Sword Art Online: Extra Edition

First and foremost, if you ever plan on or have considered watching this special, I'm assuming you've seen the first season, otherwise, there's no real reason for you to be here. Because this is a special, my rating for it is not based on complete quality of the special on its own, but how the special relates to the first season. A special is an addendum to a series; it's like an extra episode. Keep that in mind while reading my review.

Examining the special piece by piece, I will start with the basics: art and sound. As I mentioned before, if you're considering watching this ... special, it's probably because you saw the first season and are interested in seeing similar content. I can assure you that the art and sound in the special is exactly as it was in the first season. Not even the opening theme is new. Simply put, your personal opinion on the art and sound of the first season is going to be identical to your opinion of the art and sound in the special. So because nothing has changed, these two factors can be ignored. The same goes for characters. None of them have changed, so expect nothing different from before.

What really matters is the story, right? Yes. As far as specials go, I thought the story was, in a word, decent. Everything started off incredibly slow; the whole first half of the special was basically recapping some of the more important scenes in the first season with brief bits of character dialogue strewn around in between. It wouldn't surprise me if you said that that sounds horribly boring. You'd be right. It was horribly boring. I can't think of a single person that enjoys recap or flash backs. The only thing that kept everything at least somewhat interesting was the inclusion of some mild fan service. Which, I should specify, although it probably should have been obvious to you, is entirely female only. Having watched the first season, I'm sure you know that this is an anime tailored mostly for males or really anyone attracted to females; I say males because the only real canonical pairing is Kirito and Asuna which is obviously a straight relationship. All of this is to say, there is female fan service, so expect it and appreciate it if you want. Now, while the first half of the special is truly boring, the second wasn't so bad. The rest of the plot involves a quest in Alfheim in which all of your favorite characters take part. Of course before the actual quest begins, there is plenty more fan service. The quest itself isn't really all that interesting. It isn't exactly high stakes as some of the events and quests were in the first season. Overall the quest is laid back. We see some fighting, some humor, some dialogue; really everything you'd expect from a typical episode of really anything. It wasn't incredibly captivating, but everything sort of fit together enough for it to be pleasing.

Looking at this special as a whole, I would say that it was pretty good. As you can probably see, I gave it a 7, which I think is a generous score, but not something it didn't deserve. It really and truly is an extra, fun episode involving the characters of Sword Art Online doing things you never got to see them do in the first season. If mundane events where nothing really happens don't appeal to you, I wouldn't bother watching it, otherwise I think it's at least worth the watch.

Happy New Years, everyone! To summarize this review, the first 80 minutes are flashbacks while the last 20 are a decent new bit. Also, People who take offense to stuff people say on the Internet are idiots.

If you are wondering whether you should watch this, ask yourself this question: Do you really want to relive this shit again? If your answer was a “Yes” in any way, shape or form, man, you are some serious masochist and really should be rethinking your life choices. It made me rethink my life choices, I mean like, why am I watching this and not Monster, Legend of the ... Galactic Heroes or Ghost in the Shell like all those pretentious hipster critics want me to? At any rate, this 100 minute special drowns you in 80 minutes of flashbacks to those terrible times, with special attention given to the deus ex machina moments and the horribly forced teen romance. They give you only short breaths of toxic, polluted air in between with new footage of Kirito’s harem in bathing suits talking about how much of a Gary Stu Kirito is or how good Asuna is at making sandwiches :)

You are better off skipping the flashbacks so I’ll summarize what happens during the first 80 minutes in this paragraph. If you really are a masochist and want to watch them for yourself or you don’t quite remember what happened in the show due to mental trauma, skip to the next paragraph. Basically, Kirito’s harem (Asuna, Silica, the blacksmith girl who’s name I don’t remember and Kirito’s sister) are at the pool teaching Kirito’s sister how to swim (how cute, the strong and athletic little sister needs help) while they discuss their experiences with Kirito. Meanwhile, Kirito is meeting Kikuoka Seijirou, the government official in charge of virtual reality incidents, and he's recounting what happened in SAO and ALO, covering everything that the girls don’t.

