Manga Monday: Sword Art Online – Girls Ops by Kawahara Reki

 

This week for Manga Monday I’m covering a side story to a very popular series. It’s Sword Art Online – Girls Ops by Kawahara Reki!

Plot Synopsis: This series covers the adventures of the other heroines in their adventures both inside ALO and outside in their daily lives.

Plot: The plot’s decent, nothing super amazing. But it makes for a decent side story, as it isn’t focused on Kirito. That being said if Sinon was a part of this series it’d be a heck of a lot better. Sadly she’s not.

Characters: We get to meet a new character, but I won’t spoil by talking about it. They are decent though. That being said I don’t particularly like any of the characters with the exception of Lisbeth. She just doesn’t get on my nerves as much as the others.

Art: It’s got the standard SAO artwork, so it’s pretty good.

Overall: This is a skippable side story, but if you love Sword Art Online you might wanna give it a read.

Anime Sunday: Sword Art Online II [2nd Cour Review]

This week for Anime Sunday I’m covering the 2nd Cours of the excellent second season of Sword Art Online’s anime adaptation. Spoilers after the jump.

Anime Sunday: Sword Art Online II [Spoilers for the first Season and first four Light Novels]

This week for Anime Sunday I’m covering something I don’t normally do, a second season of an adaptation that I’ve previously reviewed. It’s Sword Art Online II! Spoilers after the jump for the first season and first four Light Novels.

Light Novel Thursday: Sword Art Online by Reki Kawahara

 

This week I’m covering the very first Light Novel I ever read, Sword Art Online by Reki Kawahara.

Plot Synopsis: Sword Art Online (SAO) is a Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG), released in 2022. With the Nerve Gear, a virtual reality helmet that stimulates the user’s five senses via their brain, players can experience and control their in-game characters with their minds.

On November 6, 2022, the players log in for the first time, and later discover that they are unable to log out. They are then informed by Akihiko Kayaba, SAO’s creator, that if they wish to be free, they must reach the 100th floor of the game’s tower and defeat the final boss. However, if their avatars die in-game, their bodies will also die in the real world. One of these players is Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya, who was chosen as one of the 1,000 beta testers in the closed beta. Since he had previous experience and knowledge of the game, he felt that he could beat the game easily. As a result, he set out on an adventure to beat the game.

Plot: The plot is very character driven and focuses on Kirito’s struggle to deal with issues like Player-Killing, which is taken to a whole new level in the first arc, and his relationship with games after becoming trapped in a death game. I really enjoyed the plot as a whole because it shows Kirito’s thoughts and makes him a much more human character rather than who you see in the Anime adaptation. It also go much faster through the plot, because the first season of the anime took two volumes the first and the second, which was made solely of side stories that happen between Day 1 of SAO and the first chapter of SAO which is two years later.

Characters: I really enjoy the characters of SAO, because while the Anime was pretty good it made Kirito out to be too two-dimensional, and didn’t show any of his thoughts which helped make him a better character in the light novels.

Art: The art in the first few novels is okay, but could have been better and it becomes much better the third volume.

Overall: If you enjoy Virtual Reality stories, or video games in general, you’ll enjoy this series.

For those who like: Science-Fiction mixed with a bit of Fantasy, Romance, Virtual Reality, Video Games, MMORPG’s.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.