+Fantastic action in the first boss raid. There were gunners on the balconies, melee dps fighters taking shots, tanks tanking shots, sufficient logic of boss moves and specials, and they formulated a strategy towards the end of the fight considering they were ragtag players and not an actual raid party. Very fun!
+Good environmental destruction animation throughout. The flames, the rocks flying, the smoke, and all that stuff was well animated. I especially liked that scene where Klein jobbed, with the integration of his HUD heightening our emotional connection with his despair.
+The final boss' design met my expectations of what a final boss should look like: graceful yet menacing, a sense of beauty as she is the guardian of her garden and temple.
+I love the soundtrack and insert songs. They are right up my alley from upbeat j-pop idol songs to slower ballads; the volume dynamics used with a few noise tracks to create tension and boding.
+The background art and CGI of the AR transformation are pretty slick. This is easy mode, though; the weather is sunny for the week of this movie's timeline; and the fantasy setting is standard medieval meets magic with a blood-red colour pallete.
+Kirito and Asuna's romance moves forward in a meaningful way. The set-up is that they planned an outing into the countryside, but the plot kicks in and the trip is in danger of being cancelled! In addition, the memories they made together is being endangered! I genuinely felt for their relationship at all points throughout the movie, and I got a satisfying payoff.
+There are a few standout cinematography moments sprinkled throughout. I liked Asuna's nightmare where the faces got blurred out to represent loss of memory, and when she woke up with the camera blurry as if we were waking up back to reality; a few POV camera shots when Kirito was looking around for the AR ghost were utilized as needed; and I liked the seemless integration of the HUD into several POV shots to visualize how cool the Augma is.
+Drones are a thing!
+Asuna's hair was amazing!
+Nice foreshadowing in this one scene where Kirito visits a future site of conflict. Very beautiful place fitting of the fantasy setting.
+I was invested in the mystery during the first half of the movie, before it falls apart as we try to piece the given answers together.
-The prologue before the title card is just recap using TV footage.
-The AR exposition is boring and unimaginative. They choose to use a news segment to explain the various functions of the Augma and how it got popular; the clips used to highlight its functions are generic and uninspiring as if the audience was the mainstream instead of fans of the franchise. (It is implied that you should watch the first 50 episodes of SAO first before this movie... otherwise you'd have no interest or you're watching in the wrong order.)
-Um... idols! She comes in, buffs the players, and sings music... because the producers needed to sell some music! It felt very silly, but I guess that's why they did it.
-It feels lazy when most of the bosses were recycling SAO monster designs. "Hey, we worked very hard on these boss designs, so let's use them in the movie instead of coming up with original monsters!" The excuse is that SAO and Ordinal Scale are doing a collab. I also really hate the plant venus-fly-trap monster; that thing just really irritates me.
-The entirety of act 2 is boring.
-Heavy exposition is dumped using dialogue in uninteresting areas. Kirito and Asuna would meet up, then awkward silence would ensue whenever they weren't talking about the plot. They'd sit in their Aincrad house, or at a cafe (that's outside!), or at a restaurant, or on the street.
-On that point, whenever there is dialogue, the animation comes to a stand still. There is a basic camera encomposing two characters at opposite ends of the frame and they have a standoff with only their mouths moving for a whole minute. Often, the director would cut to scenery where background characters and butterflies would move for no reason other than looking pretty while you listened to people talking.
-For almost 40 minutes, it feels like nothing important happened. There is a lot of waiting around transitioning to the next scene and "tension-building" pauses to elongate scene time.
-How many times have I got to see Kirito cook? Slice of life can have it's moments, but not three times of the exact same animation loop with nothing in between.
-As much as I like how Kirito depended on his connections to get to the bottom of this mystery, it is still uninspiring to have plot points dumped onto him via phone calls and using the internet. I like the few times he had to physically confront certain characters, but others do work for him and I didn't feel like he earned every new information.
-There are about 4 boss raids in total before the finale, and each one diminshes in importance and entertainment. They got repetitive (using stock footage of the AR transformation of the city) and gets less impressive quickly.
-Plotholes, a whole lot of them. It's like trying to drive on a road where any pothole will lead to instant death.
-Okay, so in order to obtain the memories of SAO survivors playing Ordinal Scale, the victims had to be cut down during the collab boss raids because the SAO monsters would remind them of their time in the death game and trigger an emotional response, letting the Augma calculate the location of those memories inside the brain, scan them, and extract them. Instead of being able to copy them (because why not? high-tech can mean anything), extraction leads to (ir)reversible damage to those sections of the brain. You would think that this would be permanent, until the main villains say they can give them back by reverse scanning..... this does not make any physical sense so I'm going to pretend this is all magic (or fictional science, or whatever).
