This follow-up movie has a lot of pieces to pick up, and unfortunately, most of them fail to connect. The pacing of Scherzo is strange, marked by out-of-place jokes and emotional beats that don't receive enough buildup. Compared to the first movie, Scherzo also has less character development--Asuna went from a rising star in Aria to a static constant in Scherzo. We saw Kirito as an awkward middle schooler in Aria, which was an interesting take on the unrelatably-flawless hero of the original timeline. That extra dimension of him is now gone.
The most disappointing part of Scherzo is the lackluster animation. I thought the original SAO anime series looked great back in 2012, and Aria of a Starless Night built upon its foundation with flashier effects and punchier impacts. Scherzo, on the other hand, features a lot of inconsistent faces, off-model characters, and jittery motions. I honestly have a hard time believing the same production team worked on both SAO Progressive movies with how much worse the second one looks.
I wanted to like Scherzo of Deep Night, because I was pleasantly surprised Aria of a Starless Night. I came in with tempered expectations (it's SAO, let's be real), but I still felt let down by the noticeably many ways Scherzo fails to even come close to its predecessor. If there are any more SAO Progressive movies in the works, I hope that they take after the first movie more than the second.
