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Good premise, but it dies in the details. They have a couple amazing pieces for the soundtrack... which get so overused you are tired of hearing those clips by the third fight scene.

The story also gets sidetracked with some contrived love stories, intrusive fan service, and a bunch of beautiful successful women all throwing themselves at the main character, and everyone is too awkward to make a move despite all being supposedly strong of character.

If you pull the fan service out (and yes that includes the agender character that is still obviously a chick who only grows boobs when she falls in love with a ... man) then the anime would be at least two points better overall, but it just pulls you out of the meat of the story and gives these awful side plots that are just plain stupid.

If you love(d) playing MMORPGs, and wished you could up the stakes - make everything more real, and that everyone would take it more seriously - then this is the premise that likely brought you to this series.

The premise, and first couple of episodes, are fantastic. It's a really cool idea. I wasn't even that big into MMORPGs but I bought into it.

***SPOILERS TO FOLLOW***

But that's about where it ends. Much the way Gurren Lagann threw their whole show out the window and basically restarted halfway through, SAO does the same. They reach about halfway to the conclusion of the plot, then decide to end ... things prematurely and change from an interesting show (albeit with a lot of filler) to this weird creepy real-life situation with incredibly creepy and incestuous themes/overtones. The fanservice is ridiculous and unwarranted, and frankly it feels rapey.

In conclusion, if you enjoy MMORPGs and wish your sister had the hots for you, you will love this show. If you don't, you'll have the craziest blue balls when about halfway through they abandon the premise to focus on what is and isn't acceptable for a sister to feel about her brother.

If you made it through the first season and decided the second season was worth watching, then there are no surprises here.

Beautiful animation (although the mechs often looked overly CGI compared to the traditionally drawn characters), bad plot - and I mean BAD - and unexciting characters repeating the same tropey catchphrases they've always had.

Only Troyard makes any sort of character growth, but it is predictable and cliche. Kaizuka's older sister keeps saying he shouldn't be fighting despite the fact he's the only reason they're winning any battles at all.

Great way to kill 3 hours if you have nothing else on your list. Makes for ... good background noise and pretty battle scenes with cool mechs. Not overly interesting and you don't have to worry about missing anything. Trust me, you will NEVER hit the rewind button during this series.

This story has a lot of heart, character development, and spunk. It's completely over the top and it knows it. It comes to its natural conclusion...

...About halfway through the series. Then it just completely loses steam as it tries to continue one-upping itself to up the ante to absurd levels.

The first half of this series is as fun and silly as it is fantastic to watch. The second half is almost a parody of what animes turn into, and feels like space dandy except for the fact that space dandy knew it was a caricature.

The show absolutely delivered, but then it just kept on going. ... The writers really didn't know where to stop, and it's obvious - and unfortunate. So, Gurren Lagann exists simultaneously as one of my favourite animes and one of the most disappointing to me.