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SAO is about as generic as an anime can get. I was really excited to see a .HACK styled anime outside of the franchise; expecting some new inputs from an outside perspective. I am sadly disappointed by SAO, it started off like an even darker .HACK//SIGN and quickly turned into light-hearted romance where they insert as many anime clichés as humanly possible. Without further ado let's get into it.

STORY:
SAO does not have a well developed story, and it is not the kind of anime that can survive on near episodic content and filler. Continuity and consequence are pretty much ignored because of the way time ... jumps around "someone dies, oh well they might as well have never existed as of the next episode" and "I'm forced into a situation I don't want to be in, good thing time can jump forward and just give a vague reason why this is no longer the case." That aside SAO's biggest problem in my opinion would be that the story seems like it was written by several people and none of them talked to each other. The story starts off as a bit of a dark action story but you can tell by the way the plot is set-up (climb to the top of the tower) that it will become an action-adventure story and it does, very briefly, before it transcends into what every person watching an anime based in an action-MMO wants: A slice of life romance, because that's what we all wanted... right? Although there is a clear goal to the series, there does not appear to be much in the way of direction, at least that we actually get to see. Other than the occasional downing of a boss we mainly get to see the lives of Kirito and Asuna as they fall in love and eat sandwiches. The lack of an antagonist is annoying, even more-so because it's somewhat predictable as to what is going to happen. (NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS SPECULATION but it's probably true) the game creator is an obvious choice but since there'd be no way to defeat him outside of finishing the game and getting him in person, the creator is likely playing the game and just for the M Night Shamalan twist he is probably a character we've already met disguised as a good guy (I'm confident in all of that but the last bit but that is basically an example of how generic this is.) Which brings us to characters.

CHARACTERS:
They're bad, they're soo soo bad. I don't mind an OP character, in fact I prefer them, I don't want to watch 100 different anime all about some guy who is kind of emo and not very good at anything and then watch him grow and overcome his hardships to finally become a pokemon master, or whatever. I love watching badass main characters just be amazing and overcome incredibly difficult challenges in a creative way instead of struggling through it over 5 episodes. I don't mind that Kirito is strong, I'm not a big fan of the super secret trump card, especially when it's as lame as his is (to be honest pretty bad game design that his secret ability wasn't available to everyone.) Kirito starts off as a smart calculated loner (overdone but hey at leasts he's not emo) he quickly turns emo (damn!) and drops about 10-20 points in IQ, now at this point in watching he becomes a happy-go-lucky love bird with a sense of justice also an optimist. Next up is Asuna, a shy antisocial girl who has never played an MMO also pretty and smart. Jump to the future, she's one of the most powerful characters, talks to everyone, and is a high-ranked outgoing member of a guild also a tsundere. Jump again to the lovey-dovey girl completely overshadowed by her boyfriend and is entirely too emotional and cooks of course. I'd talk about some of the side characters but they're pretty much all dead. Other than Klein and the girls who will likely make an appearance as love rivals because there isn't enough generic romance in the series, there aren't many returning characters so far.

ART:

It's great, their is a great use of colours and even the UI looks sleek and nice. Backgrounds are drawn well and tend to reflect the mood very well. The animation for the action sequences is actually quite nice though the action is a bit sparse.

SOUND:

I would not at all be surprised if someone told me this anime existed to show off the music, it's implemented quite well and overall there's a high quality pick. The voice acting is fairly good for most characters.

ENJOYMENT AND OVERALL:

I wouldn't call it enjoyable, actually, I'd say you could basically just skip through the episode and watch about a total of 7-10 minutes and get the entire idea, there's a lot of unnecessary dialogue and if you don't care for the romance then there's a lot of nothing going on for the most part. Basically this anime is just teenagers playing house, eating sandwiches, having the occasional battle, and faffing about. The unfortunate part is that the action bits are done really well for the most part.

Story - The idea is good, Female dominant world Female only mechs, and a guy that can use them, which leads to one of the only harems where the guy has a reason to be in a harem, instead of being a regular guy who gets one for no reason. Now if they backed this up semi well the story would have been at least a 7. It is extremely easy to pick apart the story when you focus on it, saying that the world is dominated by females because of these mechs (which let's be honest don't look like they are really so big ... and bad) is a foolish claim when they proceed to say that the powerful ones are in quite a limited supply. Looking at the benefits to these over heavy artillery include maneuverability, shield, portability (you can bring it anywhere you walk.) flight and decent weapons. Now assuming that the entire world didn't lose their mind they probably have most of that technology in non mech form to at least the same degree, in fact currently in the real world we have lasers that are quite a bit more powerful than the guns they wield appear to be, so assuming they didn't lose their minds they have hover tanks with mounted lasers, leaving that alone, I highly doubt that anywhere in the world would it be accepted to have females so much more overpowered than males, but that can slide. I won't go into why only females can use them or why he can as the author really doesn't seem to plan to either. Next up is the school where people from around the world, their countries representatives no less, learn to pilot war machines, no, just no, What country do you know of that is willing to train it's adversaries how to use weapons that would likely be used in war (against them), or even their sport that they partake in (against them), just no. Also I feel that I'm misunderstanding something as I have no idea why these barely trained children are "representatives" Other than this is a harem so no real story here.

