Accel World: Infinite∞Burst

Basically, most fans who have only watched the anime will be perplexed upon seeing Infinite Burst. Bewildered. Wildly confused. And instead of taking the time to answer them, Infinite Burst rolls on without going any deeper than it wants to, just so that it can deliver something that resembles an ending to its own haphazardly cut-down story. A

The Recap:
Taking up fully half of the film's running time, the recap is badly paced, boring, and fails to do what a recap is supposed to do: 'What are the important things that has happened, and who were involved in it?' You could say that it covered The Return of Black Snow Princess (henceforth Hime in this review for convenience, since we still don't know her real name) as well as the Scarlet Storm Princess, but you know what? It doesn't cover anything else!

If I was an anime-only watcher, I would be thoroughly confused by the following events:

* Fuuko regaining her legs
* The shrine maiden girl
* The unexplained alliance between Nega Nebulas and Prominence, two legions who are officially rivals but unofficial allies last we heard
* The identity of Ash Roller
* The new skills that Silver Crow demonstrates
* The ability for Scarlet Rain to now transform her Invincible Fortress into a freaking bus
* The cooperativeness of the Six Kings despite Black Lotus having murdered Red Rider years before
* The yellow pixie thing that apparently resides in Silver Crow's chest
* Black Lotus' transformation of her sword into a hand at the end

As a recap, it was the laziest of recaps. With cut-and-paste clips from the show being narrated by Sachika Misawa, it takes enormous patience to sit through all of that and not fall asleep. Apparently I don't have it, because I nodded off twice. The pacing was so poor that even if the recap was just to cover the anime, it did a great job covering Episodes 1-12 really well, skips 13-23 entirely and barely manages to sneak in a few shots from Episode 24 because they realised they were running out of time. Time is a commodity and the recap squandered it. In fact, you get the feeling that the show was meant to be Infinite Burst as a standalone feature and not a movie when you see a new title sequence and introduction at around 38 minutes again.

The Story:
There's very little that's praiseworthy of the story. With zero knowledge of sixteen volumes of light novel content between the anime series and Infinite Burst, you'll feel like you just joined a clique that's far ahead in bonding and camaraderie that you haven't a clue about. The appearance of new characters confuses you, the change in some returning characters is perplexing, and all along you're left to stare and wonder about what you've missed. The new character has all of five minutes to herself in the limelight and then is conveniently locked away for a great deal of the film, only to reappear at the end. While I'm not insinuating that Risa Tsukiori is a flat character (appearance not withstanding), she has had so little time devoted to her that I as a viewer am not able to connect with her or the reasons she offers as to why she made the choices she took. I suppose Infinite Burst is basically a walking advertisment for the light novels and the new promotional story, Leaping To Infinity, at this point, because the only way to understand the movie is to have read most, if not all of the volumes in between. But wait, Accel World's been licensed by Yen Press, and we'll get Volume 7 in September! Hooray! Three down, thirteen more to go! It's not hard to wait for them to release the books, right?

The Art:
What this film does shine at is Sunrise doing Sunrise things. The battle sequences are certainly thrilling and well-animated, and the huge size of the enemies in comparison to the duel avatars give a larger-than-life field. Whether you're watching Scarlet Rain do her best impression of a Macross Missile Spam, Aqua Current bust out the moves in what looks like a crystalline bikini armour, or Cyan Pile fire his pile bunker again and again into a never-ending stream of adversaries, you kind of get that this is supposed to be an exciting fight, but the arrival of three more Kings, the strongest players in Accel World (Oh? Was I supposed to know that without reading the novel?) leaves a certain kind of aftertaste as we're treated to sequences of them stomping the enemies by the hundreds. If this is what passes for good animation, I guess I'll take it.

The Sound:
Plasmic Fire was cool. But I didn't hear much of it because I was busy turning into bed. The rest of the film mostly reused tracks from the TV series to good effect, but nothing else stood out.

Enjoyment:
The hype was fat. The goods were skinny.

Overall:
In the weeks leading up to the movie, some fans expressed their worries that the showing of One Piece on the same date would take away viewers from Infinite Burst. I disagree - Infinite Burst did not deserve any more viewers than what it got. It not only treats you to a shoddy recap, it slaps in your face unexpected event after event that all can be explained with the same, infuriatingly expensive answer: read the light novel. It probably suits one type of audience just fine: the whales who have bought and read every single volume of Accel World, flipped through every page, and then queued up first in line to buy tickets for this badly disguised OVA. For the rest of us, who have likely never seen more than 24 episodes of Accel World, I'm sorry. This does not deliver.