The last twenty minutes or so are decent for some light-hearted action and fun. There are some funny moments and they don’t try to take themselves *too* seriously. The plot is good... for an MMORPG, though anyone who’s played an MMORPG should know how terrible the average MMORPG quest storyline is. I was sorely disappointed that there was no final epic boss fight. Instead, they wasted their time with some crappy brother-sister drama (along with a random flashback to further emphasize how amazing Kirito was for being a hero even when he was a little kid), and, as always, they show that no one can do shit without our invincible protagonist. Nevertheless, one IS able to feel or imagine a bit of how amazing it would be to play a VRMMORPG and how incredibly huge ALO must be to find such incredible areas relatively untouched.

Characters, if this is even possible, were even worse than in Sword Art Online considering how they made all the girls just weak little damsels who fell heads over heels for our antisocial nerd of a chick magnet and all they do is talk about him. I really don’t get how they don’t give up and give Kirito and Asuna their space, all they are doing is pointlessly interfering into Kirito and Asuna’s relationship though I wouldn’t be surprised if the series ended in a sixsome (or sexsome, kukukuku, since a new girl is introduced in GGO). Kirito’s as much of a Gary Stu as ever, Klein just becomes your perverted comic relief best friend character rather than the strong caring man he was in SAO and Agil doesn’t really deserve a mention here since he didn’t really do anything or interact with the other characters.

The music score is excellent, obviously since it’s done by Yuki Kajiura, though some of it is reused from the original SAO (and of course, during the flashbacks they use the same soundtrack), while the theme song by Eir Aoi is great as well. The art is as good as ever with vibrant and colorful backdrops and sunsets that truly drop you into the beautiful world of ALfheim.

Overall, the OVA was fine, but I really wish I didn’t waste my time watching the flashbacks. The OVA ends with a hint of the upcoming Sword Art Online 2 and I will foolishly cling onto the non-existent hope that they will learn from their mistakes and present us with an at least decent anime. The next arc is probably the best so far in the light novel series, so let us all pray that they don’t utterly butcher it.

Loved Sword Art Online so much that you want to see it again? Than this is the show for you... because essentially that is what this extra edition is - the same soundtrack, art, clips and even the opening song. Basically it is like most every OVA/"special episode"/or first film - the dreaded recap.

Yes, I may come off as unnecessarily harsh but the fact is that very little new content is introduced in what is about a feature length film (~100 minutes) in regards to plot and character development. It starts of well though - Kirito has a "special" appointment with the counselor which seemed ... like it had potential because, after all, being in game for almost three years is bound to have psychological effects. Nope, it's a government man coming to interrogate Kirito - again had the potential to be interesting because it could have examined the relationship between the players and Japan, or Kirito "the gaming genius" and the government. Nope, instead it's just a recap like the viewer's were idiots and didn't watch the last season. There is nothing new in Kirito's narration which, by the way, takes up the majority of the episode. The clips are taken directly from past episode's and the summary isn't even good, in fact they seem contrived. It just really feels like a bad filler episode. The whole thing is just recap, recap and more recaps - it gets tiring after awhile.

As for the sideplot, well quite honestly this should have been called "Swimsuit Art Online" because almost the entire plot is well - cute girls in swimsuits with the flimsy excuse of "well we have to teach Sugu to swim!" There is plenty of fanservice shots that are none to discreet and this part of the plot feels as if we are in the classic harem show. Basically this ended up being the beach episode that we never got in the actual anime itself - fanservice with just a dash of plot.

By the time the show even get's to Alfheim, the majority of the time has past so to preserve time, the "quest" is reduced to a mere slideshow, just a couple of stills. Without giving too much away, the actual story ends really anticlimactically - it’s all bark and no bite. Big names and creatures appear, but it’s all done without tension or consequence (Seriously, how can you make a fight against a Kraken AND a Leviathan, boring?)

Because the music, animation is mostly the same, there's not much to say except Asuna looks bizarre.

The fact was that with that much time so much could have been done - it could have been epic, could have explored the psychological effects on players, or examined the problems created in Japan. Instead it's: swimsuits, cute girls, and recaps, recaps and recaps. If that's your sorta thing, feel free - go for it.