-"We need solid evidence before we can sue the company that makes Augma." Can't we just reverse engineer the Augma and find out that it's just the Nervegear but with certain functions replaced? You can wear them and still full-dive? Isn't full-diving dangerous as lectured by the professor? It can perform a radiation scan to the brain just like the Nervegear, but instead of killing you, it just extracts (and destroys your) memories. All this thinking of how it works is mindwrecking and I'm just going to call this plot technology magic.
-You expect me to believe that Kirito does a training montage, that in the course of 24 hours, will increase his physical abilities and Ordinal Scale level so that he can be on even footing with Eiji? What the fuck.
-Let's go to an idol concert, she only plays one song, then you all must do a boss raid but this time they will overpower you while the exits are locked. They're not even indestructible because they get destroyed later on! You have to fight the final boss by full-diving back into ALO just because! Earn this special weapon that one-hits anything! WHY DOES THIS NUMBER NEEDS TO REACH 10000 TO TRIGGER A THING (THAN JUST TRIGGERING IT EVERY TIME SOMEBODY GETS 0 HP'D)? WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
-Terrible use of villians.
-Eiji was the perfect foil to Kirito: a fellow SAO survivor who didn't get put down in history because he did jack in Asuna's guild so he carries around a "bible", so to speak, a reminder that he was insignificant and also as a revenge list containing the names of who he hates; in the two years between SAO and Ordinal Scale, he trained his body and grew quite a bit taller so that when he lays the smackdown, I believe he can easily overpower Kazuto in real life; he lost his only (female) friend in the game and wishes nothing but despair for everybody involved. There was potential for an ideological dialogue between the two where their values could be tested as they try to one-up each other. There was none, then he got his ass handed to him because the plot said so.
-The professor guy had a believable motivation of bringing back his deceased daughter through constructing an AI and inserting memories of her time in SAO. I mean, this would result in a totally different person but at least she'd be a bit more human. This idea was okay, until the very end of the movie when he decides to betray Eiji because he had the most memories of her. So I get that to construct her he needs memories of all the SAO survivors who ever had contact with her, and this leads to using a blanket strategy with total disregard. This is totally evil, but it turned an otherwise potentially morally gray character to just a one-dimensional black villian who, at the end of the day, needs have his plans be ruined by Kirito.
-Act 3 is ridiculous and stupid.
-So Kirito goes up to Eiji, confronts him, and smacks his ass. I have two problems with this scene: I already mentioned the stretch of disbelief with Kirito buffing himself up overnight; instead of a fistfight like what I would have done, they activate Ordinal Scale and perform a terribly choreographied swordfight. I get that this scene is happening concurrently with the idol concert upstairs, but then the backstory of the professor also gets interspersed in this fight. Yes, you should definitely talk during the fight so he knows where you are and parry your attacks! All tension is lost as the fight is resolved rather quickly. There's also this unneccessary augmentation device that gets destroyed by Kirito and lets him get the upper hand... Eiji is already an atheletic guy in real life, so why the fuck is this plot device ruining this fight for???
-The adult government enforcers are also dumb as bricks. "Let's just let Kirito handle this." Bitch no, people are trapped in the stadium and would like to be let out. Maybe the doors are soundproof or something. They even go up to the balcony and open the door with a bullet to the control panel (stupid cliche), then they can see down into the situation. They could have opened the doors on their way down to the lower floors!
-I don't have a problem with the AR ghost that led Kirito around throughout act 2, but then she shows up via deus ex machina and tells Kirito what to do in order to save the day, and he just does it without question because he trusts her just because.
-The final boss fight is not as hyped as I thought it would be. I would think it's because it is obvious that Kirito and co would defeat it, but it also feels short and unimpactful due to repetitiveness from previous fights. The boss lady herself is fun and exciting, but the way they defeat it is predictable and cheesy. Basically, they dive into ALO and everybody (whose function is to be a cameo) are able to come together and defeat it. Also to note is that the action happens too fast and everybody only has less than 2 seconds to show off. No strategy involved, just keep attacking it is over.
-I mentioned that the boss monsters are not indestructible. I would have programmed them to be and I'd get that special number 10000 to trigger my brain melt attack, but the hack weapon for some hack reason turns that flag off and I wouldn't be able to drain memories from my despairing victims. Bad logic.
Quick explanation of scores:
Animation 7 - Beautiful background art and action choregraphy, but terrible directing and cinematics for most of the runtime.
Sound 8 - Lovely OST, catchy insert songs, and I like LiSA. Good volume dynamics in certain scenes, and good sound effects work make the action passable.
Characters 3 - Kirito and Asuna's relationship was meaningful. Other than that, nothing of interest worth mentioning. Klein gets jobbed really hard.
Story 2 - Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Enjoyment 6 - Fun, fun, fun!
Overall 4 - Because MAL makes me assign numbers to categories even though they should not be weighed equally.
I don't hate this movie. It just falls apart by itself if you start thinking about it. I don't care about recommending it. I just wanted to ra- review it.
