[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Shinji103

Except it's a fact that this event and its timing made it different from most every other show that had it all all.

Actually no. The event occured on page 237 out of 335 in volume 1, which puts it squarely in the last 1/3 of the story, which is neither special nor unique compared to other comparable story

Originally Posted by Shinji103

Except I'm aware of this. That and the fact that it was then turned into a full-on light novel series yet the author didn't make any changes to the placement of this event like they're doing with the anime. So still unique.

Failure at understanding the differences between different storytelling medium. SAO (vol.1) was written as a self-contained stand alone story, as it was originally meant to be submitted for the Dengeki Light Novel Award competition. When Kawahara continued writing SAO, the only choice he had at expanding the story was through additional side stories, as he would've had to rewrite the entire manuscript if he was to integrate them together. An anime adaptation does not have that issue, as it has to be scripted from the ground up, and would in fact fare poorly if it has to adapt the side stories separately on their own.

Originally Posted by Shinji103

Now we really should call it quits here because I get the feeling Relentlessflame is going to walk in toting the hammer at this rate, this not being the entirely proper thread to be talking about it.

Why? this all sounds very general discussion-ish edit: guess not general discussion-ish enough


Edit:

After further thoughts, I think a key sticking point here is that Shinji sees the "event" as an equivalent of an "end-game" event which only happens very late in your typical anime stories like ZnT, while said event seems to have occured rather early in the overall Sword Art Online storyline. This is understandable since I think he's only read vol.1 so far.

The thing is if one continue reading the rest of the story, he will realize that instead of it being a kind of watershed moment or a end-game event, it is merely a beginning of a continuing story element.