Accel World (Anime)

In the future, everyone is equipped with a built in connection device - like having a computer built into your brain. Arita Haruyuki has spent his whole life being picked on and abused at school. His best friends haven't been able to help him, and the only comfort he takes is from playing video games. That is until the beauty of the school, Kuroyukihime, asks to meet him and offers him a link to a special programme called 'Accel World'. Part of this programme is that it can speed up your brain and exist as though time has stopped around you. But the main aim of this programme is a massive multiplayer fighting game, where victory is decided by how long you can survive.

(Anime: 1 Season, 24 episodes, finished)

This was quite an exciting series, but with a couple of flaws. The main one being that at the beginning of the story, there is a whole concept set up about how the aim of the game is to reach level 10, but no ones wants to for various reasons (not going to give that away just yet). This gets basically ignored for the rest of the series. They touch upon it occasionally but when they do you think 'oh yeah that what they were doing'. After they cover this point, the story just divulges into a couple of character building arcs. It even goes off on a tangent during a really important moment and has 2 episodes of pointless side tracking (I HATE when that happens). So the story and plot line could use some refining.

Apart from that, this series was pretty enjoyable. The fight scenes and animation were really spectacular, and there is a lot of depth and detail given to the game world that fits in a way that makes sense without having to be explained. The characters a fun, but the main one Haruyuki seems to be drawn like a chibi character for the whole time (Kind of Like Tomoki from Sora no Otoshimono) This results in him standing out, and generally he can't be taken seriously just because he is at odds with all the normally drawn characters who never go chibi.

All in all, some fine tuning needed, but in the end Accel World is a great show.

Rating - 8/10