Art - About the only redeeming factor here, I rather like the art in this anime, moreso for the backgrounds than the jiggly bits, and definitely not too big a fan on the character art for the most part. The art is skillfully done with vibrant colours and great detail. I'm a fan of the school uniform but the mechs... not so much, I will give it originality though

Sounds - SFX is meh throughout you don't really notice it throughout but most of the characters voices are annoying enough to have your finger on the mute button at all times. Exception Charles, Charles has a wonderful voice actor I'm actually a Hanazawa Kana fan, and she is the only reason that sound gets above a 1.

Character - Here comes the most fatal flaw in this anime, the characters are the most stale unoriginal and annoying characters I've seen in a while.

Ichika - He had a good thing going for him with the "first male IS Pilot" thing, but then he became the most typical harem character I've ever seen, he is legitimately so typical that it is actually atypical to be as typical as he is. He's an idiot completely unaware of everything around him. He is far to easily surprised and should get an afro.

Houki - Scratch that comment about Ichika being the most typical harem character Houki beats him by leagues and miles. Not only is she the too shy to say my feelings but I'll act like I own you and get mad because you don't notice how I feel psychically (though if he wasn't such an idiot he probably would have) childhood friend

Cecilia - Read Houki except more tsundere and she isn't a childhood friend but instead from England.

Fang - Read Houki except a Chinese loli this time.

Maya - (the other teacher) It's been too much of a negative train here so how about something positive Maya is a neat character she's fairly moe and a teacher, yes that much is boring, but she's not useless, which was a big surprise to me generally moe teachers are completely useless 190% of the time but she can fight well and isn't as dumb as she looks, personally one of the only saving graces in the character department.

Laura - She has serious problems, she starts of yandere and then just degenerates into a more forward and more shy version of Houki/Cecilia/Fang, admittedly at a speed I've never seen before. her background seemed interesting for like 10 minutes but don't worry it gets completely discarded after a harem joke or two, luckily she has an eyepatch so you can tell the difference between her and the other three.

Chifuyu - She's one of those people who thinks that love can only be showed through being a complete bitch 24/7 Apparently really powerful but she decided to retire because her career and the safety of her brother were colliding or something she is so far the oldest person in the anime at 24.

Char - I lol'd hard at her new nickname. She is the only real reason to watch this show, she is adorable and nice, she realizes that Ichika is an idiot and uses it to her advantage to get closer to him.

Enjoyment - Not present, the only enjoyable time is when Char is on otherwise it's useless. Neat note: Ichika will most certainly end up with Houki, that's not a spoiler after watching this for two seconds you can come to that conclusion which is upsetting because Char deserves to win, however if he ends up with anyone else it will be effectively the same as an M Night Shyamalan movie and will actually be worse, what a twist.

Overall - Don't watch this, just find the Charlotte parts on youtube or something that's all you really need.

I'll try to make this as concise as I can. Gintama is probably one of the best situational comedy type anime around. The main focus of the comedy is being completely unpredictable, with having the first and only girl to vomit in jump. That being said the humour is quite well balanced between pun/wit, outrageous/obscene/slapstick, and parody. Remember that the more anime you watch the better Gintama gets, similarly knowing a thing or two about Japanese pop-culture and history certainly helps.

Story - The story is often considered to be nearly non-existent in Gintama but that is mainly due to the constant flirtations with the past ... and main character development. When focusing on the present story it does indeed exist in the sense that what happens in each episode does impact later episodes to some extent (for the most part.) Like any anime/manga there are filler arcs, the only difference is that the quality of the filler is on par with the rest of the anime. Take note though, Gintama isn't all fun and games, there are several occasions where the story arcs are very serious, they rarely start this way and always switch back to the lightheartedness that is Gintama.

Art - There isn't much to say about the art, it is wonderful, and often has spikes of amazing. The art isn't particularly outstanding or extreme and could be considered rather plain but in my opinion it suits the anime better than some of the over detailed stuff that's out there. The backgrounds are well drawn and the characters for the most part are distinguishable by just their silhouette. Unlike a lot of comedic anime the extra characters often have noticeable features, and faces to boot.

Sound - Whether it's opening and ending themes or voice actors Gintama has made great choices left and right when it comes to sound. The background music always suits the mood and often sets the tone for what is about to happen. All of the voices match up quite well with their characters, that's not always a good thing but for the most part it's wonderful.

Characters - Minus Shinpachi this show is ten times above perfect when it comes to characters. Even minor characters in Gintama stand out well and were created excellently. Though as a rule there really isn't anything special about the supporting cast, their characters reach their goal every time, whether that goal be to give us a good laugh, or to give us goosebumps from awesome overflow they always succeed. Shinpachi isn't a failure of a character in fact he may be the most flawlessly designed, never betraying a single character trait, the only problem with Shinpachi is that he can be annoying as hell and has too much screen-time for such a bland person.

Enjoyment - This is by far the greatest attribute for Gintama, probably one of the most enjoyable animes of all time. Gintama's constant hilarity and breaking of the fourth wall make it almost interactive and draws you in immediately until it becomes difficult to stop watching. The ability to re-watch is one of Gintama's greatest assets, whether you're glued to your seat in awe, rolling on the floor laughing, or jumping out of your couch in excitement Gintama will always reel you into its pace and no matter how many times you watch you'll do the exact same thing. I've often found myself re-watching the entire series while waiting for the next episode to come out and laughing just as hard as the first time even though I knew the entire script.

oops I tried to make it concise at least.