Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale was released in Australia in February 2018, a year after the Japanese theatrical release, distributed by Madman. Like their other recent anime movie releases, a Limited Edition was released and Ordinal Scale comes with the blu-ray, four art cards and a 60 page booklet.
Packaging:
The packaging is comprised of a cardboard box and a unique cover art.
The back contains the typical details such as a summary, extras and screen caps.
However, the back is just a sheet of glossy paper attached via weak glue made to be removed. Removing it reveals artwork of the new characters Eiji and Yuna.
Lastly, the package is in a nice slipcase for easy access.
The Movie and Special Features:
For a review of the movie, refer to this page. The copy of the movie is inside a normal blu-ray case with full sized artworks on the front and back, although this means the title of the film isn't see anywhere.
The special features include:
- various Japanese and English trailers
- audio commentary from the Director and voice actors of Kirito and Asuna
- animated short Sword Art OFFline -Ordinal Scale-
The Japanese and English trailers are what they are but the audio commentary is pretty good. It's quite funny and goes in-depth at the Director's challenges and the thoughts of the voice actors. It's interesting to note that at the time of the movie's production, the second season of the anime had already concluded two years ago but the voice actors continued to work with each other via the games instead. The 14 minute Sword Art OFFline short is similar to the other ones for the anime, featuring simplistic animation and super deformed characters. It has Asuna, Kirito, Yui and Yuna turn up and talk about the movie, usually with humorous reactions. They will show clips from the movie and comment on the mechanics or some other backstory, which can be insightful.
Art Cards:
There are four included art cards and each one contains a key promotional artwork for the film.
They are printed on high gloss paper and looks very nice.
Booklet:
The Limited Edition comes with a 60 page booklet. It covers off a wide variety of content. Firstly it quickly recaps the first two
seasons of the anime (i.e. the first eight light novels) before it explores the
Augma, the new AR device in the movie.
It goes into a lot more backstory than the movie covers, including the
setting for the game, the game mechanics and more details about the new
characters. There are draft sketches of
character designs and their clothing, illustrations of the boss monsters in the
movie and screencaps. Throughout it all
is commentary which is a surprising amount of effort. It moves onto the next arc, being Alicization
and the arc for the third season before finally showcasing various official promotional
artwork for the movie. The artbook
actually feels like effort was put into it and is quite enjoyable as a result.
Below are some low-quality samples of the booklet.
Overall:
Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale is a fun film and a definite must-watch for fans of the series. The special features are nice and the extras from the Limited Edition are pretty solid.
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For reviews of other things, have a look at this page.
