If you are wondering whether you should watch this, ask yourself this question: Do you really want to relive this shit again? If your answer was a “Yes” in any way, shape or form, man, you are some serious masochist and really should be rethinking your life choices. It made me rethink my life choices, I mean like, why am I watching this and not Monster, Legend of the Galactic Heroes or Ghost in the Shell like all those pretentious hipster critics want me to? At any rate, this 100 minute special drowns you in 80 minutes of flashbacks to those terrible times, with special attention given to the deus ex machina moments and the horribly forced teen romance. They give you only short breaths of toxic, polluted air in between with new footage of Kirito’s harem in bathing suits talking about how much of a Gary Stu Kirito is or how good Asuna is at making sandwiches :)
You are better off skipping the flashbacks so I’ll summarize what happens during the first 80 minutes in this paragraph. If you really are a masochist and want to watch them for yourself or you don’t quite remember what happened in the show due to mental trauma, skip to the next paragraph. Basically, Kirito’s harem (Asuna, Silica, the blacksmith girl who’s name I don’t remember and Kirito’s sister) are at the pool teaching Kirito’s sister how to swim (how cute, the strong and athletic little sister needs help) while they discuss their experiences with Kirito. Meanwhile, Kirito is meeting Kikuoka Seijirou, the government official in charge of virtual reality incidents, and he's recounting what happened in SAO and ALO, covering everything that the girls don’t.
The last twenty minutes or so are decent for some light-hearted action and fun. There are some funny moments and they don’t try to take themselves *too* seriously. The plot is good... for an MMORPG, though anyone who’s played an MMORPG should know how terrible the average MMORPG quest storyline is. I was sorely disappointed that there was no final epic boss fight. Instead, they wasted their time with some crappy brother-sister drama (along with a random flashback to further emphasize how amazing Kirito was for being a hero even when he was a little kid), and, as always, they show that no one can do shit without our invincible protagonist. Nevertheless, one IS able to feel or imagine a bit of how amazing it would be to play a VRMMORPG and how incredibly huge ALO must be to find such incredible areas relatively untouched.
Characters, if this is even possible, were even worse than in Sword Art Online considering how they made all the girls just weak little damsels who fell heads over heels for our antisocial nerd of a chick magnet and all they do is talk about him. I really don’t get how they don’t give up and give Kirito and Asuna their space, all they are doing is pointlessly interfering into Kirito and Asuna’s relationship though I wouldn’t be surprised if the series ended in a sixsome (or sexsome, kukukuku, since a new girl is introduced in GGO). Kirito’s as much of a Gary Stu as ever, Klein just becomes your perverted comic relief best friend character rather than the strong caring man he was in SAO and Agil doesn’t really deserve a mention here since he didn’t really do anything or interact with the other characters.
The music score is excellent, obviously since it’s done by Yuki Kajiura, though some of it is reused from the original SAO (and of course, during the flashbacks they use the same soundtrack), while the theme song by Eir Aoi is great as well. The art is as good as ever with vibrant and colorful backdrops and sunsets that truly drop you into the beautiful world of ALfheim.
Overall, the OVA was fine, but I really wish I didn’t waste my time watching the flashbacks. The OVA ends with a hint of the upcoming Sword Art Online 2 and I will foolishly cling onto the non-existent hope that they will learn from their mistakes and present us with an at least decent anime. The next arc is probably the best so far in the light novel series, so let us all pray that they don’t utterly butcher it.
