Underworld- Sword Art Online: Alicization First Episode Review, Future Directions, and Brief Parallels Between Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya and John Patrick “Jack” Ryan

“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?” —Morpheus, The Matrix

Kirito is recruited to test the development of a new technology known as the Soul Translator (STR) system, an interface that directly interacts with the neurological impulses within the brain to create a dream-like sequence. In his time using the device, Kirito befriends Alice in a fantasy world, but after venturing out of bounds after their search for ice takes them into a deep cave, Alice is taken away for execution. Meanwhile, Sinon asks Kirito to help her with another Bullet of Bullets Tournament in Gun Gale Online, after they confront a team whose modus operandi is killing other players. While he listens to Sinon’s request, Kirito reveals to Asuna he’s been working on an experimental new full-dive system several orders of magnitude more sophisticated than any previous technology. He later expresses to Asuna a desire to go overseas to study North American technologies, and encounters Jonny Black, the remaining Death Gun member who was never apprehended. Despite his attempts to fend off Black, Kirito is stabbed with an injector containing succinylcholine. Thus, Sword Art Online‘s third season, Alicization for brevity, has begun: unusual in its opening, and unusual for having four cours’ worth of episodes, Alicization is the next great journey for the Sword Art Online franchise. Out of the gates, Alicization wastes no time in setting up the new environment and new stakes. I’ve long regarded Sword Art Online with a mixture of engagement and disappointment: on one hand, the character development is lacking and outrageous, but on the other hand, world-building and storytelling are solid. Having followed Sword Art Online since its first season, some interesting patterns are also beginning to emerge from this series, especially with respect to Kirito, a bit of a controversial character at the centre of virtually all discussions on Sword Art Online.

Originally a Sword Art Online beta participant, Kirito became known for his past experience after the SAO incident began, and sought constantly to prove himself. Kirito’s singular determination and persistence, in conjunction with a deep-seated desire to help those around him and prevent deaths where he could help it, eventually led him to defeat Sword Art Online’s lead developer and creator. With his involvement, the Japanese government begin involving him in solving a variety of crimes surrounding the VR technology. Through Kirito’s adventures, his uncanny ability to amass female companions and develop limit-breaking skills from raw emotions have made him somewhat of a dull character; many count Kirito to be a clueless young man who stumbled into incredible fortune, as Tom Clancy might put it. Infallible, firmly determined to do what is right and look out for those around him, Kirito does indeed resemble Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, the central character to Clancy’s early novels. Born in Baltimore, Ryan majored in economics and minored in history before joining the Marines, where he was injured in a helicopter crash. Leaving the Marines, Ryan becomes a stockbroker and makes several million on Wall Street before enrolling in a PhD. While in England, Ryan saves the Royal Family from a terrorist attack and is knighted. His abilities lead him to become a consultant for the CIA, and Admiral James Greer, noticing Ryan’s accomplishments, offer him a position at the CIA. Ryan is promoted and later, Ryan reluctantly accepts the post of Vice-President. When a plane crash caused by a Japanese airline pilot kills most of the administration, Ryan is made the President of the United States. Clancy originally created Ryan as an every-man, and from an external perspective, it is true that Ryan stumbles into incredible fortune. Like Reki Kawahara’s Kirito, Ryan is competent, but is otherwise an ordinary man dedicated to doing what’s right. Circumstances come, time and time again, that force both Kirito and Ryan to step their game up. Rising to the occasion each time, both become well-known in their own worlds, with Ryan taking on the presidency twice, and Kirito becoming regarded as an asset in the controversies surrounding VR technology. Clancy uses Ryan to voice his own opinions on the political landscape, creating a character whose position of power allows Clancy to, in effect, write out his thoughts on what a government should do. Kawahara likely wrote Kirito with a similar idea in mind, that as Kirito continued progressing, his experiences would similarly make him suitable for providing a means for Kawahara to express his thoughts on where VR technologies are moving, and their subsequent impact on society.

Screenshots and Commentary

• Sword Art Online was wreathed in controversy from the day it began, and was polarising the day it began. At the start of Alicization (IPA aˈliˈzāSH(ə)n rather than aˈliˈkāSH(ə)n as I originally imagined), however, Kirito’s traits are nowhere to be seen. Curious and and somewhat chivalrous, Kirito appears to behave as any child would, working on his assignments, messing around with Eugeo and enjoying Alice’s baking.

