Accel World Reviews

NOTE: Although this review focuses mainly on the tv series, it covers the entire animated franchise up until this point. If you happen to be one of the few people that didn’t watch it, thought of giving it a chance, and are reading this right now, I should advise you that there are some spoilers here, so take this TL; DR instead: THIS FRANCHISE IS COMPLETE GARBAGE AND YOU SHOULDN’T WASTE YOUR TIME WITH IT. With that said, let’s move to the review.

Ah, Accel World, the title that blew everyone’s mind when it came out for being about people playing videogames with an advanced virtual reality technology, for featuring a fat ugly male protagonist and for being made by the author of Sword Art Online (this anime adaptation came out before SAO’s, but it was the other way around in the light novels). Since it panders to both the otaku and gamer audiences it was hailed as a masterpiece, and guess what, IT’S GARBAGE.

So the show presents this futuristic society where people basically get a wireless virtual world installed in their heads since they were born. They have access to internet whenever they feel like it and thus can mail and call other individuals, take notes and do their homework or search information virtually. All of which appears as windows in front of them which only they can see. It’s presented in the cheapest way possible with people moving their hands in front of thin air.

They can also talk to others mentally if two or more people connect each other with a cable. This is also presented in the cheapest way possible with people sitting on a table and talking to each other without even moving their mouths. Good use of an advanced technology story presented in a visual medium there. Also sometimes their thoughts mix in and sometimes they don’t. Is there a rule which controls that? Nah, it changes whenever the author feels like throwing an ecchi joke or not.

So it’s a society that wasted money and technology on an application that allows them to being anti-socials that don’t really communicate to each other but it’s really awesome because people can (not really) play crappy videogames from within. Yay!

Here’s some app called “Brain Burst” which transfers them to the “Accelerated World” that allows people to think way faster than the normal human brain but in order to do that they need some experience points and how does people gain said experience points? They play a crappy mmorpg and fighting game fusion which is obviously a serious and very dramatic thing.

The game already begins in a ridiculous way by basically raping the players’ mind to get information about them and create their avatars based on their emotions and psyche (mostly insecurities). Um, what? Why would someone do such a thing, why no one demanded the developer for being a potential cyber-terrorist group that brainwashes people? Who cares, let’s play videogames! And the designs are ridiculous, simple yet deformed robots with one or two colors and no explanations whatsoever about how that specific design reflects its player.

What about the game itself? A generic mmo where people kill creeps and gain level; there isn’t even some lore behind the world they play in. They don’t even form factions because those were already formed when the game started by some people that apparently didn’t have better things to do than playing a bad videogame the whole time, said people didn’t even wanted to reach the finale of the game and instead tried to be at peace. What kind of gamers are those? But don’t worry because the main girl of the show didn’t like that and betrayed them and decapitated the guy that proposed that and since then there are factions at war in the game.

What that means is that the little bit of story within the game was made by the players and no from the game itself, how sad is that for a game that is not about creating your stuff with whatever is given to you like some simulation game or Minecraft? (And even that game has some sort of story).

What about the leveling and abilities system and the gameplay? People gain experience by killing creeps or fighting against other players, just like in any other mmo. But since this is also an rpg they also unlock new abilities when they gain more level. How? Weren’t their personas based on each person? Why don’t they begin with all of their unique abilities if their avatars were created based on the individual characteristic of each one? Why are the character’s abilities so similar to the ones of generic rpg classes like mages or healers when they are supposed to be based on each individual? What about those abilities represents the players? Who cares let’s just play videogames!

