Things aren't always as they seem.
Back when Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale first made the rounds back in 2017, it was lauded as a massive improvement over the first two seasons. Sure, SAO II received some of said treatment for the first couple of weeks and Alicization would eventually be given this reception almost wholesale, but this film is the first time it stuck. Then again, there is a subsect of viewers who consider this the worst major entry to date. Even many who praise the film's improvements won't come out and say it's good, given the franchise it's a part of.
A lot of the “improvements” seem rather basic, which does paint a damning picture of the franchise. Kirito is a consistently active protagonist this time…just like in the infamously dire Alphein arc. Klein isn't primarily treated as an absolute joke for the first time in several arcs…even though his ephebophile wannabe casanova tendencies are on full display this time. Asuna gets some active time to shine again like in Mother's Rosario…for the first 55% of the movie. The diner scenes have been phased out almost entirely…in favor of cabin exposition scenes. Kirito is finally being challenged by forces that give him a run for his money…until 1 strange 5-sec training session later, he's back to plowing through damn near everything before reaching the last two fights which do bring that back. The antagonists finally have sympathetic motivations for the first time since arguably Aincrad…except the impetus for everything and how asinine the plan is make it difficult to really care. Hell, the romance between Kirito and Asuna gets a decent amount of focus like in Mother's Rosario and the back half of Aincrad, and it even ties into the back half of the film…where the movie falls apart.
Yeah, there's this one aspect of the film that kills it so hard that a lot of what people praise it for either isn't enough to salvage it, or gets cancelled out completely. The more you learn about the plot, the stupider it gets. Each and every reveal is as dumb or dumber than the last ro the point where we're dealing with inexplicable digital ghosts, asspull functuonalities and hacks galore, and several nonsensical game mechanics like how nobody is #1 on the Ordinal Scale game's leaderboards until a certain endgame boss is defeated and how that stops a field everyone is trapped in from having enough power to microwave everyone's brains.
A lot of the major problems with the series also rear their ugly head here, too. Sure, there’s no rape or sexual assault attempt scene like in previous seasons, but there are still two big problems. Several characters in the ensemble cast don't get to do jack outside of one or two fights in the back half of a combat heavy film, with retroactive explanations around the halfway mark being given that feel tenuous at best as to why they couldn't do anything earlier. Hell, when Suguha finally gets to be relevant, the film quickly zooms in on her tits to let Yui pop out for a giant asspull...because priorities. Hey, it's still better than how the new characters are written.
Remember how in SAO II, Kirito undergoes PTSD due to a flashback to a raid that presumably took place during Aincrad even though we never knew about it or how important it was before? Ordinal Scale does that but for its antagonists, one of whom was apparently presumably one of the Knights of Blood who we never saw even as a tertiary or even background character in S1. They’re motivated by the death of someone who was apparently a really important bard who kept everyone's spirits up everywhere in Aincrad to the point where they wanna bring her back and we get to see pictures of her playing near the SAO cast. Even if it means potentially flying everyone's brains Akihiko Kayaba style.(because of course we need that old Ainxrad type "die in the game die IRL" threat back for the 3rd time), if it somehow means bringing her back to life -somehow being the operative word– then so be it. Do you see the issue with how hard they're reaching to justify such ridiculous retroactive storytelling?
Apart from the motivations being borked, the new characters are either there, annoyingly flat hate sinks, or incredibly jittery and difficult to comprehend like Yuna. Shrouding your characters in mystery and tying them to oddball circumstances only works if you can still see a throughline for their actions but mysterious digital idol Yuna is as erratic as the main antagonists are undercooked. It's a shame since there was some potential with them, and the old cast, while mismanaged, still had some cute moments and scenes where non-Kirito Aincrad characters could show off what they're made of. Even worse is that whenever Kirito does engage with these new antagonists and learn of their motivations, he doesn't bring in his similar experiences to relate to and challenge them. Just imagine how much more intense the battle between him and SAO survivor hunter Eiji would have been if he pulled the Sachi/Moonlight Black Cats guild card on a dude who only saw one girl close to him die. Just like that, the flimsy conflict is given more weight to substantiate its severe overreliance on retroactive storytelling. As it is now, it's hard to call a shitty antagonist with sympathetic motivations a serious improvement over SAO's previous antagonists which were just as shitty but weren't meant to be sympathized with for the most part.
There are some other improvements that actually do matter, those being with the visuals. For the first 2 seasons, SAO was saddled with what would later become the stock A-1 face you'd see in future projects like Aldnoah.Zero and The Asterisk War, and it was rough. This film, however, found a compromise between BUNBUN's LN art style and that of the first two seasons, giving the series a new, stronger sense of visual identity that will carry over into future seasons. Furthermore, even with the final battle being ridiculously difficult to follow, the particle effects and general animation have been boosted to match the standards expected of an anime film. The bolder colors and shading have increased as well, and while there is the occasional CG background rando, the film generally looks gorgeous, as Tomohiko Itou gets to do more in terms of presentation with more dynamic camera movements. The only uniquely terrible aspect of the visuals is when in the climax, they start using the postcard memories still frame technique multiple times in a row, and even worse, one of the frames contains the ugly CG skeleton boss from S1. Still, this film set new standards for the franchise in terms of visuals.
The same cannot be said about the music. Yuki Kajiura's work is still solid, though there aren't any new standouts barring the compositions for most of Yuna's insert songs performed by Sayaka Kanda. "Break Beat Bark!" and "delete" are the highlights, with the former being a franetic, upbeat battle song while the former is ominous in a way that falls perfectly in line with Kajiura's signature style. It's hard to even determine if there are any new BGM tracks without looking them up, however, given that they don't stand out compared to some of S1 and II's best pieces. Worse yet, the ED, "Catch the Moment", is one of LiSA's blandest anisongs to date, making it a far cry from any of her previous songs for the series.
Is this what every SAO entry will be from now on? One step forward, one stumble back into a sprained ankle? It’s been like this since SAO II back in 2014. Every improvement this film offers is either littered with asterisks or counterbalanced entirely by poor writing. The film is perhaps the most entertaining entry so far, barring the Mother's Rosario arc, but that's partially thanks to the final act being a top to bottom trainwreck that's up there with the stupidest moments from the first 3 arcs that make up SAO 1 and half of SAO II. Alas, this anime-only entry is yet another dud in a series that struggles to reach decency or even mediocrity most of the time, close as it came. It's been 5 years since Ordinal Scale combined Google Glasses and Pokemon Go, and while Alicization is widely heralded as the best arc, will that even hold up after this film didn’t, and is it even worth it anymore?
