Deceleration

Accel World

 An halted acceleration and an arupt end to the 24 episode series of Accelerated World.

The story revolves around 4 main characters and their ability to enter another world called the Accelerated World by literalyl accelerating their brain processing and accessing their own Brain Burst program that is installed on a device called the Neuro-linker. Kinda similar to SAO's nervegear but of a smaller scale and more high-tech I would suppose. In the Accel World, each character have their own battle avatars which they fight for points which are used for acceleration and to level up. Currently, level 9 avatars hold the title of a King and becoming level 10 would be suggested that he or she would be able to discover the true purpose of Brain Burst and the Accel World. So our main protagonist, Haru, gets his brain burst program from Kuroyukihime and together with the others, venture into the Accelerated World.

It had quite a notable plot to begin with and it was definitely one of the more promising ones in the season. Some of the arcs are really good, with action scenes slammed in together with great plot development whereas others were simply fillers to drag the series on which I thought would've been better if they would care to insert a more story driving arc.

Two of the more notable arcs I would presume to be would be the Armor of Catastrophe and the Nomi arc, whereas the short trip of Kuroyukihime was simply just filler, adding more mystery and questions to the already question flooded series. The Armor of Catastrophe added on to the stress of a guardian and student relationship, where the student tends to surpass their master and succumb to temptation for power to protect their own guardians. And the Nomi arc which shows how quick something precious can be taken away from you and how important believing in yourself is.

So for the plus points: I would say that the plot is good on its on. Interesting storyline and adds a lot of suspense that could be further developed. Unique character interactions. Interesting use of avatars and a versus like game system, which combo / death move gauges and deathmatch settings. A major twist in the arc where I didn't expect Chiyu's plan was THAT and had some link with her avatar's ability. A character development moved according to the trauma that they face that makes up their battle avatar.

There was a fair bit of downside too: Most importantly, whatever happened to the armor of catastrophe? It was heavily hinted after the previous armor had fell and had itself attached to Haru, and the armor taking effect when he went berserk on Nomi. And then the armor was left forgotten for the rest of the series. Very little time was spent on explaining the neurolinker and their non-battle avatars, would've helped if they would explain a little more on that. Little is revealed about other kings, except mainly the Black and Red King. And the main goal of reaching level 10 does seem difficult for the main character since I still believe that Black Lotus, being at Level 9, would definitely have reached Level 10 faster than the rest and to do so, she'll need to have a deathmatch with the other Level 9s so I think there's little plot flow that link to Haru. And lastly, the characters talk way too much during a fight.

Not a bad series I would say in terms of the plot. An advice would be to skip the fillers if possible, since they have very little impact on the main plot and they're rather boring too. Otherwise, this would be a good time-killer with just some questions still left unanswered at the end of the series. Time to head to the novels I presume...