Gotz

I enjoyed the series very much. Great premise and I enjoyed watching the characters change and grow. It was also interesting how many characters were shown dealing with the situation in fairly realistic ways. The series started to lose my attention after Ep. 15. I thought that Kirito's sister was a bit stereotypical and it would be nice to see a sister once who didn't have a big brother complex. They had plenty of room for psychological depth without taking it to the slightly creepy side. The resolution was nice, but a bit contrived. Nevertheless, I am glad I made it through to see the rescue of Asuna, a character I enjoyed because she had a bit more depth than a lot of anime girls who typically fall into a blatant cookie cutter stereotypical category or are unbalanced wannabe males. I would have liked to see more involvement from previous Sword Art Online characters though. I am sure a lot of them would have been willing to help Kirito with his Alfheim Online mission and I would have thought he had learned more of a lesson about trusting and involving others from his SAO experience. I also thought that the lessons learned from the realities of online gaming were a bit muddled by the seed reinforcing the concept of escapism. I would have thought the dangers of extreme escapism and attempting to create an artificial or real utopia would have become clear. I like the characters and story, but I do not see a point in it continuing either. The story ended with promise for the future and sort of a Happily Ever After. Adding more that will no doubt suffer in quality will only be harmful and it is better to leave it to our imaginations to fill in the rest.