YMMV / Sword Art Online Abridged

• Adorkable: Recon; There's a reason SWE constantly refer to him as "best boi" during their streams. He's so endearingly dorky even Kirito can't bring himself to mock him.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: See here.
• Angst Dissonance: Much like the source material, Kirito and Asuna's emotional breakdown when Yui almost gets deleted is a bit hard to swallow for some viewers considering the two have only known her for about a day. However, it's even worse in this version since abridged Kirito and Asuna are shown to be much more emotionally guarded, and only took Yui in as part of their game of relationship chicken, although this can add a new layer of angst to their situation, since they had just started to genuinely like her but never got to show it by the time she got deleted.
• Author's Saving Throw: The Fairy Dance arc began facing some criticism as it went along; most of the characters and setpieces are altered to be part of an in-universe roleplay, which is amusing, but deviates harshly from the anime and becomes incredibly meanspirited, even by usual standards. Fortunately, episode 17 turns it around, focusing almost entirely on Kirito and Suguha's toxic relationship and insecurities, thereby building on the source material instead of mocking or outright discarding it.
• Awesome Ego: Here, Kirito has an ego the size of the moon and the skills to match, on top of being hilarious to watch.
• Awesome Music:
  • The opening is 30 Seconds to Mars' "This is War", which just works with the video. It comes back to the (unedited) final fight with Heathcliff/Kayaba, and is just as awesome, if not more so.
  • Lisbeth and her smithing skills, which is played to Guilty Gear Xrd's "Big Blast Sonic," which makes the whole thing even more amazing.
  • The music that plays as Yui curbstomps the Grim Reaper? The Cleric Beast's theme.
  • "Thoughts to a Friend" from Xenoblade Chronicles 1 plays when Kirito finally admits to Asuna that he loves her before he wakes up. It can, and probably should, kick your feels right in the dick.
  • Another song from Guilty Gear Xrd's soundtrack, "Coming Home" plays over the credits, a fitting and thematic send-off for the season finale.
  • And, perhaps appropriately, "Swordland" from Sword Art Online proper is retained for some key fights, usually when Kirito is bringing down a boss monster.
  • With season 2, the opening theme song has changed to Greek Fire's "A Real Life", which is just as if not significantly more awesome and meaningful than season 1's OP.
    Can we live a real life?
    A real life.
    And do we even know what that means?
    Can we live a real life
    and know people outside machines?
    Can we live a real life between the devil and the digital sea?
  • The part of Kirito's battle with Eugene where he dual-wields and finishes his opponent is done to "He of the Name..."
• Can't Un-Hear It: YamatoSFX as Kirito. Besides the usual Subbing Versus Dubbing arguments and arguments over whether it's better than the original, his Kirito voice is very distinctive, and as a result many other videos in which he's voiced a character have a flood of comments talking about Abridged Kirito.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Asuna's a walking generator of these.
    • Her horribly racist attempts to talk to Tiffany are cringeworthy as all get out... but then, they're so silly it's impossible to take them seriously.
    • In Episode 11, she merrily skips over the line of good taste like a game of hopscotch as her character fades away, but turns something that should be utterly tragic into hilarity with five simple words:
      Asuna: Go on. Cry. Cry your... little... bitch tears...
  • Suguha takes the crown as the queen of these the moment she's introduced, in which she assumes that Kirito is lying about having a girlfriend and is just taking advantage of a coma patient... and then proceeds to Virgin-shame him for it.
    Suguha: Oh, remember to take some tissues though. You know, clean it off her face when you're finished. Be a gentleman about it.
  • Sugou being creepy with Asuna in her coma stops being disturbing once he starts talking in falsetto and playing with Asuna's lips to say that she'll love him over Kirito and suck him off when they get married. His characterization as a horribly obnoxious Bridezilla is just the icing on the cake, since she was going to be brainwashed into marrying him regardless.
  • The war that Alfheim players are having to see who can reach the top of the World Tree first? It's called #RaceWar. The excitement in which Leafa describes it, and Kirito's reaction only cements this.
