I was gonna talk about KonoSuba and the fundamentals of comedy this week,
but certain recent events revolving around a major election have temporarily shorted out my ability to smile.
I am, of course, talking about Reddit's best opening polls. Where as is the case every year,
everyone is voting wrong. A lot of this I can let slide.
Some of it, I'll have to murder someone over later.
But the most unconscionable thing about these poll results is how successful Sword Art Online openings have been.
The anime community at large seems to be laboring under the misconception that SAO's openings aren't terrible.
Allow me to dispel that.
Sword Art Online's openings start at barely passable and have only gotten worse with each season.
With one exception, but I'll get to that.
Now, some of you are already typing,
"But Geoff! The music is so good, and the animation is nice, and it all syncs up real swell-like!" and I agree,
but those elements are just the bones of an opening.
I like to have some meat to tear into, and not only are SAO's OPs light on meat, most of it is rotten.
Plus, a computer can make visuals that sync up smoothly with a song, and that computer
might actually be more creative than the people working on these OPs.
They have a formula that they follow to a fault, and that formula was pretty cliché the first time they used it to begin with.
Speaking of!
Crossing Field: The Least Worst One.
We start out on what's actually a pretty strong image, a rolling field of hills made out of a matrix-like code
that dissolves away to leave us with the title. This is a pretty clever and understated way of presenting the title,
and this way of depicting a virtual world, while not unique, is at least uncommon.
It sure would be a shame if they dropped all of the clever parts of that and just use the matrix-
Oh, dear.
Oh, dear...
We'll get to you, Death Gun.
Now we see our protagonist, Kirito.
You can tell he's the protagonist because he's sullen, and miserable, and shows up first.
This shot tells us he's a bit of a loner and he uses swords.
That's it.
Next we see Asuna striding forward, contrasting Kirito in her motion and position on screen.
We can tell she's more confident and charismatic than him, and has a sensitive side, and she uses swords.
I wish all OP's were this easy.
Next we see Asuna pressed up against a mirror, showing her real and virtual selves in their respective worlds.
We rotate around it seamlessly, reflecting the blurry line between real and virtual
that is the show's only real theme up until it gets kicked in the head half way through ALfheim.
I actually really like the next few shots,
a match cut between characters stretching their hands out to touch the virtual sky as it flits by in time-lapse.
It really captures the inherent allure of a true virtual MMO,
and the way Kirito's hand recoils as the error messages blanket the sky reflects the terror of being trapped in one.
It's a cool, atypical reaction shot, and that theme of wonder turning into horror,
which is what hooked me on the show initially,
carries over into the next shot of the hub plaza opening up into a black void.
I'll admit, even though they haven't sold me on the characters, up to this point,
I'm at least invested in the premise. Then we get to the action shot, and it all starts to fall apart.
Yes, this sword fight with Kirito is well animated and well choreographed,
but it means nothing, and even that impressive running tracking shot starts to lose its appeal when you see it over, and over, and over.
The fight with The Gleam Eyes at least has a bit of meaning to it.
Kirito and Asuna are stronger when they fight together, which is the last of that we will see for the rest of this video.
Also, am I the only one bothered by the fact that in an MMO with 10,000 players,
only Kirito and Asuna are fighting the first raid boss?
Because that recurring theme in the show is one of its worst aspects.
The shot of Asuna running with her sword is especially impressive as a piece of character animation,
at least up until it devolves into a flurry of incomprehensible sword lasers.
But next we see shots of three female supporting characters,
and I defy you to tell me anything about their personalities from these pictures.
The trick is you can't, because they don't have any.
SAO thinks that hobbies are the same thing as personalities, though,
so it shows them with the pet, a blacksmith hammer, and... a moping wall?
And here's Yui, in the most generic representation of a computer ever,
slumbering dormant, waiting for the day when she can wake up and completely tank
all of the shows dramatic stakes.
Here's Kirito standing on a cliff, looking at the environments, because we need to fill five seconds.
Now here's the male supporting cast, which the show cares so little about
that it doesn't even bother to give them proper backgrounds.
And now, Asuna and Kirito have done the most generic thing that people with swords in anime can possibly do.
Good for them.
These two shots of them living their happy domestic life in the game are actually pretty nice, though.
They reflect on that theme of virtual reality being fully real and meaningful in its own right,
and they serve to break up the monotony of the fighting.
Plus, Asuna is the only character in the OP with any personality.
They kick that in the head pretty fast, though.
The very last shot of their swords crossed near the lake where they made their home is actually really nice, too.
