Rbastid

A very promising story ruined once again by someone who can just take one swing and win the game.

Story - 4/10

After a few successful years being at the top of the gaming world, Virtual Reality has now been surpassed by Artificial Reality technology, where instead of playing a game, the tech augments the world around you to become a game. The big hit is called Ordinal Scale, and it’s more than just a game, as the system allows you to do pretty much anything our current generation of phones does, including pay for items, search the web, and presumably get tracked everywhere we go. 

The one person who isn’t too caught up in this craze is Kirito, who still prefers the full dive technology used in A.L.O., as it allows him to instantly hang out with his friends, without having the hassle of actually living a life. Because of this, the once king of Sword Art Online, Gun Gale Online, and ALfheim Online, isn’t even ranked in the top ten thousand when it comes to Ordinal Scale users, as the game isn’t based on computerized stats, and instead is powered by the player’s own real world ability.

Despite not being a big fan of Ordinal Scale, or the A.R. technology, Kirito plays along, as all his friends, and especially Asuna, love it. After finding out that S.A.O. bosses are appearing in O.S., Kirito and Asuna go to give it a shot, and while there they run in to others who survived the S.A.O. incident, including someone Asuna believes was her old guild mate. 

The next time one of these major battles occur, Asuna forgoes telling Kirito, as she see’s he’s just not that in to it, instead meeting up with Klein and his clan; though oddly they (Klein and friends) never made it in to the fight despite showing up at the location. They all soon learn that Klein’s group was attacked by someone within the game, and now other strange things have been happening to fellow S.A.O. survivors, including Asuna losing her memories gathered during S.A.O.  

With the help of his virtual daughter Yui, Kirito now tries to figure out why these bosses are suddenly appearing in a game that has no relation to S.A.O., and why the rather mundane act of dying in game, is also becoming a detriment to the player’s actual body. 

This could have lead to an entertaining mystery for our hero to solve, or one that took us back in to the game world, where our characters need to team up and devise strategies to defeat bosses they’ve never seen, but instead the mystery and climax felt like they were over in a heartbeat, with no drama or edge of your seat moments you’d hope for. It would have even been better if the ending unfolded without even needing the game, as opposed to the usual act of Kirito instantly become the best ever, but as we’re use to by now Sword Art Online gonna do what Sword Art Online gonna do.

Animation - 8/10

While most of the art and character design is the same as the previous two seasons, I actually liked they way they went about this season just a little more. Since the show is supposed to take place in the real world, they did a nice job of melding the real and the virtual using the A.R. devices.  The monsters in this season also seemed much bigger and more detailed than we were used to, and the battles followed suit. 

While S.A.O. always was great in the animation department, I think they went even beyond this time around.  

Sound - 8/10

Due to the plot of the show, music was always going to play a huge role in the movie, and thankfully they made sure to bring back arguably one of the greatest anime composers ever Yuki Kajiura. Thanks to her, the overall soundtrack, along with the music of Yuna which had the potential to be irritating, was again a shinning point in the S.A.O. universe.

Since the voice cast from the previous seasons are all back, the characters all continue to sound pleasant and they deliver their lines like seasoned professionals. The ending song also isn’t terrible, as it matches the energy of the show and is at least listenable for the one time you need to hear it.

Characters - 2/10

As I mentioned before, one high point for me was how Kirito isn’t the over powered king of games like he was in every VR game he played, but they made sure to only let that plot line last about an hour, as Kirito does a small bit of kendo training and instantaneously becomes the greatest of all time once again. 

Most of the other characters we know from the first two seasons make appearances, but offer almost nothing to the film. They don’t have any growth or any important moments on screen, all are basically there to prop up Kirito.

When it comes to the villain, or well the villain and sub-villain, the creators apparently had little to go on, as both were as boring and cliche as it gets. One was the well intentioned, grief stricken, leader; and the other a guilt ridden, and somewhat bitter, lackey.  In the end neither even wound up being any match for our hero, as they were taken out in seconds.

Overall - 3/10

There was a lot of potential in this film, but they unfortunately fell back on to everything that was bad from the previous instances of Sword Art Online. I get that a hero often has to be unbeatable, but they don’t even try to make our’s even slightly fallible, so the drama is non-existent. I can even look past the many bad decisions made by the characters, or the things that even in this world are far beyond unrealistic, but doing so doesn’t make things much better.   

When they were in the video game section of the film, as was also the case in the TV series, it was fun an interesting because it really felt like an MMORPG. The other sections weren’t bad, but it was so much repeated filler, when they could have built the mystery more, instead of just having the group hanging out at the mall.

Positive Reasons for Score:

 * There’s a great base for a movie, just horribly unrealized. 

 * They do the MMORPG part really well, they just seem to not want to actually focus on it, despite it being the whole series background.

 * A really amazing soundtrack.

Negative Reasons for Score:

 * Falling back on the same old tactic of the hero instantly powering up to save the day.

 * Completely non-existent character development.

 * While the story was good, it was yet another damsel in distress plot that we’ve seen multiple times from this series.

Ways to make the film better:

 * Use the new level playing field to develop other characters as possible heroes.

 * Spend more time on the video game, than on the group going out for sweets and other slice of life activities.

 * Find a way to better integrate the new and old game worlds.