• While trying to seek out ice to keep their food from spoiling, the turn of events change their world forever. The great advantage of Sword Art Online is that there is opportunity to depict a variety of settings, and with A-1 Pictures driving the show, audiences are treated to visually pleasing environments and animation. Compared to 3Hz’s presentation of Alternative, A-1’s world is brighter, more crisply animated and more immersive.

• If and when I am asked about Sword Art Online, I’ll say that if Sword Art Online aside from Kirito’s unparalleled tendency to become involved in outrageous situations and implausible backstories for characters, then the series otherwise did a reasonable job of create a compelling environment to explore the prevalence of virtual technologies and the impact on social sub-systems in a society.

• Now that I understand why Kirito is written in this manner, and see his similarities to Jack Ryan, my antipathy for Kirito diminishes slightly. At the end of the day, I think maturity is the deciding factor here: Kirito was originally immature and prone to moping around, while Jack Ryan’s sense of duty means that he will enter situations that he may not agree with and still do what is right. Consequently, if I were to offer a suggestion into Sword Art Online, it would have been to make Kirito a ways older, as a university student, and then have him meet male and female gamers along the way. Similarly, I could come around if Kirito’s decisions in Alicization are consistently more rational and mature, more befitting those of a man than a boy.

• The world inside the STR is said to be many orders of magnitude more sophisticated than anything seen previously, and a bit of digging around finds that this system directly interfaces with the neurons of the brain to create dream-like experiences. Reading the summaries in writing makes it difficult to appreciate what is going on, and whatever other faults there might be in Sword Art Online, A-1’s execution means that these stories become much more approachable.

• Alicization has number of references to Lewis Carrol’s “Alice in Wonderland”. Written in 1865, the story’s nonsensical premise and use of logic makes it a popular work to allude to in both software and science fiction. Originally intended to be a parody of Victorian culture, the story has since been used to represent flights of fancy. I’ve never read the story in full for myself, and so, will not likely fully appreciate all of the references made to it, but some are common enough so that it’s clear when something is being said in allusion to “Alice in Wonderland”.

• When Alice’s accidental contact with the Dark World is discovered, she is arrested and set to be executed. Lacking any of his abilities elsewhere, Kirito is powerless to stop the knight from taking off. Like any nightmare, Kirito soon wakes up shortly after, only with tears in his eyes and very little memory of what’s happened. Sword Art Online is set in 2022, and by the events of Alicization, it is 2027; originally airing in 2012, I wondered if the resurgence in consumer-grade VR technologies would begin with the Oculus Rift.

• While we’ve made considerable strides in GPUs and power supplies, technical limitations still limit VR from being as robust as they are in Sword Art Online. Convenience is still the main issue, given that the need to set up motion sensors, connective cables and necessity of having a powerful desktop to render the images in 3D make VR setups one that require considerable expense and space. It is unlikely that real-world VR will reach the same prevalence as seen in Sword Art Online by 2022, but I hesitate to say “never reach that point” because technology is always marching ahead, and some things once thought to be impossible, such as virtual assistants, are now becoming increasingly commonplace.

• Folks complaining about customisation in things like Battlefield V should probably hold their tongues: the customisation seen in GGO is far beyond anything DICE is likely to implement into Battlefield games, and in such games, it is most fair to implement a system where armour and protection in gear be inversely proportional with movement speed and agility. Simply put, players wearing Sinon’s loadout would be quite fast, but at the expense of durability.

• Liz’s in-game appearance resembles that of Sakura Quest‘s Yoshino Koharu, but beyond their outward characteristics, are completely different. Liz is voiced by Ayahi Takagaki, whereas Yoshino is voiced by Ayaka Nanase. She uses a Mossberg shotgun here against their unknown assailants, and admittedly, her choice of customisations is rather more appropriate than that of Sinon’s.

• Silica mans the mounted machine gun here and lays down suppressive fire. It’s been a while since the likes of GGO has graced this blog, and unlike Alternative‘s Squad Jam, Bullet of Bullets (itself named after “King of Kings”) has a different rule set. Battle royale was the focus of Sword Art Online II‘s first half, and in reality, the basis for the battle royale shooter was inspired by the DayZ mod for Arma II. In 2013, Brendan Greene subsequently took this concept and further modified it in his own DayZ mod, drawing inspiration from Battle Royale, a Japanese film.

