If it isn't clear by the title, I hated the original Sword Art Online. While most of the hate is clearly mob mentality and part of a meme, the series itself was horrible. Terribly one-dimensional characters and a Gary Stu piled with plot armor as the main protagonist, worthless female characters that serve nothing but to fall in love with the main character for no reason, laughably pathetic and generic villains, writing that is equivalent to a fourteen year old's fan- fiction, and worst of all, fanservice that never seems to end and hinders whatever credibility I could possibly give to this mess of an anime.
Normally, when I heard there was a parody of this anime, I thought it was going to be nothing more than lazy writing with some of the lowest form of wit for the sake of comedy, but after finishing the whole series on the Aincrad arc, I just loved it. SWE ended up rewriting the story and gave the characters actual...character. The finale was perfect and even got a laugh out of me when one of the scenes criticized the resolution of the original...actually, most of the series got a laugh out of me between the way Kirito and Asuna interacted with each other and others alike. Kayaba became much more than a lame antagonist that doesn't even remember the very reason why trapped and killed thousands of players in a very unique and interesting way. The side characters were fun to watch, especially Klein, who has more relevance to Kirito and the plot than in the original. The story was well rewritten and actually made me care about some of the characters with voice acting that didn't make me want to shut my ears.
Overall, I commemorate everyone who worked on this project. All the hard work was clearly there in making an otherwise bland anime into something worth watching.
