the in-game UI design.

http://i.imgur.com/7NqGK1W.png

The UI was very simplistic, completely devoid of sci-fi feel, and very ugly. It caused many fans to voice their discontent, and thus began a sense of unease towards the SAO anime.
That was why, in the final product, the anime studio fixed the UI design, changing it to what everyone's familiar with. It wasn't much better.

http://i.imgur.com/mA8ATSB.png

This small preview lowered the expectations that the SAO fans had towards the anime adaptation, so when they viewed SAO's so-called outstanding first episode, SAO fans found that the animation quality was not that bad after all, far beyond the choppiness seen in the PV.
This served as a bit of a foundation for many others advocating SAO's quality later, but of course, this was nothing huge.
The change in the UI was unable to alter the many shortcomings of the SAO anime, and no matter how good the first episode was, it couldn't cover up the steady decline of the anime as it progressed.
Next, I will discuss a bit of background during the airing of the SAO anime.
In July 2012, SAO Season 1 began airing. Those who experienced this will probably know that anime during that season that were highly discussed were nowhere to be seen. To be frank, none of them could dominate, and in the entirety of July, SAO seemed to rule the house.
"Fate/Zero" has just finished airing, and the next dominating work, "Attack on Titan", would not surface until April of next year.
SAO had picked the best possible time.
Of course, to the anime studio, to Kadokawa, and to the SAO fans, this was perhaps, a curse.
After 2009, up to now, the Chinese anime community has experienced a sort of sustained, explosive expansion, with increasingly younger fans. It seemed that every year, large numbers of new fans would enter the Japanese ACGN (anime, comic, game, novel) circle. Following new seasons became the homework of the new guys, and with the new blood, already largely discussed works experienced explosions in popularity, earning some overrated reviews.
It's quite simple: if you've watched less, it's easy to give wild reviews to a work, and since the new guys always wanted to share their opinions, they were in a sort of possessed state: any work had the potential to become a revered masterpiece.
In essence, the SAO anime became a gateway anime for many new people, and as they described it, a masterpiece.
The exchange between young and old, and the eternal dismissive attitude held towards those late to the party, is a never ending drama.
This community was never ideal from the beginning. Although the 2-D world of anime is endlessly perfect, the world of otaku was filled with bitter criticism and toxicity.
I don't wish to be partisan towards any party. This is just history: neither side is right or wrong, they're just different.
But this time, SAO's reputation was the victim.

Here, I recall another hot topic, "Guilty Crown", which aired alongside "Fate/Zero" and dominated October 2011.
GC was the work that everyone fought over, and newcomers praised like mad, before SAO.
Of course, GC's animation quality is actually several times better than that of SAO; the only critical point is its plot.
Realistically, GC's bad reviews were more or less affected by background I mentioned before, and the popularity and good reviews of its predecessor work "Code Geass" raised the audience's expectations too high, eventually turning it into a negative example in the anime world.
If you look at it this way, these two works suffer in the same fashion.
It's just that SAO's popularity got crazier and crazier, and the criticism it encountered grew more and more.

How exactly is SAO's animation quality?
This seems like a question filled with debate.
Generally, there are 4 factions who answer it thusly:

1. The SAO anime is a masterpiece. This is mainly expressed by the newer, younger group.
2. Only Aincrad is good in the SAO anime, it would be better off without Fairy Dance. This comes from those who've not read the LN, or those are relatively objective and fair.
3. The SAO anime quality is extremely low, incomparable to the LN. This is of course the voice of some of the LN people.
4. The SAO anime is a horrible mess, the LN is a mess, all of it is trash. This is the review I've heard the most from July 2012 to 2014, and comes from those haters who've never even read the LN or those who are just determined to deal a blow to the SAO fans.

First, I've already expressed my opinion at the beginning, and it's just a personal opinion, not fact. But we must first eliminate two factions, 1 and 4.
The word "masterpiece", other than when it's used as bait, doesn't really garner much love in the ACG community nowadays. Of course, everyone has their own standards, and their own versions of masterpieces, so there will never be a masterpiece that fulfills everyone's standards, even it if created some kind of social phenomenon.
That's why, wildly applying the moniker of "masterpiece" to any work should not be done. That's the first faction.
And about number 4, that's largely crazy talk that never shies away from an opportunity to diss the entirety of SAO; in reality, there are many parts of SAO's plot worthy of criticism, but in general, it's still a great work among the relatively inconsistent LN market. In the later LNs, the plot and setting experience new improvements; it's mostly an epic work, and has never descended to the point of insignificance.
Personally, I'm an LN person, so I can only stand from an LN person's perspective to observe the SAO anime. To me, it's not necessarily a disaster, but it definitely did not satisfy expectations. This is also the reason I rarely hear objective reviews of the anime; other than insane praise, all that's left is pretty much hate.