• Since then, the concept had widely taken off: proponents cite the excitement and unknown as the biggest thrill of this genre, while folks like me, lacking patience, would prefer more traditional shooters. With battle royale games becoming increasingly commonplace, giants like Activision and DICE have taken notice: Black Ops IV and Battlefield V have their own battle royale modes.

• To make it clear, I’m not in the camp that hates the mere concept of Sword Art Online, nor am I in the camp that believes Sword Art Online to be flawless and incomparable. Instead, I see the series as a reasonably entertaining one, with its strengths and weaknesses. Of late, word has reached my ear that folks are taking Alicization as a chance to drive up their own visibility: apparently, hating on this series is what’s trendy right now. Both aware of the flaws in this series and of what it does well, my assessment of Alicization will be determined by the enjoyability factor. I can enjoy and recommend this series even if there are things I did not like, for instance.

• Sinon attempts to recruit Kirito to help her in the next Bullet of Bullets, which he accepts. One aspect of Sword Art Online that I found completely unnecessary were the implausible stories some characters had. Sinon is an example of this: having picked up a pistol and killed a bank robber as a child, she developed a fear for handguns. When GGO was introduced, she played the game with the aim of overcoming her fear. Having Sinon play the hero was strictly unnecessary: had she witnessed a firearm go off in her childhood, the effects would have been similar to drive the story forwards without need for this additional drama.

• If Kirito is Jack Ryan, then it makes sense to see Asuna as Caroline “Cathy” Muller-Ryan, Ryan’s wife. Both Cathy and Asuna are sensible, smart and concerned whenever their respective partner puts himself in the path of danger while on duty. Asuna worries about Kirito’s health, and Cathy grows suspicious, before concerned, after Ryan reveals that he’s doing fieldwork for the CIA. I’m certain that had the technology existed in reality, Cathy would likely track Ryan’s health the same way Asuna does for Kirito.

• Kirito explains the concept behind the STR system to Asuna and Sinon here, stating that photons inside the microtubules of the body carry the soul. This is a reference to the orchestrated objective reduction theory, which supposes that the quantum vibrations in microtubules are somehow responsible for consciousness. While I appreciate that Alicization is science fiction, this is wrong: microtubules are part of the cytoskeleton, participating in maintaining cell shape and transportation by providing a pathway for motor proteins traverse. Thanks to dynamic instability, the tubulin monomers that make up microtubules can assemble and disassemble rapidly in response to conditions within the cell: dynamic instability and other cellular conditions would make microtubules ill-suited for storing information; by Kirito’s account, if we held this to be true, every time the microtubule disassembled, the photons would escape, causing information loss.

• We’re at the end of the Thanksgiving Long Weekend, a time to mostly relax and capitalise on the pleasant weather. After a month of non-stop cloud cover, things have finally cleared up, giving rise to the beautiful autumn skies I know the area for. The trees did not yellow quite as nicely this year on account of the unpleasant weather: most of the leaves are still green or else went straight to brown, but otherwise, it was very pleasant. Weather or no, however, Thanksgiving dinner was as pleasant as always: after an afternoon of cooking, things were ready to be enjoyed. Besides turkey, we also had ham, cheese prawns and mashed potatoes of a home-made recipe. As well, the turkey turned out well: by cooking the it with brine and adding carrots, onions and parsley to the interior, the cooking forces moisture into the turkey.

• Kirito expresses a desire to study VR over in the United States: the US is indeed the forefront of VR technology at present, and is also home to some of the world’s most advanced software and hardware groups. Asuna supports his decision and resolves to be by his side: at this point in Sword Art Online, I’m glad that it is established that Kirito and Asuna are meant to be together, and once the love tesseract plaguing Sword Art Online was solved, the series could finally explore more interesting ground. Of everyone, Asuna is the most similar to Cathy Ryan, so I figure that she’s the most suitable to be with Kirito.

