Eh...
There's competence, and there's just "unable to generate meaningful conflict", and I'm under a very strong conviction that Kirito's of the latter. I mean, Edward Elric's competent and intelligent, but he still gets into binds out of being less skilled than the opposition. Kirito loses not out of lack of skill, but because the opposition has to cheat. It's cool to watch him kick ass, sure enough, but I just never found him compelling while doing it. We complain about whiny and ineffectual protagonists all the time, and while I get it, really, that's one of the best positions you could ever be in to get noticeable and compelling character development if you play your chess pieces right. As far as attractive qualities go... he's reportedly nice... and that's about it. I never found anything distinct about his personality that isn't in the standard heroic archetype (incidentally, against what you're saying), and at times, he's actually slightly/moderately inconsistent in character (it's worse in the LN because of the reading placement of the side stories; you get the Kirito in Silica's story, the Kirito in Liz's story, and the Kirito in Sachi's story. They're all different Kiritos, but they're all a true Kirito... ''somehow''.) That's the Cliffnotes version of what I have to say about him, because boy could I expound if I wanted to.
Bottom line: I disagree with you, and that's okay, because the most important thing in your review is how you enjoyed it personally, and that's fine. SAO is an enjoyable anime, if not just the first time around...
...in the first arc.
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Virtual Reality is awesome.
Ten years ago, I watched .hack/SIGN: A meandering series centred around barely-animated talking heads. The cast never really did any actual MMORPG stuff, preferring to spend most of the series navel-gazing. To my younger self, it was a letdown of epic proportions - But now, a full decade later, I'm actually kind of grateful that the SAO anime hadn't come out yet.
It sets the bar so high, it would have ruined my younger self.
For life.
SAO isn't a deep series, by any sense of the word; What SAO is, however, is *fun*. It's a show that's completely honest about what it's trying to be, and a grand celebration of virtual reality in general and MM Os in particular.
The story is as follows: 10,000 players are trapped in Aincraid, a cutting-edge MMO, where dying in the game means dying in real life. The only way to escape is by completing a hundred-storey dungeon; Kirito, our protagonist, is one player amongst many - And one of the first to realize that the only way out is *through.*
Let's talk about Kirito for a moment.
There are plenty of shows which are dragged down by their main character. You know the type; Whiny, useless, apathetic cyphers, who have to be poked and prodded into taking any action.
Kirito is not one of them.
Competent, intelligent and quietly mature, he's a breath of fresh air in a stale genre. As far from a cookie-cutter protagonist as you can get, he actually has attractive qualities, and doesn't behave with the frustrating wall-banging obliviousness that plagues many, many other male leads. Refreshingly, he isn't burdened by the impossible standards that define typical protagonists, and is driven by very recognizable motives and desires - Something that I'll never cease to be grateful for.
In brief, SAO is a show that knows the audience and knows what it's aiming for, with top-notch production values. It is a show about how MMORP Gs *should* be, and refreshingly free of the sneering - "Stop playing games, *nerd*! The real world is *so* much better!" - message that constantly plagues the genre.
Sure, there are flaws; The pacing lags in places (Mostly due to the limitations of the original Light Novel format), and there's an unabashed reliance on anime tropes. But in the end, SAO is immensely cathartic, guilt-free escapist fun - And that's what matters.
9.0/10.