Let's talk about the relatively better Aincrad arc.
Whether it's the monster design, background design, coloring, storyboard, music, battle scene design, and precision of animation, the SAO anime always failed to meet my expectations.
Although the first part of the LN isn't some epic work, its "one hundred floors, one hundred worlds" concept greatly appealed to me. I'm also an online gamer, and have ready many online gaming novels, so I was very expectant, and as the first fully immersive online gaming anime I've seen, this work was far from achieving what I envisioned it to be.
Even the design of the monsters, people, and background could be called rough, not even achieving the level of today's online games.
Of course, these are merely unmet expectations, which were too high to begin with anyway.
But what was even more unbearable were the terribly animated fights and innumerable places they botched. A-1 Pictures got their name of "Slideshow Studio" ever since this anime, Sword Art Online became Slideshow Art Online, filled with a great number of mistakes, and even the parts outside of the game had times when they messed up the faces of the characters.
Of course, the other reason that SAO received its fanbase was the plot of the Aincrad arc.
Putting aside how it forcibly inserted Volume 2's short stories into the canon and caused extreme holes in the plot, the Aincrad anime still managed to tell the complete story, an epic story of "boy meets girl", without the usual procrastination, and the ending finished what was unfinished.
If the story ended here, maybe it could have been a decently okay work.

But unfortunately, there was Fairy Dance.
This is a remaining problem in the history of the SAO LNs.
The LN's story design already greatly restricted the anime's creativity, bringing negative reviews to both, including Volume 2's short story nature, including Fairy Dance's forced continuation.
It's my opinion that Fairy Dance isn't a good chapter in the entirety of SAO.
It has many shortcomings, like an overly clichéd antagonist, a little sister character affecting the two main character's relationship, and other overly simplistic stories, but these holes weren't clear in the LN at all.
The LN even connected the two storylines of reality and in-game, which was very new for this series, and the words themselves had a sort of magic to them. Kawahara's writing covered up these holes to a certain extent.
But in the anime, these holes were greatly magnified.
Unknowing anime watchers would go, why is it suddenly this style? Just then we had wife and husband finally defeating a demon, and now there's a sister and fiancée?
The appearance of the harem-like sister character and the overly evil antagonist, along with the unnecessary abusive plot, topped with the male main character suddenly winning with a hack, dealt devastating damage to this work's reputation.
Kirito was labeled as a Gary Stu, and Asuna turned into a famous housewife character.
SAO became the name for a mindless novel: fanfiction.
How gratifying, yet deplorable.

After Season 1 ended, SAO began to enter into its LN prime: snagging the top place in "Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi" for 2 consecutive years, sales that were the envy of everyone, and known by everyone in the industry.
Of course, with that came the endless war between the haters and the fans.
In that time, I've always been at the very front line against the haters, to the point that the three words "Sword Art Online" were already numb to me.
Because of the circumstances, although I was unsatisfied with the anime, I still opposed the haters.
Actually, negative opinions of SAO were overwhelming for a while, and it was simple why: the haters didn't need substance like the fans did, and they were more toxic.
There were also many who went along with the crowd, and those who were actually haters, but within the community, SAO and the LN has always been reviewed too extremely; I don't think that's good either.
SAO's hate period only subsided once the new victim Attack on Titan appeared, but its negative reputation remained, the community's impression of SAO was hard to change.
The industry got the influence and sales it had dreamed of, the newcomers, like always, praise SAO to no end, and maybe, one day, to show their own maturity, they will reject this work with great contempt, leaving only those victims who truly love SAO, and withstand this unstopping criticism with wistfulness.

When Season 2 aired, SAO didn't have the hot following it did during its first season, but it was still the number one topic at the time.
A-1 Pictures continued its usual style. Although A-1 Pictures does best with tearjerkers, the Yuuki chapter didn't help me rediscover how I felt when I first read that part.
GGO was still a mistake-ridden battle story. Although some would praise it, it didn't improve on Season 1 by much.
What's good is that the debates during SAO's first season were not reopened. SAO fans could finally close the door and enjoy themselves.
Although it was not the same atmosphere, this tepid state is perhaps, more fitting for this unsatisfactory anime adaptation.
Now, SAO has fully expanded, with novels, anime, manga, games, and even VR games. LN sales continue to be stable. Although it will become a thing of the past one day, it still remains a stable anime IP now.
The SAO movie will release next year, and SAO no longer has the support it did during 2012, but in these 4 years, it has received a great deal of popularity, but lost some reputation at the same time.

This work is slowly settling, and the flame wars and popularity will also settle. I hope that, like how the SAO bar is now, it can peacefully live out its remaining days. The objective reviews it gets in the hearts of its fans may not be high, but they will not be too low either.