English Dub Review: Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale

Best anime movie of the year?

There are a lot of anime franchises that would certainly do better quality wise if they were just movies. Franchises like One Piece, ACCA, and yes Sword Art Online come to mind.

In terms of Sword Art Online, this is absolutely the case in Ordinal Scale. Fans of the franchise may recall the somewhat indelicate balance between romance and drama/action, but with TV episodes you can get away with that because we have cliffhangers and drops of plot that make SURE you tune in next week. With movies, you really can’t get away with this as much, and as such, have to rely on keeping the viewers entertained for the entirety of the film

For all intents and purposes, SAO does a great job of leaving out a bunch of fluff, but you can definitely tell it was hard for them to leave all of the crappy stuff out. Cameos of food porn and the weak romantic attention that is given to Asuna and Kirito is apparent, even if the writers DID put in some interesting nuggets of closure to tie up some loose ends, the majority of the film features the good stuff that SAO is known for…a killer sci-fi adventure rife with action.

Featuring less of the hokey Knights of the Realm type shit that the VR take on SAO had in favor of a more modernized and sleek look given to us in an AR world is exactly what this franchise needs but long-time core fans shouldn’t be worried because tons of juicy tidbits from the franchise’s past are laden throughout. The boss battles are friggin’ stellar, and even if some of the premise sees some borrowing from other famous sci-fi franchises, the exciting possibilities of AR are shown through and create an exhilarating look at the possibilities that could be a real future. Concerts that require paid admission, but you have to put on an AR headset to watch, the battle between VR and AR as the dominant technology, even the levels of greed that the brass goes to in order to utilize said technology for evil, are all just examples of a future-looking mirror that should terrify us all. Think people can always tell the difference between what’s real and what’ augmented? Think again…

In terms of the voice cast, everyone is accounted for from the franchise thus far, but I can’t really think of anything that really “stood out”, which the exception perhaps being the battle between Kirito and Eiji and the constant back and forth verbal and physical assault that took place. Other than that, the good shit was really the fight scenes with character designs of the monsters looking fresher than prior iterations for some reason, coupled with the compelling sci-fi elements of the story that very well could be second-to-none in anime in terms of a well-thought-out plot. Again, the romance shit gets in the way of what could have been more time given to Kirito’s build-up through the rankings of OS, but these are really just small gripes.

Overall, Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale is a rather stellar 2.0 take on the franchise if you will that is very much welcome and provides for an enthralling sci-fi experience coupled with fight sequences on the same level of craziness as anything on TV right now. Move over Your Name, SAO: OS is the anime film you need to get on your “must-see” list.