  • The scientists under Sugou's employ are slugs instead of humanoid because one of them has angered the wheelchair-bound model designer by stealing her medicated yoghurt. The culprit is so oblivious to the victim's that he's Comically Missing the Point, much to the chagrin of his coworker (and some of the dialog implies he's deliberately doing it).
• Draco in Leather Pants: Happens a lot, since most of the characters in this series are meant to be Love to Hate:
  • Most fans of the show ship Kirito and Asuna but are willing to admit they are an unhealthy train wreck which only works because they're both equally broken and insane and would never want anyone sane in real life to be in a relationship like that. However, during the show's 10 anniversary stream, SWE voiced their concerns over the amount of fans who genuinely consider them to be a perfectly healthy couple. If said stream is anything to go by, Asuna gets this the most out of the two, with several people saying that she was "a very patient woman" for dating Kirito, ignoring the fact that she's arguably more deranged than him, but is better at hiding it, and she isn't called out for her flaws as often as Kirito is, making her come across as the saner of the two during conversations, when they're both meant to be equally troubled.
  • Similarly, there are multiple fans who praise Yui for being a loving and protective companion to her surrogate parents Kirito and Asuna in ALfheim, ignoring the fact that, as an AI developed by an insane man, her sense of love is incredibly skewed, since she's willing to put the two of them through some extreme emotional distress by Faking the Dead as a "joke", and she encourages Kirito to continue hurting himself in the World Tree's invisible wall, showing no concern for his health.
  • Due to his Adaptational Sympathy in this version, Kayaba has a lot of fans that see him as an overworked victim whose evil actions were due to sleep deprivation despite the fact that he had two years to catch up on his sleep and put an end to his mistake to prevent any more deaths, but chose not to out of stubbornness, cowardice and his newly found hatred of the SAO player base. By the end, Kirito notes that he was nothing but a Dirty Coward who only cared about saving his own ass.
  • Since he had one scene where he played the Straight Man to his boss Jeffrey, there are several comments claiming that Johnny Black was the Only Sane Man of Laughing Coffin, ignoring that was still a bloodthirsty sadist and cyberbully who wanted to torture a game reviewer for giving a game he liked a low rating, and his banter with Jeffrey boiled down to Do Wrong, Right.
  • During Episode 17's "Post-Mortem" stream, SWE talked about how surprised they were at how many viewers felt sympathy for Shoji after Asuna was done with him, as the fact that he cared for his dog (whom Asuna threatened to eat as blackmail) apparently redeemed him in a lot of people's eyes, despite being a pathetic, cowardly bully who picked on a disabled co-worker for most of his screentime. It's probably because he's so pathetic that people find him sympathetic. Besides, petty jerk or not, he was stupid enough to say he was molesting her as a cover-up. As one highlighted commenter from the stream put it, the co-worker he was bullying was complicit in the same evil scheme, while the dog was innocent.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gary, a quest NPC that Keita "recruited" by starting the quest and never finishing it. The only thing he says is:
    "We must save my family!"
  • Rosalia for laying down her first year psychology analysis on Kirito.
  • Lisbeth. She was already a fan favorite in the original series, while here she also has the added appeal of being The Woobie, along with the fact she often finds herself playing the Only Sane Woman to Kirito and Asuna. It certainly helps that she's voiced by Megami33.
  • Yui, who had a case of Rescued from the Scrappy Heap compared to her canon counterpart. While canon Yui received flack for being nothing but a moeblob, abridged Yui is cunning, manipulative, snarky, and her adoption by Kirito and Asuna made far more sense. Her background as a psychological support AI gets more mileage and she gets the ball rolling in mending Kirito's and Suguha's strained relationship.
  • Cazmer became this in Episode 16 after being adapted from a one-dimensional villain to a sympathetic Well-Intentioned Extremist who only wanted to end ALO's race war.
