@1st Bold
It did have depth, I might have gone too far on worshiping the KiritoxAsuna relationship, but it's a good relationship and I find it better than most relationships in anime. It didn't start after they met up again, a couple more meet ups and it started building as she partied up with him on dungeon raids, quests etc.
If you find something a good couple, that doesn't mean it has depth. They're in love with each other, and that's it. They don't have any depth what so ever. To put it simple, they suddenly started falling in love with each other and there was literally no reasoning behind, they just simply did. That's not deep nor is that good build up.
@2nd Bold
LOL is all I have to say. You would do the same thing if you found out a crazy rapist is after your girl and is forcing her to love him. That's like the epitome of cliche things in a relationship, to save your lover from things like that. There is no logic in that statement.
Or you simply completely missed out the point I was making. I'm not using real life logic. I'm criticizing a series on it's writting quality.
This is a fictional story and the guy's lover was put together with a rapist so that he could rape her in front of the guy and the guy would then kill off the rapist, paying him back for what he did. That isn't heart-warming for a fictional story. That is a rather such a desparate attempt to make something try to seem heart-warming.
That's a completely different thing than a heart-warming scenario. It's ridiculously obvious that the author put her in that situation because he was trying too hard to 'cause half-assed drama and make a ''heart-warming'' scene.
@3rd and 4th Bold
It is heart-warming, actually. NaruxHina isn't heartwarming because for the entire series Hinata was stalking Naruto and all her scenes was "Naruto-kun", and don't get me started on Sakura. Those are just examples of over exaggerated relationships that people worship and consider "Heart-warming", but don't get me wrong. I adore NaruxHina and I prefer that over NaruxSakura.
NaruxHina? NaruxSaku? Horrible couples. Had no build up, depth what so ever, and even the author himself actually admitted that he can't write romance at all. Being better than any of Kishimoto's couples is like being better than trash, but just because some trash is better than other trash doesn't mean that said trash itself isn't trash either compared to other things.
Asuna x Kirito are far from the best couple because their romance and characters are generic. It's the type of romance you can find in every other romcom or harem series.
Most other harem anime out there is completely bogus IMO. For example Rosarie Vampire is completely trash. I'm sure I'm not the only one who agrees. Deadman Wonderland was a great short anime, but defiantly no love that I see that's strong going on there, even though it isn't harem.
SAO could be considered a harem to a point, as well. SAO's quality isn't better than most harem anime's. It has average action, average romance, generic characters and typical villains. Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance, Ore no Kanojo, Saenai Heroine, etc. are all as good, possibly even better than SAO. And they're all harems that people in general think are bad.
SAO is overrated towards season 2 because it's different with useless antagonists. For example, Death Gun is a terrible villain.
Death Gun's quality wasn't any lower than the Fairy King's and the dude that created SAO. Granted, the dude that created SAO might have been a bit better villain than both, but in general, when compared to other manga/anime villains all three are incredibly bad.