• Kirito and Asuna run into Johnny Black, a member of Laughing Coffin who would later develop an addiction to murder and participated in the Death Gun incident. When Kirito confronts him, Black stabs Kirito with succinylcholine: in Tom Clancy’s The Teeth of the Tiger and Dead or Alive, the Campus employs it as an agent to dispose of enemies. Clancy and other fiction writers characterise it as the ideal murder weapon: it acts quickly, relaxing muscles to the point of shutting down the heart and starving the brain of oxygen. Furthermore, succinylcholine metabolises into succinic acid, amongst other things, which is not something routinely looked for unless one was suspecting a murder with this compound.

• In his fight with Black, Kirito is hit with a lethal dose: unless he is put on a respirator, the next few minutes for him will be living hell, as the Emir in Dead or Alive discovers. Eventually, the Campus uses other methods beyond what they colloquially refer to as poison pens: by the events of Locked On, the drug is not utilised, and Clark only uses it for a hit on a Libyan terrorist cell in Threat Vector. This is a potent way to begin Alicization, and from what little I know of this arc, Kirito will be sent back into the STR system, where he will continue to unravel the mystery of Alice and her fate. A year’s worth of Alicization is on the table, and with so many unknowns on the table, I think the best course of action will be to sit down and simply enjoy the ride.

With this in mind, Kirito’s portrayal, as a character who stumbles into incredible fortune, has a justification from a narrative perspective; Kirito’s role in the anime becomes more relevant, providing viewers an idea of what Kawahara thinks of VR. One episode into Alicization, and the traits that define Kirito of older episodes is absent: he is more weary, more reserved and contemplative, even if he does still allow his emotions to get the better of him. His characterisation in the anime has improved over time, signifying a gradual maturity. Of course, at this point, it is still early into Alicization, so it remains to be seen as to whether or not some of the weaker aspects of Kirito’s character make a return, or if his experiences continue to shape his decisions in a rational manner. Over the next year, I imagine there will be plenty to cover and discuss. Because of the scale Alicization, however, I will not be blogging about this series with my usual frequency: Sword Art Online‘s strength is exploring details, and the big-picture materials I tend to cover usually require several episodes before there is something significant to say. Further to this, blogging with a high frequency about any series is a bit of a challenge on my end, so I would prefer not to burn out writing about Sword Art Online. Having said this, I will be watching the series and will return to offer feedback after certain milestones in this series. It would make sense, for example, to write about Alicization once the halfway point is reached, and once the finale has aired. With a year ahead, this is looking to be an interesting series, and while I might not be writing about it half as much as half of my readers might like, folks looking to pick my mind about Alicization are always free to do so here, or on Twitter, should they so choose.

Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale- On The Portrayal of Augmented Reality in Popular Fiction and a Movie Review

“A significant portion of the population… will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day.” –Tim Cook

The recent surge of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies has come about as a consequence of increasingly efficient graphics hardware and portable display devices; my graduate thesis demonstrated the flexibility of my eukaryotic cell simulations in being able to run on platforms as diverse as the Oculus Rift headset and Cave Augmented Virtual Environment (CAVE), both of which offered a unique environment in which to explore a virtual cell. My models were later adapted to run on Microsoft’s HoloLens, an augmented reality platform. Compared to virtual reality, which immerses users in a virtual space, augmented reality projects virtual elements into real space. In my thesis, I concluded that these visualisation technologies would be powerful tools for education, making what was once possibly only in science fiction one step closer to reality. With this being said, these developments remain very much in the experimental stage at present, but in the realm of fiction, technological advancement is much greater in order to facilitate the narrative. Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale is one such work of fiction – a film that premièred in February this year, it follows Kirito and Asuna as they investigate a mysterious phenomenon of memory loss amongst players when they begin encountering SAO bosses in Ordinal Scale, which has seen a rise in popularity after multiple incidents involving VR technologies. It turns out that Tetsuhiro Shigemura, the Augma’s developer, implemented the system in order to collect players for memories related to his late daughter, who lost her life in SAO years previously. Intending to make use of machine learning techniques, Shigemura aims to resurrect his daughter as an AI construct.

