Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale Thoughts/Review
So I had the ‘honour’ of going to watch Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale on opening day, March 9 and boy was it lots of fun.
So let’s get down to basics, I enjoyed the previous 2 seasons of SAO to an extent but constantly groaned at it’s terrible moments from its forced time skip, badly defined villains who got rapey for the sake of making us hate them, harem nonsense and in general the poorly done character of Kirito.
Season 2 was still a significant step up to me with it staying far more consistent despite its constant falls (the villain of the Gun Gale Online Arc and the whole Calibur Side Quest Arc for instance) and ended on one of the best arcs of the series thus far in Mother’s Rosario.
Now a third season is more or less in the works to cover the next big arc Alicization and we have the all new original movie Ordinal Scale to quench people’s thirsts till that comes around.
At its core, Ordinal Scale is pure fanservice with constant cameos and references to previous story arcs and characters with a heavy emphasis on the original Aincrad story. The ever popular Augmented Reality game Ordinal Scale played with the Augma headset has been holding boss events every night using actual bosses from the floors of SAO for a mysterious reason and the SAO survivors that end up being killed in game by these bosses end up losing their memories of their time in SAO only.
It’s a crazy stake that honestly works better than the ever mocked ‘die in the game, die in real life’ premise (though seeing as this is AR where you can control your body and move in the real world, you have every chance of hurting yourself seriously anyway). Plus it adds something to the much more focused relationship on Kirito and Asuna, as Asuna ends up amongst the victims and thus loses memories of her first meeting with him and all the time they spent there.
Something feels largely genuine about Kirito and Asuna’s relationship this time around, between the more time spent on them being together than being with the rest of the gang and their promise together to see shooting stars together by themselves. So kudos for that movie.
The rest of the gang still have some moments, except Suguha who the movie has leave for kendo camp for whatever reason since whether she was present there or not wouldn’t have changed anything. Klein and Agil gets some fun scenes though even if Klein ends up amongst the first victims and gets his arm broken too, because overkill.
In terms of the new characters, we have Eiji, Ordinal Scale’s #2 player who’s our main villain and a total edgelord. Dr. Shigemura, a developer and authority on non-invasive BMI (Brain Machine Interface) research who used to teach both Akihiko Kayaba (the insane jackass who made SAO) and Nobuyuki Sugou (the rapey piece of crap behind ALfheim Online). That’s totally a great sign *sarcasm meter goes off the charts*.
And lastly there’s Yuna, the artificial intelligent idol and mascot for the Ordinal Scale game who’s at the centre of this crazy plot whether she likes it or not. All 3 have their part to play and they’re done reasonably well with decent motivations that are believable and don’t ever go into anything ridiculous or stupid (for the most part at least).
Ultimately the biggest part of this film is its battles, most particularly the final one. Actual tactics are employed to attack the monsters in Ordinal Scale, most of which lead by Asuna herself awesomely enough (being familiar with the attack patterns of SAO bosses helps a lot after all). It’s a nice way to highlight the huge difference in how battles were done in virtual reality where constant magic powers and weapons were used. Whereas Ordinal Scale offers up long and short range weapons like swords and guns only to use and you have to rely on the actual strength of your body.
Which is where Kirito’s slight challenge in this film comes from. As much as he likes the advantages of augmented reality and what it can do (especially when it helps in being to interact with his and Asuna’s A.I. daughter Yui who I still don’t like to acknowldge), he’s still heavily biased to virtual reality and is just plain out of shape. Every time he plays Ordinal Scale, his blows don’t seem to have much power and he even trips over himself while running fast.
Unfortunately the film doesn’t spend enough time on this rather interesting side of the plot due to the timespan of the story over several days with a big deadline to boot. We don’t get any inspirational montage sequence of him constantly training as much as I hoped for one. Even the actual training moments were kept pretty brief.
By the time the final battle rolls along, it doesn’t end up mattering all that much. A shame really but at least the final battle made me grin from ear to ear on how fun it was. It’s literally a battle against a boss that Aincrad fans would’ve wanted to see had the first arc not ended so hastily. Almost everyone shows up to help in the fight with some insane flashiness to boot. It was absolutely glorious.
But enough about all that, time for me to pick a bone with the movie’s story in a very spoilery fashion.
Mục lục
Spoiler Corner!
Spoiler warning obviously! Turn away now! No really. Go away if you don’t wanna know anything.
