If you're a SAO fan, this movie will rock your boots. As a SAO fan myself, in the sea of anime where SAO is the sandbag of all trash anime, this movie reminded me why I loved the SAO franchise as much as I did back then.
Not because it had intricate storylines and abyss-deep characters, but it was because it was really simple and easy to understand and really REALLY flashy.
Now let's get to the actual review.
Story: 7
It's simple enough for me to understand and some parts are really cliched. The main antagonist's name is literally Edgy spelled differently. Some parts could've been changed but the story was simple enough for me to understand most of it on my first watch of the movie.
Art: 9
SAO has always had good art. The style I mean. Alot of people worked together to make this movie as pretty as it is, kudos to those people. Animation was as expected, really fluid and all the action scenes were adrenaline pumping, like someone just pumped a generator in my heart. Automatically loved it.
Sound: 10
Another thing SAO really excels at is it's soundtrack. Iwanami-sensei is literally a musical god on earth, bless him with long life. The sound direction on this show is also really spot on, I kid you not.
Also, the reboot of some old themes from the Aincrad arc gave me literal goosebumps so that was the dealbreaker for me. This might be my nostalgia talking, but even for someone who thought SAO was an average show, you can't deny that the OST for this movie was absolutely gorgeous.
Character: 7
Kirito is well, Kirito. I'm glad this movie worked more about Kirito and Asuna's relationship. They're so fucking sweet together.
Sinon, Liz, Klein and Silica needed more screentime, since compared to the rest of the cast, they were kinda outed. Which is a shame really, since they're real interesting characters on their own right.
Enjoyment: 9
I want to group together everyone who worked on the action scenes of this show and give them the biggest hug since oh my god. All the action scenes were so adrenaline pumping. The romance parts and the comedy was really cute as well.
Overall: 9
A-1 took everything that was good in the Aincrad arc, blendered it and called it Ordinal Scale. This is SAO ++.
If you liked SAO, then you're going to orgasm when you see this movie.
If you didn't like SAO but still watched this movie, you're probably going to say about how generic it is and complain about how everything is so light-novel-ish and generic. Im willing to bet that there are some people whos going to give this movie a 7 (im being really generous) for that final scene. (Movie watchers, you know what i mean.)
If you didn't watch a lick of SAO, you're probably going to be really confused about that the heck is happening.
Overall, this movie reminded me why i was so obsessed with SAO 3 years ago and that worked with my overall enjoyment of this movie. This review is insanely biased since i was also a fan of SAO, but that's what reviews are right?
10/10 would watch again.
