Thats cool and all, but as a reader I dont care what the author intended, only about what I see it as myself. The very first part of SAO is amazing. Right up till they get out of the death game. If the death game part is what you got hooked in, then the rest is not going to be fun for you to read/watch. And thats fine. The other parts of SAO for me are fine, ive read most of it and watched everything. But it just was not as good as the first part of season 1.
Its like with attack on titan, the first part of that got me hooked. But after the start where people started turning into titans, it took me completely out of it and I dropped it. I get that its more then just fighting titans. But the fighting titans was what sold it to me, and when people started turning into them, that was too much for me. And with how it ended im glad I dropped it, I would have been pissed at that ending if I was invested in the story.
SAO after the death game is by no means bad. But it's a complete departure from what may have sold someone on the series to begin with. And to its credit, unlike attack on titan, it wasn't so much that I dropped it, it was still interesting enough for me to continue it. But its one I dont highly recommend to others apart from that initial first half of season 1. Now if after season 1 we went right into the underworld stuff, that would have been a whole nother ball game.
