Review of Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale

Sword Art Online has always been a bit of a mixed bag, with its awkward pacing issues, poor characterization, and lack of general plot focus. While this didn't significantly harm my enjoyment of the series, all five arcs spread amongst the series' two seasons suffered from these drawbacks, and unfortunately Ordinal Scale doesn't do much to break the mold. The way the plot is set up is no different to the storylines we've seen prior, and the execution, while initially promising, ended up falling into the same trap as its predecessors. By far the biggest reason why Ordinal Scale ended up being a mess by thefinale was a result of its bad pacing issues. The beginning took far too long to get to the point, opting for a long, unnecessary set-up and introduction of new technology and how that has affected the world and the lives of our characters. While this is indeed crucial to the story, it was dragged on for the majority of the first act and ended up leaving less time for the plot to kickstart and flow well. This ended up affecting the conclusion, making it far, far too rushed with an insane amount of exposition shoved down the viewer's throat in the final 20 minutes expecting everything to make sense and fall into place. This made it difficult to comprehend the events that occurred and even though it did mostly make sense, it still felt confusing and bloated. While the pacing could've been better, the story also suffered from placing importance on the wrong things; a lot more emphasis was placed on the "show" and not "tell" of certain characters' motivations and reasons for why they did they things they did. This is particularly apparent in the villains, who as I mentioned before aren't properly elaborated on until the end and are given minimal reasoning or screentime to allow the viewer to understand their actions. Yes, the film has absolutely stellar animation and sound design on par with Ufotable's better work lending to a very visually engaging experience, but it detracted from giving the film more depth. Many action sequences, while again very beautiful, were drawn out and unnecessarily long. This is particularly true of the final battle, which was a total mess of explosions and colors with callback upon callback to past seasons of SAO with unexpected cameos in an attempt to please fans. In my opinion, while it was cool to see, it detracted from the gravitas of the climax and turned it into an entertaining sequence and not a nail-biting one.

However, while it didn't really work in the climax, Ordinal Scale did have other callbacks to the original Aincrad arc that were actually very well implemented. Pretty much all of the main storyline is in fact based on events that occurred in the first season of SAO and this made it a rewarding experience to recall these events and see how they've impacted the world in present day. This was one of the strongest points in the film for me; it added a considerable amount of pretext and depth to the Aincrad storyline and the characters that took part in it, even some who weren't originally present as main characters. It also developed the relationship of certain characters, namely the two main protagonists Kirito and Asuna, satisfyingly tying up loose ends and continuing their dynamics from season 2. There were also interesting flashback sequences to Aincrad, to scenes that actually weren't in the original series but occurred intermittently and not put to screen, greatly adding to the world and giving justification for events that otherwise occurred without this context. There was consistent juggling of themes and undertones that were all wrapped up by the conclusion that initially arose from these flashbacks, again making this film a very good addition to the world of SAO and giving it more depth as a whole.

To sum everything up, Ordinal Scale is a good time for any SAO fan; that much is guaranteed. Anyone who appreciated the Aincrad storyline, even if they didn't like what followed it, will find something to enjoy here, as it added a considerable amount of development to the characters and world. The animation, soundtrack, and sound design are stellar, better than they've ever been, making the visual and auditory experience something to marvel at even if the story doesn't quite grab you. Like the original series, it suffers many of the same issues that unfortunately kept it from being as great as it could've been. Still, any SAO fan will have already overlooked these issues and appreciates SAO not for its shortcomings, but for everything that it does well. And for those people, this film is for sure a home run; to everyone else, the many narrative and storytelling flaws keep it from being the truly great experience that the series needed.