Aug 11, 2014
Don't be fooled by promises of new content. SAO: Extra Edition is almost entirely one long recap, using the debatable technique of cast commentary to make an attempt at giving viewers something fresh, with a little something at the end for the people who are here for more than just a refresher course on everything that happened during the series.
The movie itself starts out promising, with the gang discussing a big quest in ALO, and the girls hanging out at the pool while Kirito is called in for a surprise counselling session. We get fanservice, and meet a new minor character, but all this is
...
quickly swept aside as the recap of the series begins with a vengeance, with an hour and a half of revisiting the important moments of the show, with the characters (mostly the girls) commentating on the action. While no doubt there are some people who are just happy to get more Asuna/Liz/Leafa/Kirito, most viewers will find revisiting all the already memorable moments of the anime to be tedious at best. When the movie's story finally picks up again later, the new content we were promised feels boring, short, and hastily put together, like a badly written fanfiction offered as a reward for sitting through the recap more than anything else. Even worse, for all of the KiritoxAsuna/Liz/anyone-he's-not-related-to fans, the character with the most spotlight is Suguha, whose one-sided relationship with Kirito upstages even Asuna.
Besides story, the characterization is lacking as well. Not because of the characters themselves, who are all absolutely fantastic. Rather, it's the lack of any real character development or meaningful screen time that brings it down. While it's great to see the gang interacting together in the offline world, most of the characters are largely relegated to background roles this time, with Suguha getting most of the spotlight, with a bit of room left over for Yui and Kirito.
The art itself is also fairly poorly done, and feels horribly under budget. While the recap moments are as beautiful as when we first saw them, and the pool scene is as good as can be expected from blatant fanservice, the actual fresh content shows an egregious lack of the scenery porn that was one of the draws of the show itself, with relatively bland and uninspired visuals that along with the aforementioned terrible writing make the fresh content almost as tedious to sit through as the recap.
On a positive note, the music department at least doesn't fail to please. With more work from the amazing Yuki Kajiura, the soundtrack is easily the best part of the movie, which would be saying more if it wasn't the only good part as well.
SAO Extra Edition could have been so much more, and an amazing addition to the animated version of the story. Unfortunately insufferably long recaps, terrible writing, horribly lack lustre visuals, and watching the entire cast (including Asuna) be sacrificed on the altar of SuguhaxKirito makes this a venture in masochism more than anything else, because watching it is nothing short of painful.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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