Sword Art Online (S.A.O) Blu-ray Box Set 1: Aincrad Part 1 Limited Edition

I love anime, all kinds. I'm 20 years old and have been watching anime since I was a kid, but recently with the decline of Naruto and the cancellation of Bleach (I love One Piece but I'm just not very far in the anime yet.) I've sort of lost interest. Then my friends started raving about this show, which was ranked best anime of 2012, might I add. So I decided to watch it, and I'm glad I did.Without giving anything away a basic summary is that Kirito enters a new Virtual Reality - MMORPG only to find out that all 10,000 players who signed in on opening day are unable to log out. If you die in the game, you die for real and the only way the players can escape is to beat the game. It should be noted that season 1 is divided into 2 arcs. Episodes 1-14 (Aincrad) and episodes 15-25 (ALO) I'm going to speak only about Aincrad.This set contains the first half of the Aincrad arc, and for 100$ while getting only 7 episodes is a bit steep. The set is packaged with a ton of goodies though including: A trading Card, an art book, a soundtrack and it's all pretty slick if you ask me. The menu's are pretty well done too. Of course this set features both english audio and Japanese audio for the purists out there. I haven't watched the English dub myself, but heard that it is quite good.One nice thing to note about Sao is that the series chances paces halfway through the Aincrad Arc. There's a lot of action and a lot of focus on Kirito for a while and then halfway through Kirito sort of takes a break from all the fighting. I can't say anymore without spoiling anything but it's something I really appreciated, the nice little break before Kirito heads off towards the final confrontation. The romantic side of the show was very sweet too, and I always enjoyed those moments too (Like Kirito sleeping in a field.)Personally, I would have bought this set just to see Kirito go berserk in glorious HD (you'll get it if you watch.) so I may not be unbiased, haha. All I can say is that if the price is a little too steep for you, get the DVD set instead. It has none of the extras this set has, but the price reflects that. This is hands down my favourite anime now, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it too.

I really fell in love with this series when I watched it originally on crunchyroll with subtitles.But I prefer my anime dubbed and have enjoyed the first 7 episodes of the Aincrad arc in a new light, enjoying the art of the series without speed reading the dialogue. The price-point for this series is pretty rough at 50 bucks for only 7 episodes. As a super fan, I ponied up the money, for me it was a known quantity now with English dub. If you have never seen it, I'd suggest you head to crunchyroll or elsewhere on the internet and watch a few episodes before you buy this to see if it catches you as it did me.Pros:Fairly good job capturing the MMO culture.Tight storytelling with no real filler episodes.Story does an excellent job conveying the choices and struggles the characters go through as they decide to risk death to escape or make a life, such as it is, in a safe corner of the game.Only slight fan servicesCons:For some, the story might be a bit on the dark side. (when players die in the game, they die in RL and many do)High price-point on the dvd set (over 100 dollars for the full arc when you are done)

Sword Art Online is one of those guilty pleasures to which you can sit down in front of, switch off your brain and just enjoy. Granted there are some fairly harrowing events in the first few episodes to which its best to be switched on for, but that aside it's a jolly good ride for the entire run.But, ofc, anyone considering this set (along with the accompanying 3 others) already knows this. The quality of this product is fantastic in pretty much everyway. The extra context discs in each are nice and volumes I + III come with the soundtrack to the show, which in itself is pretty bloody good.The price, however, leaves something to be desired. At $140US a pop, it's an expensive buy. I would've ordered it from Rightstuf.com, but they're strictly adhering to licensing and only shipping this to the US and Canada, so this was my only option as an Australian. Which brings me to my next point. The disc regions.The information presented here on Amazon is that it's a Region A/1 disc (which is fine, my laptop has region switch software installed) but when the boxes arrived (parts 1, 3, 4 arrived separately to part 2, both several weeks early which was awesome) they had no region information on them. Sure enough, the collections labelled as Region A/1 on Amazon were, in fact, all region free and run without a hitch on my blu ray laptop.So overall, very good product, high quality presentation but somewhat over priced. The region-free nature of the discs was a big plus, though.

Let me start off with saying that i am a bit biased since i love sword art online.Now, basically, when aniplex licences a series, itll come out a little expensive or completely overpriced.When i saw the price on the official website, i was mindblown. i couldnt believe the price that they attached to just 7 episodes.When I got the box set (after the shipping issues with aniplex) I opened it and found a great reason why it was worth 100 dollars, the extra content is amazing and the art was spectacular. I would recommend this to any fan of Sword art online, but if youre running low on the budget, the dvd is for you, the blu ray is WELL worth 100 dollars with the extra goodies and such inside, also, the dub was fantastic, but not perfect, i strongly recommend buying if you can afford.

I bought this product after watching the series on Netflix. The story was great and had me captivated by the end of the second episode in the first volume. I purchased this volume in tandem with the other three volumes because it's just a great series. I strongly recommend SAO, and any other anime series like it. Not to mention the product from the vendor actually arrived a day early!