Sword Art Online: The Movie - Ordinal Scale

The concept behind SAO was genius but they squandered it worse than possibly anything I've seen from a television series before and it's quality dipped. I don't think it ever got bad but it paled in comparison to what it was within around 12 episodes.

This spinoff movie follows season 2 and tells an entirely new story and is considerably better than I expected. Due to the decline I thought this would be mediocre but I was sorely mistaken.

It tells the story of VR gamings popularity taking a dip as an AR device has become all the rage. Within the augmented reality players are able to game and battle foes in the real world but our hero Kirito simply isn't convinced. It doesn't take long before Kirito, Asuna and friends realize that someone is using the hardware for their own nefarious means.

Now the concept of AR is ludicrous, in the real world it isn't practical for anything more than catching pokemon. Anything legitimately strenuous or action packed would be a severe health hazard for the player and everyone around them. For this reason you really have to suspend belief and sadly that's not the only thing.

If you can get past the absurdities however what you'll find it a very enjoyable, well paced and visually fantastic anime movie that really delivers on near every front.

This is the SAO we need back! Good stuff.

The Good:

Not a bad story

Contributes nicely to SAO lore

Great finale

The Bad:

A tremendous amount simply makes no logical sense

I loved it. It was not as good as some of Sword Art Online's other story arcs but definitely worth seeing.

The following comments are to put into context some of the comments by reviewers who missed the earlier story arcs.

We see a more mature, career oriented Kirito in Ordinal Scale. It is a consistent progression of the character development in earlier story arcs.

It may not be the last Sword Art Online story arc as there were teasers that left it open for more to come.

It was great I like this show. Don't judge it by the rating.

OK, this movie is stunning enough to made me write a review for the first time. Just came back from watching it. Its full house at the cinema. It is rare to see a full house at my country when the cinema is airing anime. This is absolute shock.

Story: 10/10 The story is great. It is a mixture of sad, emotional, tragedy, comedy and romance. Its sort like the mixture of SAO, ALO, GGO but mainly it revive that kind of feel after u watched the original SAO. It makes me feel nostalgic.

Art: 9/10 For me, the art can be consider good enough and at certain part the coloring is mind blowing especially when they defeated the monster. The animation also look more lively compare to the recent GGO. A great improvement overall. *Wagnaria Cafe (www working!) made a cameo !

Sound: 9/10 The OST is not as great as SAO but they did use back some SAO soundtrack (mainly Swordland) and even make an improved version for certain situation.

Character: 9/10 Nothing much to say here but the MC, Yuna is so kawaii (you will know what I mean once you really watched the movie). A little bit fan service as usual between Asuna and Kirito.

Enjoyment: 10/10 I really enjoy the 2 hour in the cinema and I do think that you probably need to watch the original SAO series first before watching this movie if possible try to finish ALO and GGO as well.

Overall: 9.4/10 Overall is 9.4 but I will definitely round it off to 10 instead of 9 because of the story, the comedy, again Yuna is so kawaii, the art and coloring during the FIANL MOMENT when the monster is defeated and the BGM being played at the right time at the right moment. I would definitely recommend any SAO fans to watch it, you will never regret!

I was initially not planning to do this review, but since I saw many other reviews with bad reasons to give it a low score i am doing this.

First of all I want to take a moment to talk about the characters and how many emotions you feel with them. This movie has kirito and Asuna as protagonists. Almost always you are feeling what they feel. This helps you to really care about them.

The villain was REALLY good. His purporses are really believable and some people may understand him and even feel empathy for him. The villain is so well done that you will not recognize what he really wants until he has almost done it. I would give it a 9.7

Other thing I want to point out is that I loved the AR thing. I could really more less understand the situation that they are in because in real life (when it was a trend) A lot of people played pokemon go and they would do anything to catch those pokemons. Something similar happens here.

Something I have to mention is the NOSTALGIA I felt while watching this. There are mentions and flashbacks to SAO series and it makes you really remember those moments. Only people who liked the series or light novels will understand how good those moments were, this is why I can not blame anyone for not liking the movie and not understanding how important those moments were.

The general plot was like the anime. A game that starts becoming more and more serious. The hidden meaning of this movie is represented as a question; How far would you go for the ones you love?.

The kirito and Asuna moments are great making you fall in love with those characters.