  • Shoji and Kyle, while hated to death in the original show due to only existing for the sake of a Naughty Tentacles scene, quickly became popular in this show for their hilarious banter and Punch-Clock Villain characterization.
• Epileptic Trees: During the stream premiering episode 14 the idea was floated that Recon's Nerve Gear, which he got second-hand from the parents of a dead SAO player, belonged to Sachi for maximum Black Comedy points, but the Somethingwitty gang shot it down since the people he bought it from were explicitly mentioned to have had a son, while also saying that if they had thought of that they would have changed the line to daughter and left the implication out there.
• Fan Nickname: Kirito and Asuna are occasionally referred to as Kurt and Ass due to a duology of Explanation Point analysis videos referring to them as such to differentiate them from the canon Kirito and Asuna.
• Fandom Rivalry: With fans of the original Sword Art Online, funnily enough. The series is immensely popular and heavily hyped by many who dislike or are indifferent to the original series. Fans of the Abridged series love it for turning SAO into something comedic in typical Abridged Series fashion, giving a different interpretation to some of the series' widely contested plot points, giving the more obscured or polarizing characters more distinguished personalities and development, as well as expanding on the widely controversial ALfheim arc. SAO fans tend to be more bitter towards it due to the way many Abridged fans believe it 'fixes' the original series, feeling it to be overrated and ruining the original series through its interpretations of the characters (which in itself may or may not be a bad thing depending on whether or not you like the original SAO cast), its many Take That! jokes against the source material, and for all the claims of it fixing SAO, with fans of the original arguing that the character arcs in the original aren't much different than what's presented in the Abridged version.
• Fountain of Memes: Kirito is the most quotable character period, with his many wisecracks and snarks being memefied.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Asuna has no interest in a "human piñata", but Kirito promises, "I'll save you a KitKat!" KitKat candies are very popular in Japan.
  • The soundtrack for the duel between Kirito and Kuradeel is circus music. As easy as it is to handwave with the explanation that Kayaba knows an upcoming curb-stomp when he sees one, the track is called "Entry of the Gladiators". What sounds like a badass BGM for duels... evolved into circus music.
  • The name 'Tiffany' is actually a legitimate name for a fantasy character, being derived from a Distaff Counterpart to the Greek name 'Theophanes'. However, it's rarely used by fantasy authors due to the name sounding very modern to general audiences.^note It's sometimes referred to as the 'Tiffany Problem'.
• Growing the Beard: While the early episodes are certainly funny, they stick rather close to the typical abridged series model with lots of comedic Alternative Character Interpretation and referential humor. It's the later episodes, where the Character Development starts getting more pronounced without sacrificing the comedy, that gets the series the most comments regarding improving over the original.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Asuna's teary rant after Kirito has another near-death experience in Episode 9: "You ever stop to think about how I feel?! Maybe I wanna almost die once in a while, huh?! Make you cry!" Come Episode 11...
  • Keita decided to recruit the tutorial NPC into his guild, only for the entire guild to get wiped out in Episode 3. Kayaba points out how that was an oversight in programming eight episodes later, meaning Keita doomed several newbies through his own exploitation of the system.
  • The moment where Kirito saves Yui by making her an item in Episode 10. It's revealed in Episode 13 that Yui faked her death as a joke and by making her into an item Kirito trapped her with no way to communicate.
  • Klein implied that Kirito is an Internet Jerk and gets beaten a lot in real life. Absolutely not Played for Laughs as we see Kirito getting subjected to a Curb-Stomp Battle by his own cousin in his first day out of hospital, where Suguha leaves no stones unturned in establishing she is a Little Sister Bully who doesn't give a damn that Kirito saved 6000 people on his own. Only that he's a nerd.
  • Overlapping with Hilarious in Hindsight, the entire plot of the first season is that the titular MMO, produced by Bethesda in-universe, was Christmas Rushed and ended up a disastrous, broken Obvious Beta as a result. Cue the exact same situation happening for real with Bethesda's actual MMO, Fallout 76.