Just like in any other mmo, the players have a health bar, and while that should balance the battles, it doesn’t. What I mean is that they play a game, they have health bars, they battle with specific abilities that consumes specific amount of energy (they have some form of it in the game too) and deals a specific amount of damage. Yet the protagonist can be easily owned by whoever he encounters and is always about to lose, but when he has the lowest amount of health you can imagine, the same abilities that almost killed him (or new even more powerful) now deal nearly to no damage, what does that mean? It means that he has a ridiculous amount of plot armor. Oh, and he also can easily defeat his opponents in the end with just a few attacks, of course. And let’s not forget that he is able to do that because he has THE SUPER AMAZING, UNBELIEVABLE, UNIMAGINABLE AND UNMATCHABLE ABILITY OF… being able to fly, wow…

The players gain experience points whenever they kill shit or defeat other players, you know, basic stuff, and that’s a super important and dramatic thing because if they lose all of their points they lose in the game, and if they lose in the game, what could happen? Are whole races and kingdoms going to submit to others like in No Game no Life? No. Will the players lose their lives like in Sword Art Online? No. THE SUPER IMPORTANT, DRAMATIC AND SERIOUS THING THAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN IF THEY LOSE THE GAME IS…wait for it…that they won’t be able to play the game ever again. The system blocks their ID and thus it doesn’t allow the losers to play the game ever again. Those are some really high stakes, right? Also, what kind of mmorpg blocks its players permanently? One that doesn’t expect to stay afloat for much time, I guess.

And the losers can’t even recommend the game to other people because the app instantly erases their memories of the game, and their time and role there. Do you need another proof that this developer is a potential cyber terrorist group? Say what you want about how games make people stupid, no game in real life (up until now) fucks up the players’ mind like this one, thankfully (well, maybe porn games, specially the vr ones that are being developed, oh God, what are we doing…).

That’s what happens when you create a nonsensical futuristic society with an advanced virtual reality without any form of control. How do they deal with hacking in such a society?
Anyways the brainwash is done supposedly because the game must remain secret, yeah, because having people yelling BURST LINK every time they enter is not suspicious at all.

Remember how experience points work? Well, forget about that, why? Remember when I said that the main girl of the show killed another player? Well, here’s what happened: she caught off guard the other player and instantly chopped off him. What happened with all the experience stuff? Well, turns out whenever two or more top players fight, they one-shot the other, taking away their whole experience and thus making they lose the game instantly. Why would such a broken rule which completely contradicts the mechanics of the game exist? Well, I guess it turns the game into something like Day Z and it becomes more interesting…if the protagonist didn’t have plot armor, that is.

You see, when Haruyuki, the protagonist, loses, he just gets his ultimate ability robbed by another player and becomes an unimportant player that slowly goes back to the top to fight against the asshole that defeated him once again, no big deal.

Even in their real life the main characters have plot armor. In the early episodes of the show Kuroyukihime, the main girl, wants to help Haru with his bully, so she gets him being punched by that guy so the asshole gets expelled, and what does he does for a revenge? HE ATTEMPTS TO CRASH HARU WITH HIS CAR, OF COURSE. But do not worry, dear viewer, here’s Kuroyukihime to save the day. After a long, unbelievable, lame, melodramatic, hypocritical and selfish love confession, she uses a once in a long time unique ability only the top players can use and thinks even faster, and uses her avatar to move her real body, so she gets crashed by the car instead of Haru, and after a few days, she’s ok and playing the game again, of course.
Let’s talk about the third arc of the series, because the other two were about people playing games where all those problems I already mentioned appear. So this particular arc is about how another student of their same school uses the app for something different than playing the game and that is cheating in the school exams so he gets better grades. It was refreshing to see something slightly different but the handling of this arc was also really bad. On one hand, it brings out an interesting question to the table, if we had and application like this, wouldn’t we abuse of it in order to get personal benefit? And wouldn’t we try our best to do that? Yet, again, the handling of this arc was terrible.