Like its predecessors before it, Ordinal Scale‘s strengths lie within its depiction of how a technology might be used within a society: depictions of how ordinary users are drawn to game events in Ordinal Scale mirror phenomenon seen with last year’s Pokémon Go fad, and subtle elements, such as playing AR games and collecting points that can be redeemed for real-world rewards lie within the realm of reality, showing the technology as being one that is quite familiar despite the novel modes of interaction and presentation. Ordinal Scale thus suggests that technologies capable of great popularity and amassing large numbers of users can potentially be harmful for these users if their developers have a malicious or misguided intent – Shigemura had meant for his technology to resurrect his daughter’s consciousness digitally by mining data from the userbase’s collective memories even if it meant killing the users. While not quite as dramatic in reality, programs with a large user count invariably will produce a great quantity of data relating to the user’s habits. The risk that this information can similarly be abused is non-trivial; it gives a great deal of insight as to our interests, intents and desires, and in the present age, it is not surprising that our data can be considered of greater importance than the hardware storing the data. As such, Ordinal Scale illustrates of the risks associated with an increasingly connected world and (albeit in a fanciful manner) what ends large organisations might have for data they collect from their users.

Screenshots and Commentary

• The storyline in Ordinal Scale ends up being something that I felt that I would enjoy more so than the light novel’s Alicization arc; whereas Alicization would have been more or less the same thing in Sword Art Online, really being just a high-stakes version where Kirito is poisoned, the Augma and AR in Ordinal Scale is novel, reflective of the public interest in AR to keep up with current trends. For this review, I will feature thirty screenshots.

• One aspect about Ordinal Scale that I enjoyed was the fact that AR was so interwoven into social interactions; things such as customer loyalty programmes take advantage of the Ordinal Scale to encourage and reward interaction with their services. Kirito is less-than-enthusiastic about AR at the film’s beginning, feeling that immersion into a completely virtual space is more effective than enhancing real spaces digitally. For clarity’s sake, Ordinal Scale in italics refers to the film itself, while Ordinal Scale in standard formatting refers to the game.

• Yuuna is presented as an AI construct in the Augma, arriving on battlefields to cheer on participants and perform. While seemingly sophisticated to the point where she is said to be able to pass the Turing Test, I remark that mimicking human behaviours is actually not too far off, especially with the pace that machine learning is advancing. Chat bots using machine learning can simulate surprisingly real conversations, and sentiment analysis algorithms can allow these bots to now respond appropriately based on what a human user is typing in. Coupled with advances in voice recognition and generation, personal digital assistants like Siri and Cortana could begin rivaling Yuuna in complexity within the next ten years.

• One of the reasons why Kirito is not fond of AR is that for all of his capabilities in virtual spaces, his physicality in the real world is low, and in this battle, his performance is not quite what he is expecting owing to the fact that swinging a weapon around for long periods requires great stamina. While I lift weights, run and do martial arts, it seems that I’ve somewhat pigeon-holed myself for short bursts of power rather than longer endurance events, making me less effective in an AR combat game: bench pressing 120 percent body weight isn’t quite the same as what amounts to running around on a soccer field for half an hour.

• During the first battle, a mysterious player ranked number two arrives and provides enough assistance to help Asuna eliminate the event boss. This player is Eiji, who works on behalf of Tetsuhiro, and as a SAO player, he regrets not being able to save Yuuna, hence his involvement with the project. His presence in the film is one of its weaker points, being spurred on only by his sense of regret and a personality that certainly won’t lead audiences to symapthise with his motivations. Formerly a member of Blood Oath, Eiji has also sought out other SAO players and enjoys harming them out of a desire to remind players that AR and VR are quite separate.

• One aspect of Sword Art Online that the critics have frequently discussed is Kirito’s nigh-invulnerability in games and uncommonly quick learning in reality, which leads him to be an asset for government officials looking to investigate the different incidents surrounding AR and VR games. Kirito is a highly competent character with limited flaws; he is similar to Jack Ryan Senior in Tom Clancy’s novels. Tom Clancy further shares strong female partner for the protagonist with Sword Art Online (Cathy Ryan in Tom Clancy novels, and Asuna in Sword Art Online), and Tom Clancy avoids the trap of such hyper-competent protagonists by shifting focus in the narrative to other characters, such as John Clark.

• Sword Art Online is at its strongest when focus switches between Kirito and the other characters, especially Asuna, whose role and experiences are worth depicting. In a series where the focus is on contemporary technology and their impact on society, I’m actually a little surprised that the only discussions out there about the movie are on this particular frame, specifically how the BD edition has certain advantages over the theatrical releases in that they show Asuna’s Papilla mammaria.