  • In general, Kayaba's infamous Motive Decay from the original gets rewritten to be the result of making a snap knee-jerk decision while having a nervous breakdown after being overworked by his superiors. "Crunch" in the video game industry, in which developers are under extended overtime to develop video games to the detriment of their health and wellbeing, started to become a serious discussion point a year or so after the episode aired, especially after it led to the disastrous releases of several games widely considered Obvious Betas.
  • Ubisoft being the ones that worked with RECT Progress to create and publish ALfheim Online, and its administrator, Sugou, being a sexual predator abusing his position to get away with it, becomes this with several reports in 2020 regarding widespread sexual harassment and abuse within Ubisoft.
• He Really Can Act: LennonDrake as Suguha was almost instantly showered in praise by viewers after Episode 17 premiered thanks to how fantastically they delivered Suguha's tearful breakdown towards Kirito over their falling out.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Before Pina gets killed, she calls Silica "Dovahkiin" in the Dragon Tongue. In episode 11, the final episode of the first story arc, we learn that SAO's in-universe publisher was Bethesda, the company behind The Elder Scrolls. Fittingly for an open-world Bethesda game, SAO is also glitchy as hell, up to and including player death.
    • This becomes all the funnier with the release of Bethesda's wide open massive multiplayer survival game: Fallout 76, a horrible buggy mess.
  • Similarly Kayaba's superiors excusing the bugs and telling him to release the game as soon as possible because it has already been delayed twice and "it's a big open-world, no one is going to notice a few glitches" became this after a certain game released in 2020, also a buggy game (although some of it has been patched as of this writing).
  • If Silica hadn't told Kirito EVERY problem in her life, Pina would have been alive at the end of the episode, Chain Fetch Quest and all.
  • In Episode 2 of the Sword Art Offline DVD Commentary, Kirito remarks that he should have drawn on Asuna's face while she was asleep. In the same scene of the Abridged Series, Kirito actually does.
  • Based on how Kirito acts around her, it's quite possible that Asuna is actually following through on the "If you walk away with my half the coat, I will make your life a living hell!" threat she made in episode 2.
  • Kirito saved a lot more people than just the three "sinners" with his advice to Laughing Coffin; Kuradeel reveals that Kirito's "advice" left them with "an army at their door and a blade to their hearts".
    Kuradeel: "Ad campaign! PR Blast! Get your faces out there!" Send an e-mail with your exact location to EVERY PLAYER IN THE GAME!!
  • Many SAO detractors have mockingly referred to Kirito as "God" or "Jesus", while in the Abridged Series Kirito outright declares himself to be God. Becomes even more hilarious in the original story, given that by the end of the Alicization arc and going into the Moon Cradle arc, Kirito and Asuna literally become digital gods.
  • Schmitt's mention of Pokemon V&R in Episode 6 (released in 2015) becomes funnier in hindsight when taking into account SAO's in-universe release date of 2022. Once the real year came around, that predicted abbreviation was only off by one letter. And just like SAO, that game also released with a plethora of glitches due to being rushed and received great backlash because of it.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • It's not for nothing that Kirito refers to his own life as a multi-headed dick hydra. Sachi's death really messed him up, and he's in an absolutely miserable situation in the real world. ALO was also a massive Humiliation Conga for him, with his only goal at that point being to save the only person he thinks he has left in the world.
  • Kayaba can be considered this due to being overworked to the point where the official release of SAO had the real-life death glitch. The Jerkass part comes into play when he keeps players from leaving the game so he can look more competent and dastardly than he really is, but even that was due to extreme sleep deprivation affecting his sanity and he eventually regrets his pointless actions. While he brought most of it upon himself, it's still pitiful to see how his attempts to save face turned into a massive Snowball Lie.
  • As of Episode 12, we can add Asuna to this list given her miserable excuse for a father, who only leaves Asuna plugged in at his lawyers' insistence and wants to marry her off to Sugou so he doesn't have to pay her medical bills any more, with her unable to consent due to still being trapped in a game.
