Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-25908228-20141222101442/@comment-4567891-20150623203841

Thank you. I get so sick of people making the false accusation that Kirito is OP or some Gary Stu when most of his victories have been very close calls or attributed to someone helping him. When he fought Illfang, he needed the entire group of players to coordinate together in order to beat it (this isn't illustrated in the anime where it just came down to him and Asuna, but in the LN, it is a group effort). Both Nick the Renegade and Gleam Eyes took him down to a mere sliver of health when he went at them alone(in the latter case, he had the assistence of Asuna and Klein). To add to it, he was nearly killed by Kuradeel until Asuna saved him. Also, when he and Asuna went up against the Fatal Scythe, a Boss that brought them down to half of their health even when they were blocking in one hit, both of them would've have been killed if Yui hadn't stepped in and saved them both by killing the monster with her Object Eraser.

And to add the point about Kayaba, if he wasn't such a good sport about it, he could've easily had the NerveGear fry Kirito's brain after he technically lost. Just to put that out there.

In the Fairy Dance Arc, He wouldn't have defeated Eugene if he hadn't taken Suguha's sword to Dual Wield in order to counter Etereal Shift. The intial stage of his rescue attempt to save Asuna got botched horribly when he went at it on his own, and only succeeded later on thanks to the efforts of Suguha, the combined might of the Guilds, Yui and even Asuna herself(and ultimately, Kayaba). And in Alicization, Almost every one of his major fights were won thanks to Eugeo and/or Cardinal having his back since nearly all of the Knights that he fought are on his level of skill and higher. Alice in particular was one of his strongest opponents to date as he could barely hold any ground against her on his own and needed to double-team her with Eugeo to stand any sort of chance against her.

And I don't even need to touch the final battle with Quinella, or his current situation after the fact. TUSF covered that adequately.

As for Yuuki, it's explained that the reason why she is stronger than he is because she's spent a good majority of her life in a virtual world, meaning that her online experiences eclipse Kirito's two years in SAO. Kirito even goes as far as to say that if Yuuki was in SAO, she would've gained the Dual Blades ability much sooner than he did and would've have been more skilled at it as well. So no, Reki isn't BSing on just how ridiculously OP Yuuki is.

So, it's completely wrong to say that Kirito wins because he is innately better than everyone, or receives a deus ex machina to help him claim victory when he clearly doesn't. He has a consistent tendency of either nearly dying when he fights on his own, or needs someone else to help/save him. And as of the recent arc, he is in serious need of the latter.

On topic, it is hard to say because it's always been ambiguous about who is better than the other. Kirito thinks Asuna is better than he is (and very early on in Progressive, she's shown to be faster than him), and Asuna believes him be likewise. The one time that they actually dueled one another required Kirito to kinda cheat with an outside skill in order to beat her after fighting for 20 minutes.