• Kirito runs into a Yuuna look-alike here, who points him in a direction of interest. With the previous screenshot in mind, I admittedly would prefer folks discuss those elements than attempt their hand at talking about neural networks, a topic that is sufficiently complex that in order for me to adequately write about it, I would likely need to return to university and do a PhD on the topic. One element about some parts of the anime community I’ve never been too fond of is that some discussions fixate on technical details, and the lack of talk on artificial neural networks in discussions surrounding Ordinal Scale suggests that folks who affectedly display their technical knowledge have limits.

• I bet that an anime fan admitting that they don’t know something at Tango-victor-tango would be a foreign concept. With this in mind, I have sat through some lectures on artificial neural networks (ANN), and while I have no background with the implementation, I can say that ANN are made up of what are conceptually called layers. Information from the input are passed to these layers, and if a particular score is reached, the information is passed to the next layer, similar to how stimuli propagate in biological neurons. Information that reaches the end is subsequently classified. Back in Ordinal Scale, Yuuna and Eiji share a moment in a virtual version of what one of our readers has identified to be the Fairmont Hot Springs in British Columbia.

• ANN are highly useful for classification functions, and with Tetsuhiro’s goal being the acquisition of memories pertaining to Yuuna from a vast data set, it is appropriate to use ANN for finding these memories and using them to re-create Yuuna’s personality digitally. Ordinal Scale only refers to this as deep learning, of which ANN are one particular approach; the movie wisely chooses to be very general with its descriptions, so it doesn’t misrepresent machine learning as a whole. While waiting for an event to start, Silica grows irritated with Lizbeth and elbows her, causing a minor loss of health.

• The visual effects in Ordinal Scale are absolutely stunning: like the preceding installments of Sword Art Online, the film is produced by A-1 pictures and is afforded exceptional quality in both artwork and animation. While real-world locations and AR UI elements are fantastic, the film really shines whenever Augma events begin. The reappearance of SAO bosses is described as significant, and during this battle, Asuna is defeated in combat and loses her memories of SAO in the process.

• Ordinal Scale‘s soundtrack is composed by Yuki Kajiura; I know her best for composing Puella Magi Madoka Magica‘s soundtrack, and a closer listen of her compositions find that they share motifs and aural elements. In her best pieces, Kajiuramakes extensive use of choral elements in her songs to create a cold, distant sound that conveys a sense of mystique about a setting or disconnect that characters experience from those around them. Yuuna’s songs are particularly well-written, sounding like vocal versions of Kajiura’s instrumental pieces.

• The realm of neurological sciences is well outside my discipline, although I can say with reasonable confidence that the technology to artificially manipulate or alter our memories is not an impossibility. Recent studies have found that external information can affect neuron connections and modify how we recall an event, while straight-up suppression or erasing of memories has been somewhat successful in highly controlled experimental settings. We are nowhere near having the medical knowledge or technological implements to selectively remove all memories related to one particular element, however.

• Kirito is devastated when Asuna loses her SAO memories, and after deducing that SAO events are somehow related to Asuna’s memory loss, he posts warnings onto forums, asking other players to stay away from SAO bosses. His findings are met with skepticism, and Kirito turns to his old standby of levelling up far enough to investigate what’s going on. He runs into Sinon, who agrees to help him out. Sinon had one of the best stories in Sword Art Online and is also quick to accept Kirito’s relationship with Asuna.

• The ghostly form of Yuuna appears once again, prompting Kirito to chase down this apparition and ask for answers – the apparition clarifies the location that Kirito is to visit. One of the remarks I have about this review is that I was not inclined to include too many moments with Eiji. He befriended Yuuna in SAO and regrets not being strong enough to save her from death; his motivations have the same depth as that of a puddle formed from a light rainfall, and his enjoyment of causing physical harm to other participants in is petty revenge for having felt so powerless in SAO.

• When Kirito asks Yui to map out the location the ghostly Yuuna presents, he brings up a map worthy of Tom Clancy’s The Division, a game whose UI is highly unique, being modelled after AR elements. It’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed the beta to the extent that I did, and after the beta, I decided that the game would be worth playing if there was enough to do from a single-player perspective, without the need to party up with other players. After the game’s release, the amount of content for solo players, coupled with the price tag, dissuaded me from buying it. However, it’s seen a ten dollar drop in price now, and records indicate that it will go for 28 CAD during a Steam Sale.