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Dear lord, every time light novel is mentioned as a source for an anime i get a bad feeling about it and its for a reason. The latest in the trent of "read the light novel first" is here, Accel World: Infinite Burst. I wont be talking about characters and basics here since i figure you should know the stuff by now so i get straight to the point.

Accel World and the gap:

Accel World season 1 that aired back in 2012 covered the first 4 volumes of the LN material that began with "retun of the black king" and ended with "Dusktaker arc". After that the series ended and the LN continues, from volume 5 to vol 20. After that volume it is here that Infinite Burst takes place, thats right, for the entire 16 volumes of content is lost, everything from new characters to new alliances and game mechanics is also lost. The "only anime viewers" wont have a chance in hell to understand what is going on. The main lead Haruyuki is much stronger and has new abilities but the movie does not care what so ever to explain any of it. You get the picture by this point.

40 minute recap:

I have seen a lot of anime but never things like this, the entire movie is around 120 minutes and 40 of those minutes are spent upon recap from season 1. It does a very bad job of it, it does not explain everything, the first 12 episodes are covered but not the second half where the incarnate system is explained, are you for real?. This is lazy, why would anyone watch this movie unless they are new to the franchise is beyond me.

A side story:

This entire movie is pointless to the overall plot of the series, it deals with a new burst linker that is not explained well at all, in fact she is shown only for a couple of minutes and then its all forgotten untill the last 15 minutes of the movie. This entire movie does not add anything except for confusion and hatred for Reki and what he has done to this movie. To be frank, why does this even exist is something that i cannot explain either.

Light novel and Reki Kawahara:

AW:IB is everything that is wrong with LN and anime combined, Reki has an great idea for the overall plot but fails to carry it out. The original goal was to defeat the six kings of pure color and reach lvl 10 but at this point, who cares?

When you watch this movie, you will see that all of the kings from season 1 and after 15 volumes of LN are still allive, so what has happened during that time? the answer, nothing. Reki introduces new characters constantly but without doing anything with them. I read the LNs until volume 12 and then i lost interest. It is clear that Reki simply writes for the sake of writing instead of having a plot. He is simply doing this in order to sell a LN and if the cover is sexy with all the girls from the show it will sell but the overall goal is lost.

Conclusion:

The only redeeming quality of this show is the music and visual presentation but this is sunrise so its not a big suprise.

Accel World: IB is simply a waste, LN readers may enjoy it but the anime only viewers wont and after this retarded movie, i simply dont care about their goal anymore. I allways said that i considered AW a better show than SAO but that does not say much. Everything that is wrong with LN and anime transitions is here, new characters that is not explained at all, new powers, plot devices that is not explained at all.

Reki Kawahara cant write even if his life depends upon it.

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Overall: 7
This movie was fine all in all, very sunrise style I guess you could say. There was a lot of re-cap as the other review claims, however there is more than enough original content to split it evenly. Definitely not worthwhile watching in theaters due to the recap though, sorry Sunrise.

Story: 6
Discluding the re-cap the story for this movie was fine, and although it did lack character depth, the story worked out none the less. The original content in the movie was not long enough to be an entire arc, nor was it short enough to be an OVA, so it was more of an Extra Part for those who wanted to see more of Accel World. Unfortunately, it will make absolutely no sense unless you read the novels, which is quite unfortunate.

Art: 9
Good art, animation, colors, and settings. All expected of sunrise, especially with the robotic/mecha-ish aspect of Accel World since it's right down sunrise's lane. The lack of blatant and obvious CG makes this quite nice.

Sound: 8
New OST is introduced, and they do make good use of the old ost's. Rather steady use of sounds and ost so the movie does well there.

Character: 6
This is where I will be explaining the lows of the movie. The character this movie essentially revolves around lacks any depth. This seems to be Reki Kawahara's flaw as he does excellent depth with the main character(s) but completely skips out or skims other characters.

Enjoyment: 7
Personally, I could not get one of those awesome Kuroyukihime Movie Tickets but I was able to enjoy the movie, without being put through 30 minutes of pointless and terrible recap as this was the fastest I've ever seen an anime movie pirated. So I was able to skip the 30-40 minutes of re-cap and enjoy another 40 minutes of new content, which is what I highly recommend you do to get the most out of this movie.