It reflects their status as equal partners as well as a longing to find happiness and tranquility in a life of danger.
The show couldn't ditch those aspects fast enough, either.
The second opening, Innocence, also starts strong, if super generic, with birds flying through the sky
and all the characters looking up at them.
Even if the continuity from the hospital to Kirito's house at the subway station
makes no sense, at least it's, you know, pretty and a little bit of evocative.
The real world falling away to reveal ALfheim is another cool reflection
of that, "Virtual Is Real" theme. It seems like whenever the animators have something to actually focus on,
no matter how basic, they make stronger, more inventive shots.
Now we set up the structure of the season. Asuna is trapped in a coma, and Kirito comes to visit her every day,
as evidenced by the repetition of him at this crosswalk,
but he's determined to move forward and find a way to save her.
Suguha, meanwhile, does Kendo, and she's distracted by something,
which we know is Kirito, but based on the way this is cut together,
the OP manages to make it seem like she has a crush on BadGuy McRapeSuit. This is really incompetent editing.
We see- I forget his name- looking into a mirror with his character in it, which means... he plays that character in an online game?
This is really dumb and bad.
Asuna is standing in a lake looking like a sexy damsel with no personality.
She's gonna stay like that.
Then those same birds fly over, which means she's still connected to her 'husbando' and his 'imouto' in this world.
The birds can fly, and they can fly, and that means freedom, and also the real world and virtual world are connected too.
How deep!
And with... ugh.
A panty shot transition,
We go into more generic fighting,
which lasts, like, two seconds, because they need to remind us that some characters exist,
and fit into obvious archetypes,
and then, oh right, Yui still exists to remind us that death doesn't mean anything anymore,
and golly, isn't flying cool and exciting? Sure would be, if I could see the cool landscapes they're looking at
instead of Asuna quietly giving up on ever being a good character again!
Then we have some shots of Kirito, and Leafa, and Yui doing cute regular life stuff again, which I like,
even though they're a weird fit for an arc about racing to find a kidnapping victim.
Then we're back to Kirito and a crosswalk, and oh look, he doesn't have to go it alone.
This is so touching! My heart is soaring like these not at all generic white birds.
SAO has started to fall into a rut here,
but at least they try to make a consistent motif with the clichéd shots
instead of just tossing them in because they need to fill space.
That was foreshadowing.
Ignite is bad, guys. It's real bad.
In 20 seconds, it manages to establish what the main characters of the arc look like in the most boring way possible,
and the fact that this one has guns in it. This is gonna be rough.
Kirito is sitting at a café with his girlfriend,
and they're talking about stuff. Meanwhile, his avatars are walking by in the crowd behind him,
which either symbolizes that they're reminiscing about their time in those horrible death traps for some reason,
or Kirito is constantly distracted by the pull of adventure.
I honestly can't tell you which, because the writing in this series is not very consistent.
And here, Sinon is shown in limbo between her traumatic past and the character she uses as a coping method to try and move forward.
This shot is pretty okay.
The use of a swing set as a symbol of loneliness and arrested development isn't exactly revolutionary,
but it's something.
Next we see Sinon's friend Kyouji, and oh wow! Oh gosh!
I wonder who Death Gun could be!
I know I praise OPs for their foreshadowing,
but there's a world of difference between hinting at a character's fate through subtle choices in blocking and editing,
and [yelling] CUTTING DIRECTLY BETWEEN A CHARACTER AND HIS SECRET IDENTITY
THAT IS THE LYNCHPIN OF THE SEASON'S WHOLE PLOT.
And then this! This isn't even symbolism!
It's a fucking diagram!
Take two seconds to think about it,
and you instantly know that Death gun is three guys pretending to be one guy who have roots in Laughing Coffin.
You want to talk to me about giving away everything?
This is how you do it wrong.
After that, we see that Death Gun plays people like puppets, apparently,
and is also dragging Sinon deeper into her misery, I guess.
This reaction shot that follows is... actually pretty alright.
It tells us that the events we're seeing are being watched intently, like some sort of sporting match.
Also, I'll be grudgingly admit that the way Yui copies Asuna is cute.
Now we get another generic sword fight scene, but this time there are bullets and a terribly composited CG backdrop
that the characters just sort of float around on,
and Kirito is running right instead of left,
so it's totally not identical to the last twelve,
and here's a shot of Sinon that I'm pretty sure I saw like,
exactly in Highschool of the Dead, and pretty much any other anime with a sniper character, for that matter.
