Review of Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale

Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale is the first anime movie I've seen in a theater since Evangelion 2.0 several years ago. The basic premise of the story revolves around an Augmented Reality game designed using The Seed and the ever continuing fallout of Sword Art Online and Kayaba Akihiko. The bad guy's plan seems strange and a giant mess that requires like a hundred different things to go perfectly to work right. I would compare it to Captain America 3's villain. For fans of the Sword Art Online series, this story would have made a lot more sense if it took place chronologically AFTER Alicization (readspoilers yourself if you want to know why). Instead, it takes place after Sword Art Online II and some of the concepts and ideas are not introduced yet and leads into Alicization from there, resulting in inconsistencies that lead to plot holes. Overall, it leads to Kirito saves the day again, something that has occurred in every story arc. It would have been nice to see something different, but at this point, it is expected to be the tradition.

Like most anime movies, the art is very impressive. Most characters have alternate designs of their Sword Art Online costumes. It makes the characters seem familiar, but also different at the same time. I kind of like it. The visuals are great, but do not help to hide a story that needs to be fixed desperately.

The biggest problem here is the characters. Because this movie is essentially a filler, there is little character development. The relationship between Kirito and his friends do not really change. There is practically no character development in this and do not help to establish much of the relationship between the characters other than Kirito and Asuna love each other and the fact that their friends all want to help each other out when needed. The characters needed a little more depth, but like most anime movies, it is more geared towards fan service, causing the overall story and characters to suffer because god forbid, here is actual long lasting development in fillers.

Overall, this is what you expect of a typical anime movie. The action scenes are great. There is a lot of fan service and beautiful art, but lacks depth. It is better than a DVD recap if you are a fan, but if you are not already a fan of the series, you might want to skip this one.