Gekijô-ban Sôdo Âto Onrain: Sword Art Online - Ôdinaru sukêru -

The concept behind SAO was genius but they squandered it worse than possibly anything I've seen from a television series before and it's quality dipped. I don't think it ever got bad but it paled in comparison to what it was within around 12 episodes.

This spinoff movie follows season 2 and tells an entirely new story and is considerably better than I expected. Due to the decline I thought this would be mediocre but I was sorely mistaken.

It tells the story of VR gamings popularity taking a dip as an AR device has become all the rage. Within the augmented reality players are able to game and battle foes in the real world but our hero Kirito simply isn't convinced. It doesn't take long before Kirito, Asuna and friends realize that someone is using the hardware for their own nefarious means.

Now the concept of AR is ludicrous, in the real world it isn't practical for anything more than catching pokemon. Anything legitimately strenuous or action packed would be a severe health hazard for the player and everyone around them. For this reason you really have to suspend belief and sadly that's not the only thing.

If you can get past the absurdities however what you'll find it a very enjoyable, well paced and visually fantastic anime movie that really delivers on near every front.

This is the SAO we need back! Good stuff.

The Good:

Not a bad story

Contributes nicely to SAO lore

Great finale

The Bad:

A tremendous amount simply makes no logical sense