  • Episode 17 adds Suguha to the list: for the whole season, she's been an unrepentant Jerkass and Big Sister Bully to Kirito, but Episode 17 reveals her rather sympathetic Freudian Excuse: she used to really look up to Kirito, and started learning kendo with their grandfather to emulate him, but he quit to work on computers instead. This left Suguha to endure Training from Hell from their grandfather, who had only been interested in training Kirito and wanted her to quit, causing her to resent Kirito for abandoning her. However, She's still more of a jerkass and less of a woobie because her treatment of Kirito and Recon is still too extreme to fully make her sympathetic enough.
  • On top of being one Asuna's jailers, Shoji is a pathetic and selfish Jerkass who makes a habit out of antagonizing his disabled co-worker for no apparent reason other than prejudice. Despite this, seeing him cry and confess to a False Rape Accusation after Asuna threatened to eat his dog can make some viewers feel sympathy for him. The fact that Asuna targeted him directly during her rampages (in which she's implied to have been eating her jailers) adds some sympathy points.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Fluffles. The Abridged fandom claim he's the greatest SAO villain of all time and everything that has ever gone wrong is his doing.
  • Abridged Kirito is cited as the best version of Kirito period; he is glorified and praised to ridiculously copious levels.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "The Abridged series is better than the original" eventually got spread so much, especially by detractors of the original SAO, that you are very likely to find some variation of that line in pretty much any comment section of anything SAO related.
    • "The only good thing to come out of SAO is the Abridged series"
    • "I'm only here for the Abridged series"
  • "We must save my family!"^ExplanationThe line Gary constantly repeats.
  • "There's no need to wonder where your god is! Cause he's right here.. and he's fresh out of mercy."^ExplanationKirito's A God Am I proclamation, one of the most iconic Internet Jerk "l33t" gamer moments in fiction. Makes all the Jesus-kun jokes even funnier now that Kirito himself is deciding he's a God.
  • "Who's Klein? I only know BallsDeep69."^note Fans giving Klein's abridged name precedence over his canon name
  • "Mr. Kettle? Mr. Pot called! He says you're blaaaaaaaaa... ck."^ExplanationAsuna's reaction to Kirito describing her as "not what you'd call a people person"...in front of Tiffany.
  • "My sandwich, it was innocent... I must grieve."^ExplanationThe Kirito sandwich meme from the canon series got taken to new heights after the abridged series poked fun at it.
  • "Have you considered...murder?"^ExplanationLaughing Coffin's advertising slogan after they take Kirito's advice to heart.
  • "Goddammit, Kayaba! I am sick and tired of you kicking my heart in the dick!" ^ExplanationKirito sums up the Yui situation in his own unique style. This one has spread into other fandoms as a response to other heartwrenching events.
  • The Kirito is Always Right Foundation^ExplanationOriginating from this video it soon got posted on anything related to Kirito, abridged or not
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Kirito. The abridged series adds in a dangerous Ax-Crazy side to him and he likely has a higher body count than Laughing Coffin.
  • After her darker side is revealed in Episode 5, Asuna quickly one-ups her Spear Counterpart in this regard, being a full-fledged psychopath who terrifies ALL of the show's villains, including Kuradeel, Kayaba, and Sugou.
  • In Episode 10, we can add Yui to the mix, and we've got our Dysfunctional Family of psychos complete.
  • After her introduction, Suguha was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap from the original show, owing to her Laughably Evil characterization.
• Moral Event Horizon: In a series where a large majority of the main characters are complete assholes, there are a few who stand out.
  • While in a sleep-deprived state, SAO head programmer Kayaba Akihiko accidentally creates a glitch in his game that kills players when their avatars die, and by the time he realizes this there are already 10000 people playing it. Instead of doing the rational thing and shutting off the servers before anyone else gets hurt, Kayaba prioritizes that people play the game he spent many sleepless weeks coding and traps everyone in the game, promising to free them if they complete it. He kept the trainwreck going even after catching up on his sleep, deciding that he would rather be a Card-Carrying Villain than a screw-up, and donned his Heathcliff persona to keep the other players as hostages. By the time the Aincrad arc ends, he's already caused the deaths of thousands of people, left thousands more completely traumatized, and deep-sixed an entire industry; all in a futle attempt to try and save his own ass.
