Review of Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale
********THIS HAS SPOILERS*********** When I think of Sword Art Online, I think of the anime that my friend first showed me that got me into the medium itself. That was five years ago, which was around the time SAO first aired on Japanese television. Five years later, I'm watching it's movie adaptation, and my expectations were beyond my reach. My friend and I took a seat in the theater, and began chatting up the other people in the venue, talking about SAO and various other anime. It was a Fathom Event, so they had an on-screen SAO quiz for us before the film began. The lightsgo off, and we get introductions from LiSA, the singer for the film's theme song, Catch the Moment. Then we had Haruka Tomatsu and Yoshitsugu Matsuoka greet us and give us a small insight of Kirito and Asuna's relationship, which they mentioned was the main point of the film.
The actual film began with a detailed (but quick and to-the-point) overview of the series. There were plenty of call-backs to the previous seasons, including the Ruby Palace, Yuki's cameo, and a whole bunch of GGO and ALO players joining in on the final battle.
Haruka Tomatsu had mentioned in her greeting that our understanding of the characters will depend on who's perspective we view the film from, and she was right. The character development was solid and all covered in two hours, enough to make their motives sound believable. The villain status switches from Eiji to Dr. Shigemura after we uncover the motives behind both of them, and Eiji's defeat in Kirito's hands. It would have been interesting if the film was more of EijiYuna, instead of KiritoAsuna, but at least they had their chance to reconcile towards the end.
The art and animation of the film were noticeably uneven in several aspects of the film. During the slice-of-life scenes, the animation wasn't bad. However once they jumped into fights, the animation was mind-blowing.
Music selection were top-notch. Yuki Kajiura returned on-board to make the music for the film, and her music is godly. Sayaka Kanda not only voiced Yuna, but also provided several insert songs, which were quite amazing in their own right, especially when some of them were produced by Kajiura herself.
Overall, I haven't enjoyed such a good movie in a long time. The pseudo-announcement of Season 3 (Rath and the Underworld) had me begging for more, and with Shigemura joining Rath and Eiji now purged of his darkness, I get the feeling that this isn't the last that we will see of them.