Review of Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale
Alright, time for another one of these. This movie got a lot of hype but I've only gotten to see it just now. It seems to be the highest rated iteration of Sword Art Online as of yet which certainly proves how much sway production value has on viewers. Now, there has always been a lot of hate towards this series overall and there has been an equal amount of praise attributed to it. I watched the show some while back when I was just getting started with watching anime and just like all casuals I loved it. The absolute strongest point of SAO was simplythe premise of this show. The way it was executed is a totally different thing, but no one can deny that the first couple episodes sparked some interest in viewers. The idea of being trapped in a death game with such high stakes seemed fascinating. The show lost a lot of kick after the end of the Aincrad Arc because after that one that suspense didn't quite exist anymore due to the fact that the characters weren't in permanent danger anymore. The drama element was lost and the they couldn't quite bring that back. Mix that with a cast of abysmal character writing and you get the failure of the later part of season 1 and the first part of season 2. That's when people started to hate on this show. The show started however to redeem itself starting with Mother's Rosario, the last arc of season 2 and now with this movie, but there are still shortcomings.
The first two thirds of this movie had me pleasantly surprised. It somehow managed to create tension and give a sense of meaningfulness to what was happening. A lot of the scenes were well directed and I found myself actually enjoying this show without feeling bad because it was actually good. That was until the part where they fully fleshed out the villains and their intentions. I don't know what it is with SAO and their abysmally written villains. I am one of the people that actually things that the Kayaba Akihiko from the original Aincrad was a presentable villain if one does a stretch of thought. But all the others were stereotypical bad guys at best. The ones in this film weren't as bad as the elf king guy from Alfheim (I don't even want to google his name) but the way they rushed out their intentions was so bad and took the whole kick of the show away. Characters still remain the biggest flaw of SAO after all. Kirito is pretty much an irredeemable character so I won't say much about this at this point. The problem with him is that his persona doesn't really make sense at all. There are a lot of points about him that contradict themselves and that makes him seem like a totally unrealistic character. That is if you put much thought into it. I usually try not to think that much and then I can actually get excited at how OP he actually is and how enjoyable it is to see him kick ass.
The problem with having bad characters is that they make the story a lot worse. These two components are usually the most important for a work in any medium, be it books, movies or tv shows.
What saves SAO Ordinal Scale is it's animation and sound. A1 Pictures made sure to pump up the production value ion this one for sure. Although these fight scenes seem too fast paced for me personally, I can't deny that their fluidity is outstanding. Yuki Kajiura did the soundtrack for this one and most of the songs are sung by either Kalafina and LiSA (top notch). Two remarks about Animation and Sound. 1. is that as cool as these fight scenes look, the art somehow fails to attain my standard of beautiful. What that means is that when I pause the show I should be presented with a frame that is worthy of being a cool desktop background. That's just a retarded standard of mine. 2. is that most of the songs performed by Kalafina are knock off's from Fate/Zero's secound opening. Yuki Kajiura composes for Kalafina and i must say that as someone who fanatically listens to Kalafina it seemed like she was just a bit lazy on this.
I'm finally at what i consider to be the end of this review and it took me quite some time but I'm okay with it I think. Last I will say something about the enjoyment one has with this show and I must say that as much as I can analyze the flaws of this series to no end, matter of the fact is that I will still fucking have a heart attack due to the excitement i get when Kirito pulls out his second sword and fights a boss with the track "Luminous Sword" or "Swordland" playing in the background and for that I will burn in hell. My inner pleb enjoyed this show and gives it a 9, meaning it is GREAT. In actuality it is somewhere at 7 meaning it is still GOOD but hey, just watch it and decide for yourself.