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I love accel world, and I gotta say this was awful. The recap imo was completely wasted on the fact that the story doesn't even start where the recap leaves off but rather several volumes past the anime. It would have been better if they gave a two minute recap of the anime and fill in the blanks between the anime and movie with the rest of the 35 minute recap. Otherwise how are people expected to know how Sky Rakker got her legs back or who Ardor Maiden is? Or they could have just made the whole Hermes Cord volume into a movie which would have been much smoother from start to finish. Terrible subbing aside I feel the story for the second half of the movie felt rushed and half assed (gee I wonder why...). I felt like there was no real threat going on at all and it's all based on the fact that the gymnast girl (didn't catch her name, not worth going back) used unlimited burst instead of physical burst (an ability all level 4 bust linkers have. It increases conscious thought by 10 fold in real time in your real body). Using physical burst she could have landed properly, avoided injury and possibly get a do over due to faulty equipment.

Accel World is my favorite anime/light novel series and seeing how poor this whole movie project turned out I fear it ruined any chance at a second season. I am truly disappointed.

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It's basically just fanservice.

There's a lot more to say than that, but it sums up my overall position on Accel World: Infinite Burst.

The movie begins with an approximately 40 minute long recap of (mostly) the first half of the TV series. This is something I'm not a big fan of, but have seen before in anime movies tied into a TV series and I guess I can understand the intention if it's to bring the audience up to speed with the plot. I still don't agree with that choice, but I can understand it. But here it's immediately ruined by the fact that not only does the recap mostly overlook the second half of the show, but also a long series of other events only covered in the original light novels, leaving the viewer very confused as to what's happening at the start of the animation-new material in the movie if the show is all they're familiar with.

SPOILER WARNING: major plot details follow







These include, but may not be limited to, new characters, Sky Raker's legs having been restored, the fact that Nega Nebulus and Prominence are now one legion (???), the ability of Scarlet Rain's fortress to transform into a four-legged tank and some kind of large flatbed truck-tank thing, and the fact that it seems to have a time limit now, the fact that many characters who were previously only acquainted through the game seem to now know each other in real life and make no big deal of it (despite the fact that the importance of hiding your real life identity was stressed very heavily by Black Lotus in the TV series), and the fact that Silver Crow now throws around Incarnate abilities against AI opponents who aren't using them despite the fact that this was said to be extremely dangerous for one's mental state. I assume most or all of these are explained in the intervening light novels, but there's no explanation to be found within Infinite Burst itself (nor, on a more meta level, for why this arc was chosen to be made into a movie now when so much of its foundational material is unexplained).

The actual plot of the movie is also rather poorly explained and rushed. The hook is solid,that a girl in the middle of a gymnastics accident accelerated into the infinite neutral field right before falling into a coma and has thus been stuck there. We learn that something's going on to disable security cameras and lock people out of parts of the accelerated world, the party gathers at a point outside of the disabled area and is able to pierce the veil using Rain's truck and the Green King's shield, and then they fight a large horde of monsters summoned by a legend-class enemy Nyx, who has apparently been summoned by the trapped gymnast, and Crow and Lotus enter her fortress and have a brief confrontation. This all has the makings of an interesting narrative with some good tension and reveals, but it goes by so fast that nothing has much weight; the new content of the movie only makes up about half of its 80-minute runtime, only about 1.5 times the length of a single episode of the TV show. I have no idea why half of the movie was given to recap when the other half feels so rushed, but regardless of why, it severely hampers the story.

That being said, the art and soundtrack are still great, the characters are likable for what we see of them, and some of the fights are quite well animated. Seeing this stuff in action is cool for people who already know the story, or fans of the original show that want to see more stuff from the characters they like, but as a movie it's pretty weak, and I genuinely don't understand how the same people that made the TV series, which I think has great pacing and narrative construction, could have messed up this badly on the movie. I don't really know enough about how anime is produced to speculate, and I'd love to hear an explanation if anyone has one. Overall, I wasn't expecting anything as great as I thought the show was, and I was still pretty disappointed.

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Accel World is probably LA's most favourite work from Reki Kawahara, that isn't an understatement by any means...so when Accel World announced it was getting a movie, LA was hyped to say the least.

However...Accel World: Infinite∞Burst like MANY other anime movies with an original story, recap of the anime series events and movie-only characters deterred into LA loving this movie.