  • Fluffles is a cat that somehow learned to play the game after likely getting stuffed in a NerveGear. In a classic display of Offstage Villainy, he rose up the ranks and became a mob boss, founding the first of many Player Killing groups in the form of The Mafia. He stays past the line in Episode 9 when he joins "The King of Ashes" in his journey of Rape, Pillage, and Burn, even suggesting that they boil two intruders in oil, and purring when his companion eagerly accepts.
  • While trapped inside the game, Grimlock murders his own wife Griselda (who was trapped alongside him), and then rallies two of her friends against a troubled lancer named Schmitt to frame the latter for his crimes. When it seemed like this was going to fail, he paid Laughing Coffin to dispose of the trio. The kicker? He only killed his wife because she prioritized strategizing for a raid over making him dinner once in her married life. As if this wasn't bad enough, he then goes on to justify himself when he's caught, saying that any man in love would've done the same as him. Needless to say, Kirito is disgusted.
  • Asuna's bodyguard and stalker Kuradeel crosses the line from Manchild to Psychopathic Manchild when he sadistically murders his friend Godfree after poisoning his drink because he found his roleplaying to be annoying. He stays past the line when he tries to do the same to Kirito for getting his favorite cult of murderers Laughing Coffin disbanded and humiliating him during a duel, and because he insulted his face.
  • SAO player "The King Of Ashes" is a deranged psychopath who takes advantage of the lack of authority in the game to go on a rampage of Rape, Pillage, and Burn against other players, taking over Floor 75 and hindering the process of all those who seek to escape the Deadly Game. It gets so bad that Kayaba has to use his Heathcliff persona to try and quell his rebellion.
  • Asuna's greedy asshole of a father Shouzou Yuuki crosses it when he essentially sells his comatose daughter to one of his employees in exchange of a large sum of money. If that wasn't horrible enough, his original desire was to euthanise her to get out of paying her medical bills. It's no wonder Asuna turned out the way she did.
  • Nobuyuki Sugou is a particularly repulsive employee of RECT Progress (founded by Asuna's father) who lusts after his boss' daughter. However, he absolutely demolishes the line when he traps her and 300 other recently freed victims of SAO to use as test subjects to give himself mind control powers, all with the end goal of turning her into his personal Sex Slave.
• Narm:
  • Episode 3, which was a Christmas special, took the liberty of adding Santa hats to all the characters in the opening. However they don't quite follow the characters perfectly, making it very amusing to watch. Whether or not this is intentional is unclear.
  • In Episode 11, when Asuna learns Kirito's true name is Kazuto, she acts as if it was a terrible name that's awkward to say, and the scene totally rolls with it as a joke on Kirito. But the joke falls completely flat considering "Kazuto" is not an unusual male name in Japan at all, so it makes no sense for her to react to it that way. It'd be as if an English speaking girl reacted the same way when she learned her online boyfriend is actually named "Kevin" and she went "How am I supposed to call you? "Kev"?".
• Nightmare Retardant: Sugou moving the unconscious Asuna's lips and imitating her voice, which makes for a funny moment in what would otherwise be a creepy scene.
• Play-Along Meme:
  • The original work was designed by a writer who wasn't familiar with video games, so the question of exactly how Sword Art Online was played was typically given a Hand Wave. The Abridged series explores the gameplay in more detail and the suffering of the players being trapped in a barely functional game is Played for Laughs.
  • In Agil/Tiffany's real world shop, there's an advertisement for "9-UP". Rather than treating it as a Bland-Name Product, it is instead treated as a Shoddy Knockoff Product of 7-UP. It has to be boiled in order to be safe to drink and Kirito gets violently sick after trying it.
