Why do I hate Sword Art Online so much?

In a lively debate on the popular internet forum Reddit, users have delved into the reasons behind the love and hate towards the anime "Sword Art Online." Despite its immense popularity, the series has been the subject of intense criticism and divisions within the otaku community.

"Sword Art Online," a light novel series written by Reki Kawahara, has become a cultural phenomenon since its debut on paper in 2009. The plot follows Kazuto Kirigaya, also known as Kirito, and other players who get caught up in an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) called Sword Art Online. Unable to exit the game unless they complete its levels, players must fight to survive in a virtual world full of dangers.

However, despite its intriguing premise and impressive animation, "Sword Art Online" has generated a divide among anime fans. Some praise its thrilling action, romance, and VR concepts, while others criticize its narrative pacing, character development, and depiction of relationships.

Ultimately, the love and loathing towards "Sword Art Online" reflects the diversity of opinions within the otaku community. While some enjoy its fast-paced action and romance, others lament its lack of depth and character development. In a world where tastes are as varied as the anime themselves, "Sword Art Online" continues to be a topic of passionate debate among fans of the genre.

"It's an incredibly mediocre anime that became SUPER popular. That irritates some people a lot. No one would complain if it had a mediocre reception."
"It's a perfectly normal show that showed signs of being above average only to backtrack earning people's hatred. The fact that the main character is quite boring, and that the series keeps creating new girls to add to a pseudo harem even though he was already taken in the first story arc, doesn't help at all. Season 3 was okay though, but that may be because Kirito feels like a more interesting character when he moves away from everyone he met in the previous two seasons, at least to me."
"To me, a combination of characters without much personality, Kirito excessively powerful, which takes the tension out of the fights he's involved in, lots of bullshit, huge plot holes, terrible pacing, nonsensical game mechanics, unnecessary and annoying fanservice even in serious moments, numerous rape scenes treated as something that is supposed to turn us on, and mediocre fight animation and choreography."
"What people hate is usually the second half of the first season (Fairy Dance) and the first 2/3 of the second season (GGO). That's a little over half of all SAO until Ordinal Scale came out, so as a result SAO itself doesn't have a great reputation. I thought SAO was absolutely amazing when I first started watching it, but even with all my enthusiasm, those two arcs were definitely disappointing compared to my expectations after the first few episodes. I don't HATE them, to me they were just normal (Aincrad and Mother's Rosario were great), but I understand why people hate them. After Aincrad, which at the beginning had an amazing setting, you wouldn't want to have a normal series."
"Because it became 'cool' people to hate Sword Art Online."
"I hate this statement with a passion. As someone who doesn't like ODS, it's irritating to read people completely dissolve your opinions into "it's popular, so they automatically hate it." It's a very easy way to completely dismiss anyone's opinion, and it seems to be the worst case with SAO these days. Just because I don't like the show doesn't mean I can't stand its popularity or look down on the people who enjoy it."
"It's as superficial as it is popular."
"My problem was that the first arc of Aincrad dies like 80% of things well and pretty well. It's an anime with a pretty solid first 2-3 episodes that attracted a lot of people and then shit on the bed. What confuses me is that it has staying power."
"The problem with anime is that only the first 13 episodes of the first season are good. They swooped in on the gold and created a fairy anime crap for the final part, followed by some sort of weird unknown player VR. I tried watching the second season three different times, all without success, ended up so bored that I fell asleep, or started playing games on my phone, realizing within 15 minutes of the episode that I had no idea what was going on."
"It sucks, they had huge potential to make this anime amazing, the Sword Art Online part was the best part and they rushed in. They had 100 unique floors to work with, and no limits because it was VR. They rushed, they could have made a really incredible, long series. Instead of seeing Kirito progress, train, grow, we see little snippets of his life there."
"Poorly written popcorn entertainment, which is not bad in itself. The problems arise when it's also very popular and has a very loud fandom (even rivaling JOJOs) of tweens who think the show is the best thing ever."
"Mostly because it's a lot more popular than it should be... Don't get me wrong, I love the series too (Kirito x Asuna <3)... But there are many more out there that are much better but not as popular. Many see this as unfair."
"Because he takes the most basic of storytelling and throws it out the window because of laziness. Seriously, while I enjoyed it, as a series it had big objective flaws that I couldn't overlook. I agree with the harems, the fanservice, and the broken protagonists, but the thing is, it has to be done right, and SAO was the complete opposite of that. In fact, it's useful as a tool to show people how not to write. I don't know how the third season was, but the first season was bad and the second season was even worse."
"I think what people really need to do is look for the kind of story that SAO is trying to tell, like a murder mystery, and really understand what makes a murder mystery good. SAO doesn't do that, two of the killers aren't even characters and there are no real suspects as there's only one suspicious character and the rest are minor characters that no one would consider to be killers (and they're not and it's not even implied that they are apart from an obvious red herring that she gets killed once she appears)."
"SAO also has inconsistent characters like Kirito who changes his personality depending on what the author wants him to do. Yes, there are people like you who love it, people like me who watch it to learn how not to tell a story and just laugh at all anime in general. However, there are also people who will hate the popularity of anime because because of these flaws they believe that its popularity was completely undeserved."
"It's because the premise was good, but it quickly turned into a harem simulator. Even the movie was for the theme of "Rocky Balboa" where the protagonist loses his edge and then regains it. A bit cliché. The only redemptive part for me was the 2nd arc with GGO, then with Yukki."