Not only is the \"incest\" one-sided, but Suguha realizes it\'s forbidden (despite being her cousin, Kazuto is also her adopted older brother) and her brother\'s already in love with the comatose Asuna, so she desperately tries to get over it by falling in love with Kirito... who turns out to be Kazuto. In a sense, though, it actually fits the arc\'s recurring theme of identity, especially Kirito\'s speech about people being one with their \"character\"- if Suguha has a forbidden love for Kazuto, it makes sense that she\'d fall in love with Kirito, since they\'re essentially the same person.
Asuna\'s status as a Damsel in Distress is understandably controversial, but if she hadn\'t snuck out of her cell and stolen the key card, Kirito would never have made it to the top of the World Tree. Granted, the entire escape was made possible by Sugou\'s stupidity, but Asuna also had to be smart enough to take advantage of it.
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Episodes 15-25: How does this exist?
Before we get into it, lets imagine what 15-25 could have been. If 15-25 had been a sudden mid-series switch into a slice of life drama about the inhabitants of SAO learning to readjust to the real world and balancing their 'unreal' digital experience with their old lives. Asuna who formed a bond with the mind of Kirito, sharing highs and lows with him for two years and the girl who stayed by his hospital bed side and formed a bond through faith in his body. What a fake-out that might have been!
Instead...
By itself, SAO 15-25 is just mediocre. As a sequel to SAO 1-14, it’s an unnecessary cash-grab series probably made by a completely different team who couldn’t convince any of the voice actors to come back.
As a collection of episodes in the same series as SAO it’s baffling.
I don’t understand how this exists. My only guess is that maybe the novels it’s based on are an unnecessary cash-grabs trying to cash in on the original series?
It brings over nothing the made SAO 1-14 special. It has no understanding of what people who watched 1-14 want or expect and it answers none of the themes and questions 1-14 creates. It’s entirely unrelated.
If I made a list of the things which people liked about SAO 1-14 and might want to see brought into a sequel it would be:
What the writers of SAO 15-25 thought they needed is:
You could write essays on each aspect of SAO 1-14 that cut away and undermined. For brevity I shall stick with two:
It’s unbelievable how much a betrayal it is to have Asuna be the damsel in distress with only 10 minutes of screentime and spending most of that about to be violated by the villain of the series (who is himself nothing compared to the original villain). After 1-14 established that their relationship was so strong they would break reality for each other SAO 15-25 thought she barely needed more than a cameo in the epilogue of the show! The climax is painful to watch and utterly unearned by this thoughtless generic story.
And the one constriction 15-25 placed on its players was that they could not fly for very long and flying for a long time was both the final obstacle and the prize. And yet they _never show anyone struggling with flying_. In fact they routinely show the protagonists flying to places and for lengths of time that were narratively established as unreachable achievements.
Watch SAO 1-14, it’s a good show. Watch SAO Abridged, it’s the best abridged series yet. Why would you watch SAO 15-25?