  • Alfheim Online in both the original series and Abridged version are frequented by a large number of roleplayers. In the canon work, everyone either stayed in character, despite Kirito not roleplaying, or casually swapped to speak to him normally. In the Abridged version, Kirito has to argue with Leafa at length to get her to quit roleplaying so he can ask her questions about the game itself that don't make sense in roleplaying terms. For example, she attempts to explain that there's a magic spell that prevents people from swearing before finally dropping the act and just telling Kirito there's an in-game profanity filter.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The abridged series has done this for Kirito, who was one of the most polarizing anime characters in The New '10s. Many consider his depiction here to be much more complex, while seeing him being a jerk as far more entertaining to watch than his canon counterpart's more stock personality. His overpoweredness has also either been toned down in some instances, justified, or poked fun at by making him a Comically Invincible Hero.
• Reality Subtext: Kayaba's unwillingness to just own up to his (admittedly colossal) mistake with the glitch, shut down the servers, and let all of the survivng players out of the game makes a bit more sense when one remembers that he works for a Japanese company; workplace culture in Japan is a lot more stringent than in most western companies and operates off of Theory Z management that prioritizes loyalty to the company and one's co-workers above all other concerns. Admitting the he had programmed a glitch that was literally fatal to the customers wouldn't have just put his ass on the line, it would've likely resulted in the entire company being shamed and run into the dirt, a Fate Worse than Death in Japan's corporate world. It didn't stop it from happening anyways, since the only thing preventing the company from being shut down was the hostage situation.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • While still a lazy, manipulative asshole, Keita usually gets accused of being directly responsible for the deaths of every SAO player in the first month because he stole the game's tutorial NPC. Barring the ridiculousness of there being one single tutorial NPC to be used by ten thousand different players (something Keita probably didn't know), it's also made clear said tutorial's advice was useless at best and harmful at worst, so the blame can be mostly placed on Kayaba for his impractical game developing and the comical stupidity that characterizes the SAO player base.
  • Due to Memetic Mutation, Gary has reached Memetic Psychopath levels of evil in the fandom, which ignores his status as a Non-Player Character who, unlike Yui, hasn't been portrayed as having any level of awareness for his actions. However, because Kirito believes him to be directly responsible for Sachi's death, many fans now see him as a Dirty Coward who intentionally abandoned his guild to die.
• Signature Scene:
  • Kirito going Laughing Mad from Episode 04 and his A God Am I rant.
  • Lisbeth's Blacksmithing scene is considered one of the most memorable scenes in the series.
  • Kirito's final fight with Kayaba to Thirty Seconds to Mars "This is War", often singled out as the scene that "out-anime'd the original anime".
• Spiritual Adaptation: Ironically, for its expansion of situations in the Aincrad arc, it makes for either an alternate take on Sword Art Online Progressive's own take on the inbetweens or the inevitable Cultural Translation version that would be seen in Skydance Television's version of the arc.
• Squick:
  • The result of the teleport crystals glitching is severe Body Horror. SAO Abridged adds animated original footage in Episode 11 showing one unfortunate victim with his limbs distorted, with his hand coming out from where his mouth should be, while his eyes and mouth have been disembodied and floating beside him.
    Player: How ya doin' buddy? You feeling ok? You hungry?
    Glitched Player: (distorted voice) Killlllll meee.
  • When Kirito finally gets out of SAO, he tries to walk around only to find out he's got a catheter in his urethra too late. If you don't know what it feels like to have a catheter indelicately removed from your urethra, you're better off not knowing. We later find out in Episode 12 that this RIPPED KIRITO'S DICK IN HALF!
  • Kirito wastes absolutely no time verbally objecting to Shouzou marrying his unconscious daughter off to Sugou, and the show treats the situation with complete disgust.