Case in point the extremely long recap recalling the events of the anime series however even as a recap, it had some questionable layered problems. For one, the recap only goes into full detail only during the Cyan Pile and the Chrome Disaster events of the anime series however completely skim over the Dusk Taker events to start the new story for this movie, LA "gets" why this anime movie recaps several events of the anime series as fans of the anime might not have remember all the details or newbies can get into this anime with the needed information for the new story HOWEVER the recap is by in large inconsistent to say the least, if your gonna do a recap movie recap and detail the ENTIRE anime series or don't do it at all (or better yet, spare us wasting our time and just make the recap movie fully for newbies then make the new movie with the recommended time a MOVIE takes) and yes the recap takes FORTY MINUTES, eating up almost HALF of the movie's screentime.

Well at the very least the new story of a black cloud disconnecting any Burst Linker in the surrounding area as it's new story for this movie was an upside all things considered. New and old characters are re/introduced and if people wanted the other Colored Kings to get screentime, then this movie is undoubtedly shows them in their full glory (where they put their differences aside concerning Kuroyukihime to take down the new villain of for this movie Nyx voiced by Aoi Yuuki).

The black cloud also adds in the additional factor as to why to make the audience see this as a "big" deal in a ways concerning Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime as if the black cloud spreads all throughout Japan, they won't be able to Burst Link and thus possibility of them losing their memories of Brain Burst and their time together (and by in large their relationship goes down with it)...thus the urgency.

The only other grip LA kinda had with this movie is with this new story, they didn't have time to flesh out the MANY MANY new characters from the Colored Kings (such as Green Grandee's power is never explained how he can NEGATE the black cloud effects?), Metatron voiced by Yukana who barely had ANY screentime and the only new members of Nega Nebulus, Rin Kusakabe and Utai Shinomiya voiced by Yumi Hara and this flaw could have EASILY be remedied by removing the long-ass recap and flesh these characters out more.

The animation once again helmed by Sunrise did a pretty great job overall, from the glossy CG-like Burst Link mechs of the majority of the characters (though one little flaw to this is probably Scarlet Rain's as the anime series didn't make the CGI THAT blatant but Accel World: Infinite∞Burst definitely shows this). Many of the fights were amazingly detailed and sometimes happened so fast but that "impact" is there in full force and LA loved it nonetheless when a big fight scene took place. Sunrise did their job splendidly and was expected quality out of them.

For voice acting, they were once again expected quality compared to the anime series with some additional voice cast seiyuu's from Yumi Hara, Chinatsu Akasaki and Aoi Yuuki. Aoi Yuuki as the new villain for this movie was a GREAT choice as Aoi wasn't playing a full-out evil villain but something of a sympathetic villain thus the vocals she used was expected and LA liked it to be fair, gave her an aura of mysteriousness and dread at the same time. LA's favourite voice actor?....well Sachika Misawa as Kuroyukihime is good option but she got second best for LA, no LA easily chose the hamminess seiyuu in this production...yes that's right Rina Hidaka as Scarlet Rain. Look, Rina Hidaka as Scarlet Rain brought her into LA's radar and her hamming it up is just glorious, LA couldn't pick anyone BUT Rina Hidaka.

Accel World: Infinite∞Burst falls under the same prejudice MANY anime movie with a compilation has fallen for, only this time Accel World: Infinite∞Burst has doubled down with trying to add a new story with new characters and a recap at the same time and expected it NOT to rush itself. Accel World: Infinite∞Burst could by all means have done SOOOO much better if the recap was scraped and allowed it's screentime of 82 minutes be fleshed out and realized with JUST the new story. Even with this HUGE flaw LA just can't ignore, LA still liked the new story as it expanded the world of Brain Burst even just a little as well as bring screentime to the Colored Kings in some respect and many of the climactic fight against Nyx were just amazing, but this flaw crippled ANY chance the new characters (apart from Nyx and Risa) they bring up by hardly fleshing them out or giving any chance of screentime with the few "helping out Nega Nebulus/Kuroyukihime and Haruyuki" as "compensation" not enough to know these new characters.

Accel World: Infinite∞Burst, LA wanted to love ya, but you pressed too many of LA's buttons with anime-original movies with a compilation especially with that HUGE recap being a HUGE detriment to the movie and with that it gets off with a slap to the wrist and LA crying out to anime movies to STOP. DOING. THIS. SHIT and LA thought LA gave Trinity Seven Movie: Eternity Library to Alchemic Girl a bad time.

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Jesus christ this was awful.

I usually am pretty happy to give high scores and derive a sincere enjoyment to even the most weird stories but this just went above and beyond to deliver the worst possible scenario and pacing I have ever seen.

