Sword Art Online the Movie: Progressive – Scherzo of Deep Night is a sequel to SAO the Movie: Progressive – Aria of a Starless Night but unlike that, it follows a brand new story on how Asuna and Kirito complete the 5th floor in order to prevent a war between guilds. Here is our full Sword Art Online the Movie: Progressive – Scherzo of Deep Night Review
The movie was released in the Fall 2022 anime season and takes place between episodes 2 and 3 of the 1st season. Sword Art Online the Movie: Progressive – Scherzo of Deep Night was animated by A-1 Pictures and based on the spin-off light novel Sword Art Online the Movie: Progressive. A-1 Pictures is also known for anime like Kaguya-sama, 86, Fairy Tail, and Persona 3.
After the 1st movie, I had some really high hopes coming into this movie, and having it seen in the cinema kinda upped my hype for it, but for some reason, I didn’t leave as hyped as I was at the start, but I still enjoyed it, but it felt more like a set-up for a 3rd movie than anything else. Some things that happened hinted at some things, but we didn’t really see them come to fruition, but did lead to some minor things happening that the main characters had to try and stop.
Unlike the 1st movie, the main focus shifts to both the main characters and not just Asuna’s perspective anymore, something I didn’t really mind, because we did luckily get some moments that were the main focus of Asuna and her perspective when meeting up with both old and new friends, these were some of the highlights of the movie in my opinion. Sometimes I love the main character OP kinda thing, but it feels like Kirito just doesn’t really fit that role too well.
The story is all over the place and felt more like a 5 episode mini-arc than an actual movie, or honestly, it evolved like how a Family Guy episode starts, something happens that leads to something completely different. This is not a negative in any way, but I did wanna see a more streamlined story that didn’t go from 1 thing to the next and build on it more. But as I said earlier, I think they used that for something that will come in a 3rd movie or get solved in the anime, I have no clue if that actually happened because I’ve not personally seen that yet.
Just like the 1st movie, the boss fight blew my mind with expectations and even the intro boss did something they didn’t really use in the 1st-floor boss of the previous movie, an actual game mechanic-filled boss. If they step on a line something triggers, I loved seeing how this could have actually been a boss in a real MMO but it also just made it feel like the characters had to think a lot more about what they need to do and how to solve this puzzling boss.
The boss itself, on the other hand, didn’t actually look that cool in the beginning with its head just sticking out of the ceiling and hands and feet flying around, felt more like a funny thing than actually threatening. When the boss does come out of the wall it’s a sight to behold but it does get taken down fairly quickly.
Now we come to the part I didn’t really like, the player killers. For some reason unknown, 2 people met up and want to create a war between the 2 guilds that are the biggest at that time. It seemed like the Player Killers, PK for short, made a group of their own just to try and slow down the leading groups as much as possible, but other than that introduction, we don’t really see them again or get resolved in any way. Something that was even worse is how Asuna and Kirito found them… But I don’t wanna spoil the whole story, so it’s best to just watch the movie and see how it unfolds because it really is just a strange string of events.
Visually the movie looks kinda the same as the 1st one, but it does use a few minor 3D animated things like the boss and introduction scene, this looked really nice and in the cinema, it felt a lot more like an actual cinema experience more than anything, but I am worried that it might lose a bit of its impact on smaller screens.
Do I think this is better than the 1st movie? No, due to how random it felt it just didn’t leave that same impact, but from what I’ve seen of the anime so far, this movie looks like an absolute masterpiece.
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