• Subbing Versus Dubbing: The one area of the series which opinions are divided over, even amongst the abridged fans. The voices done for most of the characters are either extremely unorthodox or just ordinary sounding^note YamatoSFX simply uses his real voice for Kirito, with most VAs sounding quite amateurish in comparison. A lot of the time they really don't line up with their original character voices from either the Japanese or English versions, which is in stark contrast to other Abridged Series like Dragon Ball Z Abridged, which largely involve voice actor impersonation.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Suguha has a number of problems, stemming from a Freudian Excuse, as shown in Episode 17's ending. She originally took up kendo because Kirito was practicing it as well. But when he quit to take up programming, their grandfather, who never wanted to teach her in the first place, did everything he could to make Suguha quit, but she kept going due to wanting them to be closer again. Since Kirito never showed how much he truly cared for Suguha in the past, as compared to the extreme lengths he's going to to save Asuna in the present, Suguha grew up resenting Kirito's passions and her own femininity, angrily declaring that he "never gave a shit" about her. The problem is that most of Suguha's screen time thus far has repeatedly shown Suguha to be cruel to the people around her, especially Kirito. So Suguha resenting Kirito for not being a Big Brother Mentor when she's never given him any reason to act that way rings hollow. And the idea that Kirito doesn't care about Suguha is intentionally ignoring context, since Kirito is literally fighting for Asuna's life while Suguha merely wants his attention, making the comparison feel exceedingly selfish. Some of Suguha's actions — mocking her brother's penis being ripped in half from a catheter, beating him to a pulp in Kendo shortly after he had gotten out of the hospital, and punting her crush Nagata for asking her out on a date — make her Motive Rant feel more like Misplaced Retribution, especially since Kirito was never given such a degree of sympathy during his own redemption arc, despite having a similar Freudian Excuse^note that is mostly Played for Laughs. and never reaching the levels of physical abuse Suguha was notorious for. As well, it is revealed that Kirito has asthma, and implied that it was part of why he quit kendo and went into programming, meaning she was either somehow unaware or willfully ignored his health issues and came to the conclusion that him refusing to take it back up meant he didn't care about her rather than wanting to look out for his health.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The first season draws quite a bit of humor from the buggy-state of what should be a AAA-game. Eventually, it gets revealed that Sword Art Online was Christmas Rushed and the developers were overworked to make it happen, with Kayaba eventually suffering a nervous breakdown which led to him trapping the players in the game. This all came right before the dam started to burst in the real-life game industry due to the revelations of many big-name studios inflicting "Crunch" on their developers. So what started as just a parody of the SAO anime ended up turning into a satire of the Gaming Industry during The New '10s. This isn't helped by the next season's Big Bad being a CEO of a gaming company who's also lecherous pervert, something that had also been exposed in the gaming industry.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Lisbeth's blacksmithing minigame is just stunning, with a backdrop of several exciting games like Guitar Hero, Space Invaders, and Mortal Kombat. And also Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, because why not?
• The Woobie:
  • While everyone who is trapped in SAO could count due to how glitchy and unfair the game system is, Sachi takes the cake as the one that goes through the most grief. Her poor internet connection causes frequent glitches and unpredictable lags that make her experience notably harsher. These issues often arise at the worst possible moments, leaving her stuck in place, interrupting her speech, and in the worst possible scenarios, spreading to other players and catching fires. When Kirito learns of the seriousness of the situation, even he can't bring himself to mock her situation. To make matters worse, she gets killed just as it seemed her companion was going to cut her some slack.
  • Silica, due to Adaptational Angst Upgrade. Not only is her misadventure with Kirito much more unpleasant due to the latter being at his worst, but also ends up being a "Shaggy Dog" Story when Pina's feather expires just as she's on the brink of reviving her. She becomes a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds in the stinger.
  • In just one episode, Lizbeth loses her best sword, gets dragged along a freezing mountain, gets PTSD, gets repeatedly insulted by Kirito, and when she manages to craft the best sword in the game for him, he turns her legacy into a poop joke. Also she gets her store and home burned to the ground by her only friend at the time, who is now also threatening to kill her. As if that wasn't enough, the stuff she manages to salvage from her shop gets shattered two episodes later. The only good thing that happens to her is that Kirito didn't actually make the poop joke and was just teasing her.

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