Let's recap:

- We have a recap that takes half the movie, shows nothing of relevance, and is quite boring honestly.
- I have not read the LN and for the life of me couldn't understand half of what I saw, for a moment I was confused and thought that maybe there was a season 2 that I'd have missed or something, unbelievable. The story just jumps straight ahead 16 volumes from what I've heard, this is madness!
- But the ending... the ending just takes the cake. Interesting fight in progress... bit of story... then boom final ultimate attack and everything is over in an instant, 30 seconds of epilogue and roll the credits! You better not blink or you're gonna miss the ending, that's both hilarous and insulting.

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6/10, watch if you already watched the series, but you won't miss out on much if you don't watch this movie.

Literally, the first half of the movie recaps the entire season, skip to the middle if you just binged the series.

The second half is new material, but they honestly could have just made it into an OVA instead of calling it a "movie".

Honestly, I didn't enjoy it all too much. I wasn't a huge fan of Accel World when I watched it years ago when it premiered, so this wasn't a big deal for me.

The most redeeming qualities are the animation/action and soundtrack.
The least redeeming qualities are the storyline and overall shallow depth of each character. Not much substance.

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A great case study for what NOT to do in film making.

Why they took half the movie to recap the series is beyond me. It wasn't even a good recap, literally a clip show from the first half of the series.

The second half of the film, which is new content, based off of the light novels, was interesting and had fantastic action sequences. Too bad I had no idea who the hell any of the characters were and the plot was so rushed that it hardly could be called a cohesive story.

This shouldn't have been a feature length film. There was enough content that it should have been its own 12 episode series. They really bring a whole new meaning to the term "accelerate", as the movie was way too rushed to adequately convey any sort of emotion, and viewers like me who haven't read the light novels are forced to piece things together the best we can.

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I rather tend to consider Infinite Burst movie not related to the series’ main story, as the characters- friends or foes- join their forces in order to protect the Burst Link world from an imminent new danger , while the purpose of the series is to get to the 10th level of Burst Link fighting the top level players (the 9th level kings). However, a big chunk of the movie covers the series recap. Well, that’s understandable, I thought to myself: while it’s difficult to develop the movie’s story without giving a background of the characters, their relations, and their world (especially as Infinite Burst it’s a lot about teamwork, alliances and Burst Link fights), it’s also not easy to summarize 24 episodes.

And things just can’t go smoothly, can they? With all the time given, the recap it’s more useful to those that have seen the series and that can fill up certain things cut out from the recap. For the rest it can be confusing. And because of the recap there is less available time for the movie’s story, which is why you may get the strange feeling that you have just joined a race ride and you can barely understand what’s happening around you because of the speed. Luckily the main idea of the movie is not that hard to get.

In my opinion there was a slight improvement in the characters’ relations by comparison with the series. For one thing their roles were better defined, which I find very important in a story where the main subject is something beyond the characters’ daily life. The team work is very nicely built up. The fights are intense and we also get to see in action all the kings (a thing that some of us have longed for during the series). However, I still find the couples unconvincing.

When I ended the series, it appeared to me that the black king’s team was barely shaping up. During Infinite Burst, after the recap, I had this feeling that a long time had passed (maybe years?) from the end of the series until the moment of Infinite Burst. The characters were so familiar with each other, even characters that I had no idea who they were (not in the series). It can be confusing, like having missed something, but this didn’t really mind me. I could imagine that the period of recruiting and bonding of the team was skipped and we got directly to the final result. What really bothered me was that cram of female characters. I felt this imbalance rather annoying.

Even though I was satisfied with the series animation, Infinite Burst’s animation was even better. I felt as if I was finally getting the ultimate satisfaction of a fighting game movie. The graphics were slightly improved too, I could tell. And so many Burst Linkers, some of them top level, showing so many different abilities, some of them quite astonishing (Sky Laker and Ardor Maiden were quite the surprise!)?! God that was a treat!

I can’t tell much about the soundtrack, though. As I usually do, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but I’m sure it had its contribution at trapping my mind into the spin of the story and making me feel part of an intense action movie (especially in the second part).

Overall, there’s something that I find quite interesting about the way Infinite Burst action was built: you start with one of the key characters of the movie’s story, but at low pace, then you go roughly through the series’ story where you can feel a rather higher pace which is mostly the effect of passing somewhat abruptly from one event to the other, from one character to the other (sort of a bumpy road, I’d say 😊) just to get back to the movie’s story at a fast pace and jammed with new characters. These changes of scenery, story, pace and characters in this exact order (which I described above) can really pump you up with adrenaline giving you that nice taste of what “accelerated world” experience might possibly feel like. I may be wrong, but I just can’t help seeing it that way too :D.

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