I'm usually on board for fighting silhouettes,
but only when they're used right.
The lack of detail means the animation can be smoother while still looking stylish.
Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, this moves at like four frames per second,
and the choreography is boring as dirt.
And now, generic shootouts. How fun.
And after that, notice that the moments of normalcy are completely gone,
because at this point the show has abandoned all pretense of having a coherent meaning.
Instead let's have these two characters walk in opposite directions dramatically,
like the whole arc is building up to their confrontation as warriors, even though its really not.
But it looks cool, and it's ten seconds that we can fill without having to think about it.
Ignite is garbage, guys. It's a dumpster fire.
So how the fuck did it make it past Toradora and Pet Girl?
Fuck you.
That's how.
And somehow Courage is even worse. At first.
We open on CGI swords, because why think about the meaning of what you're filming
when you can just fill time with pretty CG?
Like, I rag on these OPs for being brain dead,
but this shot could actually just be a randomly generated visualizer.
This entire thing is a mess.
I can't even be asked to think about the individual shots
because they're all just characters standing places,
or shots of those places, or generic computer imagery,
or more interminable generic fighting.
There's only one shot I even kind of like, and that's just because it reminds me that unlike everyone else,
who are all reacting the exact same way,
Klein has a bit of a personality.
This is an absolute bottom of the barrel OP. Instead of creating original footage,
they just use clips from the show and really obvious inserts of concept art.
It honestly seems like it's just filler put in place of more interesting images that haven't been finished yet.
Hey, guess what? It is!
The Mother's Rosario version of this opening is actually good.
There are two reasons for that.
Firstly it, reframes itself around the growth of the arc's main character, Yuuki, who isn't Kirito.
In fact, Kirito isn't in it at all.
Hallelujah!
Secondly, it actually has a few moments of good, meaningful action.
I mean, it's not great.
It still uses a lot of the same generic imagery as the first pass at the OP, just with the characters replaced,
and we don't learn a lot about them aside from seeing that they sort of fit into archetypes,
but these are one-shot characters, so we don't really need to understand much about them beyond what they mean to Yuuki.
And hey, look! Her party's not a fucking harem!
The shot at the beginning of the two twins stumbling as they grow up, and picking themselves up,
and breaking out into running before we're left with just one of them is really meaningful and potently emotional.
These sisters have coped with a lot. It killed one of them, and they're placing their hopes on this one VR avatar,
which adds further meaning to this Michael Bay shot of a blowing orb pulling Yuuki's attention toward the dungeon,
a shot which made no goddamn sense when Kirito was the focus,
but here it seems like her sister's soul is guiding her.
And in between the generic character shots in time with the guitar chords,
we get these freakin' badass choppy rotoscoped moments of Yuuki fighting shadows.
The next time we see it, Asuna is fighting alongside her,
making up for her deficiencies and fumbles.
It's not a lot, but there's a bit of character growth,
and I really like this first-person shot of Yuuki approaching the Floor 27 monolith,
wiping away the dust to reveal her friends smiling behind her,
supporting her, I've always been a sucker for that upbeat 'shounen' happy jump.
the next shots are pretty trite, but having a likeable character in place of Kirito makes them a lot more bearable,
and at the end of the OP, we return to the shots of characters going about their everyday lives.
SAO remembered what it's about, and it's charming! Briefly.
This is the first time the show has made flying look fun, too.
A few of these shots honestly make me smile. This OP isn't amazing,
but it got me interested enough to watch more SAO after Death Gun made me drop it like a fucking rock,
and the side story was kind of worth it, almost.
Asuna is almost likable again. Can't wait for it to go back to not that.
With this one exception, the SAO OPs are mostly terrible, and they will continue to be terrible because they don't have to try.
I mean, enjoy whatever music you like, but just remember that good music + good animation does not necessarily equal a good intro.
It needs good direction on top of that.
If you enjoyed listening to me being negative about things for a change, you might like watching my last season recap,
which is for summer. I only watched One Punch Man this fall. Speaking of that,
you should also check out my OP analysis of One Punch Man.
It's pretty good, and if you like this or those videos and you want to see more,
be sure to subscribe for new content every week, and tell all your friends about the video too.
Or your enemies who like SAO. Let's make them suffer together.
Thank you for watching, and thank you especially if you're one of the kind folk like these guys on the screen here
who support me on Patreon. Your support helps to lift me up when the SAOs of the world have me feeling down,
plus it's nice to have someone to vent to once in a while.
As always, this is Geoff Thew, professional shitbag, signing out from my mother's basement.