Leaving the fact of how minimal his main objective is aside, the antagonist of this arc is so edgy that you can’t take him seriously; he laughs as a maniac and treats everyone like shit because he gets better grades and because he has a higher score on a videogame. He does all that because he suffered bullying in the past from his brother, meaning he is not only edgy but also victimized; Haru went through something similar and he didn’t become a piece of shit. Also, he use one of Haru’s friends to gain points in the game, because she has THE SUPER AMAZING, UNBELIEVABLE, UNIMAGINABLE AND UNMATCHABLE ABILITY OF…being able to heal. What kind of lame ass mmorpg is this where a basic ability like that is a big deal?

This girl kept saying the whole series that everyone is stupid for taking a game so seriously and when an asshole tells her to betray her friends in order to gain more experience in a game she supposedly doesn’t care that much about she instantly agrees? Well Haru and this girl were extorted by the antagonist, yes, but it’s a futuristic society where they have all kind of stuff in their heads, they can record conversations and videos anytime they want. If it’s possible to do it today with no much difficulty, imagine how easy it should be for them, the whole arc could’ve been avoided.

And what does the super pro player Kuroyukihime is doing? She is on a school trip until she appears at the ends of the arc and easily defeats their enemies except for the main bad guy who has to be faced by Haru, because otherwise he wouldn’t regain his ultimate ability I guess. And of course, the final fight is full of plot armor, ass-pulls, new abilities similar to others and lame motivational speeches, what did you expect, strategies and fair conditions for each player? Oh, silly you.

This third arc ended up being the worst, not only has all the problems from previous ones such as plot armor and ass-pulls and could’ve been avoided as I stated before but it also contradicts the most basic rules of the series:

-Two players who have similar abilities to those of Haru and a girl from the second arc appear and Haru gets his ultimate robbed. How is it possible for his ability to get robbed by other player? How is it possible that there are players with similar abilities? Weren’t their abilities unique because they supposedly represent every player’s personality and psyche?
-During Kuroyukihime’s trip she has her own adventure fighting a random monster and she gets the help of her best friend, who was a Burst Linker before but she’s not anymore. It is stated at the beginning of the series that whenever someone loses the game and it’s uninstalled that person can’t play it again. What happened to that? Also this mini arc was thrown in during the last arc interrupting the story. I don’t care if it was a side story in the light novels or something like that, in the anime adaptation it killed the narrative flow just like a filler arc does.

Now, let’s talk about the characters, shall we? Unlike most of the others modern anime’s protagonists, Haru is fat, short, ugly, suffered bullying and have an inferiority complex. So this isn’t a story about a bland self-insert Gary Stu that haves all the chicks for stupid reasons and an empowerment fantasy for otakus and is actually about an interesting, flawed and well developed protagonist? No, is the same shit as the others but even more retarded. Why? Because lots of girls fall in love with him despite all of his flaws because he is kind and good at videogames, featuring not one but two cliché and lame characteristics of modern anime’s protagonists in one package that no girl would see as enough of a reason to fall for a guy.

To his credit, he gets some development throughout the story as he becomes stronger and thus he gains more self-confidence, but that is also inconsistent since he is constantly going back to how he was, and the circle repeats forever whenever something positive, immediately followed by something negative, happen to him.

As for the other characters, there’s Kuroyukihime, the perfect waifu of the show that is somehow a pro player, a top student, and a kind hearted person at the same time, yet in reality she’s selfish and hypocrite. I can’t believe how every fan of this series takes her characterization at face value and don’t realize how she only wants Haru for his (not real) capabilities of taking her to the top of a freaking mmorpg.

As for the others, edgy enemies with close to none characterization, and some turns out to be cliché harem archetypes that fall for Haru because of the aforementioned reasons; Takumu, a typical protagonist’s best friend, and Chiyuri, that bitch that isn’t just annoying and useless and not only betrays her friends for stupid reasons but is also jealous of Haru and Kuroyukihime and she tries to take advantage on him despite being his best friend’s girlfriend. Fuck this girl.

