Review of Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale
DISCLAIMER (READ!): This review—though I'm not a popular review poster nor a popular MAL user—may contain heavy spoilers for those whom haven't viewed the movie yet. Preliminary statement: I do realize that this review is written a tad late in comparrison to when the film was released to the public in theaters. However, I do have the excuse of waiting for the english dub (because I was so used to watching the first two seasons in such) and ended up forgetting about it over time. But finally, after so long of waiting, I was finally able to watch the movie comfortably. And, I was honestly astonished byhow much I enjoyed it than what I thought I would.
Story:
The story isn't all that great, but I'm giving it a 10 just because I'm an avid SAO fan. Basically, what ends up happening is that something traumatic within the first quater happens to Asuna, which is her losing her memory through the means of bringing the fear of dying during boss fights back to her so someone controlling the Augma mainframe can access those memories by sending signals to the brain and capturing the information revealed by said fear. In my perspective, that was really said to see because so much has happened in SAO, specifically to her, and, by sympathizing, I can only imagine what it must feel like for someone to forget the most important thing in their life, let alone their lover, whom they met during this point. But anyways, what those scenes do is grabs onto the emotion created by the creators of SAO and exploits them to a dangerous scenario, which makes the viewer just as worried to what woulud happen to the main characters as the characters are about themselves. But anyways, straying back on topic: the story is basically a copied and pasted version of the last two seasons; Asuna, or a person close to Kirito is hurt by whatever means and he goes in to save the day.
Art:
There really isn't anything to say about art; it's almost exactly the same from the first two seasons. The only thing I can really point out is that the art is smoother and looks more appealing to the viewers eyes, especially during the fight scenes. Everything looked more controlled, technical, and just...better. The character design itself wasn't different, but the way it was executed definitely was. I think the best thing about the art was the scene where Asuna was in the bathtub and you got a side-view of her breasts, and a nipple was visible and UNCENSORED. Just one. So much for PG+13.
Sound:
The sound was definitely upgraded from the original seasons, however there wasn't anything that was loud enough to be noticed. After watching the movie several times now, I've realized that the change is extremely minimal and hard to notice if you're a casual anime viewer. The OST includes newer songs, with the exception of Crossing Field near the third quarter of the movie. Hearing that song during the movie, especially without watching the last two seasons before viewing, gave me a nostalgic feeling, and definitely an emotional one.
I'm sure things like Character and Enjoyment are self-explanatory and I don't really feel like getting into those things in this review. I have to say, this is definitely one of my more detailed ones. I hope this review was good enough to be useful or was pleasing to read. I am, in fact, an avid supporter of the Sword Art Online community and do hope to see a third season (which was teased at the end of the credits if you watched that far).