• Kirito’s meeting with Tetsuhiro proves unfruitful; Tetsuhiro refuses to answer any questions about the Augma, and only allows Kirito to know that his daughter died in SAO. Kirito later visits Asuna and promises to retrieve her memories. Ever since the second season, Sword Art Online made it clear that Kirito and Asuna are meant to be, and the other girls amongst Kirito’s group of friends have accepted this. Once this particular aspect was established, Sword Art Online was free to pursue more worthwhile stories, and Ordinal Scale is illustrating just how much there is that can be explored once Sword Art Online dispensed with the whole love tesseract concept.

• Yuuna is voiced by Sayaka Kanda, an actress and singer whose roles in live action films far outnumber her appearances in animated film. Eiji is voiced by Yoshio Inoue. There is a pronounced difference in the Yuuna that performs during events and the one that Eiji speaks with, compared to the Yuuna that appears in front of Kirito when he’s investigating the mystery behind Ordinal Scale. In a one-on-one duel against Eiji later on, Kirito learns the truth behind Eiji’s role in things and Tetsuhiro’s intents. While initially outmatched by Eiji’s superior physicality, Kirito notices a power supply on Eiji’s collar. He disables it and manages to overpower Eiji, suggesting that Eiji’s martial arts capability was only possible because he was hooked up to a powered exoskeleton.

• I found that the idea of the drones generating enough energy to fry the human brain and kill individuals being scanned was tacked on to the film in an attempt to elevate the stakes for Kirito to overcome – having spent most of the film reinforcing the notion that the Augma was orders of magnitude safer than any VR hardware, this revelation comes out of the blue. While perhaps necessary to convey a sense of urgency, it would have been more effective to suggest that the scanning technology involved energy levels sufficient to damage the brain much earlier on, such as when Asuna lost her memories of SAO. Knowledge of this threat would therefore lead audiences to appreciate what Kirito stands to lose if he should fail in advance of his fight with Eiji.

• With Eiji neutralised, Kirito rejoins the others as they engage hordes of SAO monsters. In order to stop the data transfer, Kirito is returned into the virtual reality environment and with his friends, prepare to do battle with SAO’s ultimate boss, which never made it into the original game. Despite being outmatched initially, Yui accesses Kirito and company’s old save files, allowing them to fight on even footing with the boss.

• Ordinal Scale could not count itself as an instalment in Sword Art Online without the main cast returning to their SAO gear for at least one battle in Aincrad. One of my friends wondered, in his words, “how a franchise about internet fighting can go on so long”; Sword Art Online‘s popularity is often attributed to likeable characters and emotional impact, but I personally found these aspects to be passable. For me, technical excellence and social relevance ends up being the reasons why I continue to watch this anime: while the characters are not particularly noteworthy, the world they inhabit and the aural-visual strengths make this a series that I enjoy.

• While all of the battles in Ordinal Scale were exceptionally well-choreographed and written, the final battle exceeds even those. Unrestricted by the physical laws of the real world, each of the characters have their moment in the limelight as they help defeat the new devilry that is the boss to the 100th floor. One would imagine that by the events of Sword Art Online, each of SAO, ALO and GGO use the same game engine, backend and share assets if players can freely import their profiles from one game into another.

• In the years since Sword Art Online became popular, technologies such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have arrived on the market, bringing us one step closer to the immersion seen in Sword Art Online; during my attendance of the 2016 Laval Virtual Conference last year, attendees mentioned this fact, although we agreed that the biggest factor that presently precludes widespread adoption of VR headsets is the fact that they still remain quite cumbersome to set up and wield: when I tried the HTC Vive, it took another individual to help me gear up.

• There’s also a cost factor – the HTC Vive costs 600 USD, but having a PC powerful enough to provide a satisfactory experience is also necessary. By comparison, conventional gaming is much more affordable and convenient: playing Battlefield 1 and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus entails turning on a computer and double-clicking on the play button. Sword Art Online is able to have widespread VR adoption precisely because the headsets are more convenient to use.

• While I’m not one to play that particular game, if and when I’m asked, Suguha/Leafa is my favourite character of the Sword Art Online franchise; she’s strong-willed and driven despite her internal challenges, and moreover, is able to eventually accept Kirito and Asuna’s relationship. While her story in Sword Art Online‘s ALO narrative is counted as the weakest, there’s an appeal about Suguha’s character that sets her apart from the other characters, and her design ultimately is why I managed to finish the ALO arc.