And that’s it for the series, although it has an interesting concept and some attempt at showing people’s change of attitude by the dependence of advance technology and less social interactions, as well as some attempt at showing how we would abuse of some power or facility gave to us if we have the chance to get benefits from it, along with some development for the main character, everything failed in the long run. Apart from the interesting premise, the only positive aspect regarding the story that I can think about is the pacing, which is not good, but not bad either. Take in count that while it’s still an adaptation with no ending, it covers three arcs where the protagonists fight against various other factions, which means that every important character was already revealed. But then again, this is also questionable because they keep making progress and going back to square one and then they constantly keep repeating the process.

If there are some positive aspects in this show, those would be the visual and sound department, the character designs are generic, bland, and Haru and the avatars are ugly and retarded, and the voice acting is nothing special; but the backgrounds, the motions, and the special effects are well done, and the sound effects and soundtrack range from fine to good, making the world they play in and their fights spectacular on a superficial level. I don’t want to waste more time in this, I’m moving to the rest of the franchise.

The tv series was followed by two ovas that were silly ova material about a pumpkin hunting other players full of fan service, even more retarded designs and melodrama regarding the not couple from the show and another one about onsen, Haru being fat and having to lose some weight in order to pass a medical exam in school, what does this have to do with gaming? Well if he doesn’t lose weight he can’t play videogames for stupid reasons. That’s it, don’t lose weight to gain better health and appearance, do it so you can go back to play videogames for another person. Overall good pacing, visuals and sound apart, there’s nothing more to these ovas, moving on.

After that, another studio released some two minutes specials about every character being even more retarded, barely trying to hide their fetishes (Haru’s best friend is literally treated as a dog by his girlfriend in these specials) and, of course, everything is shown in a crappy chibi style.

And finally, four years after the tv and ova series finished, Sunrise released a movie, and it’s easily the worst thing in the franchise. It tried, and failed, to be a recap movie, a sequel to the former entries, a stand-alone entry, and an adaptation of some volume of the light novel series to please the fans that were waiting for a second season, all at the same time. How is it possible to fail that hard? Well, like this:

-Bad as a recap movie: It only covers part of the series, leaving some details from the show off the summary.

-Bad as a sequel: The events here happen way after the tv and ova series, if it is watched by a person that never read the light novel series, said person would ask him/herself: Who are all of this new people? When and how did the long time characters gain so many new abilities? (Said abilities are pretty op btw) Why are the two factions still allies when they already accomplished their common objective in the series? Shouldn’t they go back to be enemies already since they want to reach glory (if you can call reaching the top of a mmo that) by their own? What are the new areas they go to? When and how Haru got rid of his curse?

-Bad as a stand-alone entry: You may think that this movie shouldn’t be judged as such because it doesn’t try to be one, but it is. Why would it include a recap then, if it wasn’t? The people that watched the series already knows the story, and the same goes for the people that kept reading the light novels, of course. Yet the movie starts with a recap that lasts for half its duration, and wastes said duration in stupid things instead of telling the viewer all of its important details. That aside, it’s also just a bullshit mission about two factions fighting against a feminine player that somehow allied with a monster in the game for escapists reasons, and she was defeated by the power of lame speech about love and friendship, and bullshit op new abilities. But that does not mean that the film can’t include some silly moments about the main (not) couple, right? Talk about wasting screen time in nothing.

-Bad as an adaptation: It is not even good as an adaptation of its source material because it changed some important details from the story it’s supposed to be adapting.

Good animation and sound apart, this movie is a complete disaster, there is not a single good thing about its script and thus, it does not deserve more than the minimal score.

And that’s it for the franchise, the tv series alone is slightly better but, as a whole, is the anime equivalent of the third Spy Kids film, and that’s definitely not a good thing.

Accel World: 4/10
Accel World EX: 3/10
Accel World: Acchel World: 2/10
Accel World Infinite Burst: 1/10

It is great if u watch it dub but i think its OVAs were not too good to be watched.
I even liked the title song it is a great one.
I think one must watch all its pars