Where Does Sword Art Online Ordinal Scale Fit Into the Series
April xv, 2017 · 0 comments
By Andrew Osmond.
In the summer of the post-obit year, anyone in a large Tokyo park like Ueno or Yoyogi would accept witnessed huge crowds of people, mostly but not exclusively youngsters, flocking from one spot to another… all looking intently at their mobile phones. They weren't on an evening stroll. No, they were competing to grab "virtual" creatures overlaid past commercial networks across not just Tokyo merely through many countries round the planet. In New York, for example, massive crowds stampeded to Central Park in search of something called a Vaporeon.
The Pokemon Go craze is so last year, merely Ordinal Scale brilliantly predicts and supersedes it. Sword Art Online fans know the earlier adventures in the series took place in immersive virtual worlds, which you "visited" through games rewiring your senses, feeding you sight, sound and other sensations. You could cross a country while fighting a hundred epic battles, but your concrete body always stayed in ane place. Ordinal Scale changes that.
The new technology is not virtual reality merely augmented reality, AR. Like Pokemon Get, it opens up gameplay beyond your bedroom or your morning commute; to play AR games, you must go to real places to find monsters. But unlike Pokemon Become, the monsters aren't cute animations on your mobile screen. Instead you activate your "Augma" device, which resembles a headband, and the world transforms into a wondrous landscape – with monsters to fight, of course. "Ordinal Calibration" is the proper name of the leading AR game; its name comes from how information technology ranks all players, with the seductive promise that y'all could be Number One…
Like the game, the film puts imaginary characters into real places. The characters are, of course, our old friends from Sword Fine art Online, topped by Kirito and Asuna, who are very much at the film's middle. Similar any proficient spinoff, though, Ordinal Scale finds room for very many of the supporting cast. So expect to run into Lisbeth, Silica, Klein, Sinon and Agil… and don't forget Kirito and Asuna's "daughter" Yui, and Kirito's feisty kendo-evangelising "sister" Leafa, and many more besides. There are new characters as well. Ane of the almost prominent is Ai Yuna, a virtual pop-idol singer with shades of Hatsune Miku (or, if you lot're old-school, Sharon Apple in Macross Plus).
Ordinal Calibration, we should specify, is set in 2026, four years afterwards the start of the original Sword Art Online, and chronologically afterwards the end of Sword Art Online Two. However, the picture show has extensive call-backs to the franchise'due south first arc, the "Aincrad" storyline. That's the 1 where thousands of players were trapped in a deadly virtual game, and when Kirito and Asuna met and formed a relationship – a time of both trauma and joy for them.
This nostalgic tone should resonate with the fanbase. The movie is released viii years afterward the Aincrad story was offset published in Nippon in book grade. Admittedly, the arc isn't really over yet. Franchise creator Reki Kawahara is nonetheless working on Sword Art Online: Progressive, a multivolume retelling of the Aincrad adventures in lite novel and manga forms. Yet it can't erase time'due south passing, and Ordinal Scale acknowledges that the SAO heroes are older now, looking back.
The film as well has an amusing subplot near the way that the "Augmented Reality" tech is outmoding the VR game-worlds that Kirito and some other SAO characters prefer. It's a witty comment on the acceleration of technical obsolescence, and of nostalgia besides; these days, fifty-fifty nostalgia ain't what information technology used to exist. Gaming may exist the medium where this sped-upwards trend is well-nigh acute. There are whole magazines devoted to onetime games; Disney paid the same tribute in Wreck-Information technology Ralph; and anyone who tried to buy the Nintendo Classic Mini on its release volition know the power of retro techno.
At the same times, Ordinal Scale gives the assurance of continuity. The moving-picture show keeps the main credits from the Idiot box anime: director Tomohiko Ito, graphic symbol designer Shingo Adachi and musician Yuki Kajiura are all back, along with the Japanese vocalization-cast. And nosotros can say that the final dazzling loftier-speed boxing has stuff – loads of stuff – to brand any SAO fan very pleased indeed.
Ito is co-credited with Ordinal Scale's scenario together with Kawahara himself. The presence of the "god" of the SAO franchise establishes this is no mere spinoff, only a approved improver to the story. And for those of you wondering if in that location's something tucked after the motion picture'due south last end-credits, something that gives possible clues to the next phase of the franchise… We can confirm that, yes, there is.
Andrew Osmond is the writer of 100 Animated Characteristic Films. Sword Fine art Online: Ordinal Scale is released in UK cinemas on 19th April. Book tickets at saothemovie.co.uk
Source: https://blog.alltheanime.com/sword-art-online-ordinal-scale/