What would you do if the hottest new MMO was a fully emersive world, transmitting your brain signals in and out of the game? Buy it of course! What about if that game turned out to be an elaborate trap where you can't log out and dying in game means dying in real life? Kirito now must figure out how to play the game in this entirely new setting.
SAO is well made, moves the narrative tension well, has interesting (so far and so few) characters, and looks to be one of the best of the season. For those reasons alone, it should be on top of anyone's watch list.
My only gripe? To recap, the basic setting is that a cyber-terrorist inventor has basically thrown away 10,000 people's lives for the sake of perfecting his video game. I understand the narrative hook here is meant to force the issue of "this is reality", but I tend to find character triage and mass off-screen (or on-screen for that matter) slaughter to be a cheap ploy. Not as cheap as survival stories (i.e. where characters are periodically killed off as part of some system, like in Battle Royal or Hunger Games). Now, that is an issue of preference and doesn't take away from the quality (or entertainment value) of the show. unless you are like me.
Rating: A-
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