• While a solid film, Ordinal Scale is not for all viewers: folks will need to have seen the first and second seasons in order to understand all of the mechanics and characters: Yuuki makes a short return during the final boss fight to boost Asuna’s attack power. A member of the Sleeping Knights, Yuuki was a bed-ridden patient with HIV; she befriended Asuna in Mother’s Rosario, one of Sword Art Online‘s best arcs, and passed away peacefully.

• Apparently, Kirito’s fondness for swords is a callback to author Reki Kawahara’s own fondness for Halo‘s energy sword; he cites it as being the best weapon in Halo, but I disagree – the M6D pistol, BR-55 Battle Rifle and M329 DMR are the best weapons on account of their versatility. While the energy sword is exceptionally powerful, it is useless at longer ranges. Conversely, the weapons I prefer, the MLG weapons, are useful at all ranges. One of the aspects I’ve not included in this Sword Art Online talk, or any previous talks, are frames where Kirito’s facial features distort as he moves in for a killing blow. I’ve never been too fond of these moments where Kirito appears inhuman.

• Kirito et al. ultimately succeed in defeating the floor boss and share a conversation with Yuuna, who cancels execution of Tetsuhiro’s program and restores the attendees’ lost SAO memories, including those of Asuna’s. Tetsuhiro is taken in for questioning, and is later recruited by government officials to work on another programme, which will likely form the basis for Alicization. Given the success of Sword Art Online, I imagine that this arc will see an animated form at some point in the future, and with the series continuing, there is certainly not a shortage of materials to adapt.

• I’m unlikely to ever pick up the Sword Art Online light novels: the writing style in most light novels has never been to my liking because of the limitations of a first person narrative, which precludes insights into other characters’ minds and perspectives. As readers are limited to what the protagonist can see, and their own thoughts, authors must rely on what the protagonist perceives in order to depict the world around them. In the case of light novels, constraints with translating metaphors and other narrative devices into English mean that characters like The Melancholy of Suzumiya‘s Kyon come across as being unnecessarily pedantic, or else, like Kirito, describe things in very a roundabout fashion.

• I admit that I’ve been spoiled by the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien and Tom Clancy as far as fiction goes, so while I won’t enjoy light novels, I won’t hold it against folks who do enjoy them. Asuna and Kirito share in a meteor shower as per Kirito’s promise in the film’s final moments. This also brings my take on Ordinal Scale to an end, and overall, I must admit that my initial expectations for the film were not particularly great, but after seeing the film in full, I did enjoy it. With this post over, I’m not too sure what November’s schedule looks like, save the fact that I will definitely be writing about Yūki Yūna is a Hero: Hero Chapter once that lands on November 17.

From a narrative perspective, Ordinal Scale inherits all of the strengths and weaknesses of Sword Art Online; Kirito’s improbable ability to uncover what investigative groups could not and his uncommon talent for overcoming almost any challenge by means of brute force come into play within Ordinal Scale. There’s no point in the film where he is presented as vulnerable, giving audiences no suspense in wondering if Kirito will figure out a clever solution to his situation and no sense of elation when such a moment does occur. Similarly, villains with exceptionally thin motivations also dominate the film – while one sympathises with Shigemura’s situation, it is dubious that the Augma could have been approved for sales without the input of regulatory bodies. Eiji’s reason for working with Shigemura is similarly shallow, reducing his role to that of a mere puppet despite the threat that the movie attempts to portray him as presenting to the protagonists. While characterisation in Sword Art Online has always been lacking, Ordinal Scale does address some of the weaknesses its predecessors possessed. Kirito’s interactions with the others in the film, especially Asuna, were executed to a satisfactory extent. Further to this, the audio-visual aspects of Ordinal Scale are of a superb quality. The sound effects for combat, especially the sword-play, are as visceral as Star Wars’ seismic charges (which is high praise), and Yuki Kajiura’s soundtrack is phenomenal. Overall, Ordinal Scale earns a weak recommendation: it’s certainly not a bad film and will be enjoyable for fans of Sword Art Online, but audiences will have to accept that while it does exceptionally well what it does well, Ordinal Scale continues to share the same shortcomings as earlier instalments.