So the main plot of it all was that Eiji and Dr. Shigemura were working together this whole time to bring Yuna who was an A.I. based off Shigemura’s daughter back to life, sorta.
Eiji was an SAO survivor that used to be in the Knights of the Blood Oath alongside Asuna but was too afraid to die and thus never took part in boss battles. He became a close friend of Yuna, a talented singer who often acted as a bard to support the players that were fighting. At some point, that the film never felt bothered to give details on (so it’s left ambiguous as to whether it was another player’s fault or was in a boss room for some reason), she died in the game.
After Kirito cleared the game and Eiji wound up free, he ended up in contact with Shigemura who was the professor at the university he was attending and the two decided to work together to bring Yuna back to life. With the A.I. of her created as the mascot for Ordinal Scale, they’d steal the memories of SAO survivors playing the game and use them to reconstruct Yuna completely.
It’s a crazy plan that largely makes sense. Both Eiji and Shigemura are going through heavy grief for different reasons. Eiji feels guilty about not doing anything to save Yuna’s life while Shigemura feels personally responsible since he pulled strings in his position to gift Yuna an Amusphere for her to play SAO on.
But putting all of that into consideration, the plan was far too large scale and crazy to even work. If the idea was to steal the memories specifically relating to Sword Art Online from the players that survived the game to recreate Yuna, how would it work? Assuming every player whose memories have been stolen has interacted with the real Yuna at least once in the game, that interaction could barely amount to anything that could recreate a real person.
Shigemura could’ve easily recreated Yuna just from his and Eiji’s memories (or just Eiji, assuming there wasn’t another way to transfer memories without removing them) alone in that case since both of them closely knew her the most of all. There’s no guarantee that the Yuna recreated would even be the same anyway. Hell, Shigemura ends up betraying Eiji in the climax anyway and removes his memories of Yuna, but it just doesn’t have much impact.
I wish there was better explanation on this, Shigemura’s claim that the SAO survivors losing their memories of that time as a good thing due to all the pain and suffering during then could’ve worked as a legit excuse for his actions and he could even back it up as him making up for his student (aka Kayaba’s) actions. But the line just ends up as a deflection when Kirito attempts to interrogate him.
Hell, even the fates of these characters end up ambiguous by the end. Eiji recovers from everything and is last seen watching the aftermath of the final battle, whether he gets any comeuppance for all the crap he pulled is left hanging. Yuna’s A.I. system seems to have been removed for good (though I guess a backup could possibly exist, I dunno).
Shigemura ends up having the most concrete fate, as he gets apprehended by Kikuoka (that guy from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who’s responsible for monitoring situations in the virtual world and keeps calling on Kirito for stuff) and we see in the after credits scene that rather than being arrested, he’s been brought on to a mysterious project due to reasons related to his A.I. work and is introduced to RATH. A clear tease to the Alicization arc capped off with the words ‘SAO Will Be Back’.
On a different note, I really appreciated the Mother’s Rosario callbacks. From Dr Kurahashi playing a decent role in studying the effects of the amnesia through the Medicuboid, the Sleeping Knights small cameo at the start (though only 2 of them, being Siune and Jun, appear. Which is depressing but makes sense) and the biggest pay off of all: Yuuki’s spirit showing up to guide Asuna’s rapier as she uses the Mother’s Rosario move on the 100th Floor Boss during the final battle.
If there was anything I wanted the most after the end of the Mother’s Rosario arc, it was Asuna using the aforementioned move to attack whatever boss she would be facing in the future and boy was I happy to see that happen.
Spoiler Corner End
All in all, Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale was a fun time to be had and I look forward to seeing more of franchise if it keeps up this upward swerve in quality. From the animation quality (or sakuga as Canipa can attest), crazy fight scenes, good attempt at developing Kirito and Asuna more as a couple and much more interesting villains. It’s an improved experience from either seasons of the series.
I also will definitely be rewatching the film with its English dub when it’s released. The US premiere already confirmed the dub’s existence and the anime’s director Tomohiko Ito even sat in for a session or two with the series’ ADR director Alex von David. Plus, judging by a tweet by Christine Marie Cabanos (English voice of Sillica), it seems the insert songs for the movie are getting dubbed as well. Still it should be interesting to see what English actors they’ll cast for Eiji, Yuna and Shigemura, unless Alex himself really is voicing all 3 and singing too.
So here’s hoping for encore screenings in Australia with the dub just as America is getting on April 22.
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