Top 10 Best Sword Art Online Characters

Screw all his haters. Kirito is far more complex than people mistake him for being a Gary Stu. Kirito isn't your average Gary Stu.

Kirito was created by Reki Kawahara to be a character who could do as he liked and be laid-back since he was a teenager. Call it wish-fulfillment, but Kirito only started playing VRMMORPGs to escape reality.

However, he has been through a lot in the virtual world and in real life. He shows true dedication to those he protects and loves and has a noble morality code. You gotta love the guy for that. Kirito is awesome.

Easily my favorite character. So much development, yet people say she is bland and boring. I don't get it. She goes from hardcore training to beat SAO to understanding how to love the awful situation because of Kirito.

Kirito dies at least three times without her: the crazy guild member, when they fought the dungeon boss as just the two of them, and the final boss. Without her, I feel Kirito wouldn't have been able to finish the game through willpower or his own strength.

I love Asuna! She's the perfect combination of badass, loyal, kind, and developed. Asuna gets hate for things that are no fault of hers.

She gets hated for being a damsel in distress, but it wasn't her fault for getting kidnapped and locked up. She actually averts the stereotypical hero's love interest by showing she can be badass on her own.

Sinon is totally the best. Why? Because she's pretty much the only character with a story arc. Her life is so much more upsetting and harder than any other character on this list, including Asuna.

I honestly don't like Asuna. But Sinon made the entire series of Sword Art Online a rate-up! I ship her with Kirito. I don't know why. I guess they just seem much better for each other, and she needs someone like him the most.

I will be 100% honest right now. I actually didn't think highly of Sword Art Online during season one. Nothing amused me until SAO 2. Most of my interest in Sword Art went up an entire boost because of Sinon. She's so super pretty and very headstrong.

She tried facing her anxiety by playing GGO, and even when it didn't help, she kept going. To be honest, I think she's a better girl for Kirito than Asuna because:

1. They have more stuff in common.
2. Asuna gets pretty weak around Kirito when Sinon is just helping out.
3. Sinon is one of the most beautiful characters in anime, in GGO or out. Much more characteristic than Asuna.

It's not true that she was weaker than Kirito. He was apparently fighting at his hardest in the middle of the battle, but lost anyway.

She took the "Stu" out of Kirito. He was a large Gary Stu, and I will admit that. She's awesome. As a person hoping to be an official author soon, I can tell you that making a good character is very difficult. But she was the perfect combination of all the spices, a firework that died away at the end. It was the grand finale. She was just the embodiment of a good temporary character. If she had stayed, it would have been a bit boring after a while.

But while she was there, the death still left me shocked. THAT'S a good character. Kirito's "death" left me bored and emotionless, and he sprang back up anyway. It's not that I HATE him, but he was just a bit of a bland Stu in my opinion.

Yuuki, though, was just a perfect combination in the recipe of a character. It was a beautiful part of it. She was important in the series' development.

He, alongside Agil, are the only characters in the entire show that behave like a human would. You know, instead of a Harem Girl #69 or Count Edgelord Deathdark. Using this setting, with Klein as the main character, and the absolute removal of Kirito, it could have been a significantly more interesting show.

His skill would bring him to the front line in SAO, yet he's not particularly brave. The grim nature of the game would have been far more relevant with his likely constant fear of death. It also wouldn't have been a terrible harem anime with him in charge, either.

A beautiful little sister, Suguha has a little brother complex, which I find a lot cuter than any other girl. She is also intelligent and always on the side of her brother.

Best supporting character. It's incredible how she overcomes her feelings to be the support that inspires Kirito and gives him strength when in trouble.

I love her, one of the most interesting characters. I hate how all the interesting ones get the least screen time. Asuna has too much screen time.

Sure, her "Mommy" gig can be a little annoying, but everything else about her is just beautiful. She is willing to do anything for Kirito and Asuna. Although she's just an AI character, she's the smartest and most helpful AI I've ever seen in a game.

Although she should've just died in Episode 12 of Aincrad and not been revived, that doesn't mean I despise the character. Ironically, she was one of the best things in Aincrad. But after the arc, she was just fan-service and served no purpose. That being said, her "death" was likely the second-most sad of the series.

Lisbeth deserves way more attention and recognition than what she gets! She's a great character. She just needs her own story arc and more appearances in the anime/manga to get more attention.

I feel like she would be a great aspect to the show. It's all Sinon now. Sinon is cool, but she is a screen hog. She takes up all the screen time, and some of that screen time could be going to Lisbeth.

Why is she so far down the list? She's amazing, sweet, and cute. Her persona is awesome and honestly deserves so much more and better than Kirito.

The Asuna and Kirito couple can go to hell for all I care.

Kayaba Akihiko is great. The power to kill someone's real self through a VRMMO was pretty sinister, but if it weren't for his work, then Kirito and Asuna wouldn't have fallen in love, VRMMOs wouldn't have made it big, and Yuuki wouldn't have spent the last few years of her illness in pain.

Also, he basically lived on as an AI because he uploaded his own consciousness. That's pretty cool.

Kayaba Akihiko is easily one of the best characters. To him, SAO wasn't a death game, but a life no different from reality, just more magical. He stayed with everyone after the game ended and saved them in-game as Heathcliff. He could have just had everyone die after the game was cleared. Also, he made the Medicuboid.

The only black character on the show. And who doesn't love Agil? Everyone loves Klein and Agil.

He literally has more development than Kirito.

He has great character development in the first part of Alicization. He literally broke the Seal in his right eye to save Tiese and Ronye. The man also dedicated most of his life to finding Alice and regretted how he wasn't able to save her due to the Seal of the Right Eye.

I'm not sure if his feelings were ever clearly stated in the anime or light novel, but he definitely held some form of affection towards Alice, which I found really beautiful. His friendship with Kirito was honestly also one of the reasons I watched the Alicization arc. The fact that they both lost their memories of each other but still became friends again was honestly great. Also, his death broke me. "This sorrowful world...envelop it as gently as the night sky."

Now she's incredibly overrated and her death was way overhyped, but she was a good character. Some people are incredibly afraid of dying, and she's good for relating.

The sad thing is that she, in the end, passed away, even when Kirito promised she would live. This makes her death sad but more shocking in my opinion.

Sachi's death was, in my opinion, the saddest death in the series. Most of Kirito's development was because of Sachi, and I was very sad to see her die. If Sachi had stayed, we could have seen a weak, scared girl become a badass like Asuna.

I think that she's a super strong character and cares about Kirito deeply. I argue that her feelings towards him are only platonic, but people can think what they think.

I am trying to make Engel and Alice on top. If only Alice and Eugeo were in the Sword Art Online episodes already...

Alice is simply amazing if you ever read the LN. She is really strong, takes really good care of Kirito when he <spoiler>, and actually has her own viewpoint unlike most other characters.

Was it really necessary to spoil it for people who haven't watched the Phantom Bullet arc yet?

He was a pretty cool guy. I hate how he was basically absent after Fairy Dance because he was the best thing about it, honestly.

The guy is a legend. He never got the girl and had the most meaningless death in all of television.

He sacrificed the most in the ALO arc and still didn't get the girl.

She's just a minor character, though she kind of cemented the relationship between Kirito and Asuna. I liked episode 10.

A bit of a wasted badass. He barely has any personality other than loving to murder people. His brother was better.