Sword Art Online The Movie -Ordinal Scale-

Sword Art Online The Movie -Ordinal Scale- (劇場版 ソードアート・オンライン -オーディナル・スケール-) is a Sword Art Online movie that was released in about 1,000 theatres worldwide on February 18, 2017. The movie is set after Mother's Rosario, but before the Alicization Arc and has an original story written by the author, Kawahara Reki. The theme song of the movie is Catch the Moment, a new song by LiSA.

The stage of the movie is an Augmented Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (ARMMORPG) titled «Ordinal Scale» (OS) for an Augmented Reality device called the «Augma». A feature of Ordinal Scale is a «Ranking System», according to which, each player is assigned a rank, indicated by an ordinal number instead of a cardinal number. The game is set in the real world, and players can increase their rank by gathering items that appear in various places of the real world, or by defeating monsters. Higher-ranked players are granted overwhelming power and this is commonly a major factor in deciding the outcome of Player versus Player (PvP) battles.

Prologue
In 2022, the world of virtual reality was upended by the arrival of a new invention from a genius programmer, Kayaba Akihiko.

Called NerveGear, it was the first full-dive system and with it, came endless possibilities to VRMMORPGs.

In 2026, a new machine called the Augma is developed to compete against the NerveGear and its successor, the AmuSphere.

A next-gen wearable device, the Augma does not have a full-dive function like its predecessors. Instead, it uses Augmented Reality to get players into the game. It is safe, user-friendly and lets users play while they are conscious, making it an instant hit on the market.

The most popular game on the system is «Ordinal Scale», an ARMMORPG developed exclusively for the Augma.

Asuna and the gang have already been playing OS for a while, by the time Kirito decides to join them.

They’re about to find out that Ordinal Scale isn’t all fun and games…

Plot
One night in Sword Art Online, Kirito and Asuna were enjoying the night sky of Aincrad. As Asuna complained about having never seen shooting stars because her neighbourhood was too bright, Kirito remarked that there were several good places to see them in his area, and thus they made a promise to see meteor showers some day in the real world. Kirito additionally promised to have a gift for Asuna that day.

More than a year later, by April 2026, an Augmented Reality (AR) device named Augma and its games, especially Ordinal Scale, were quickly becoming popular among the masses. The game's idol Yuna had also gained a lot of popularity, resulting in her first live concert being planned at the New National Stadium in Tokyo later that month. Students of the SAO Survivor School were granted a free Augma and a ticket for the concert.

One day, Yuuki Asuna (Asuna), Ayano Keiko (Silica), and Shinozaki Rika (Lisbeth) played an AR Pac-Man 256-like game in co-op mode in a cafe, while Kirigaya Kazuto (Kirito) observed their game with disinterest. By clearing the game, the girls earned free cakes; however the cake Rika ate exceeded her daily calorie limit, thus she left the cafe for a brisk walk in the mall outside.

Moments later, Rika created a virtual stage for Keiko, compelling her to sing one of Yuna's songs in the middle of the mall. Upon finishing an excerpt from the song, Keiko rushed back to the group in embarrassment. At a reference to Sword Art Online during a following conversation, Keiko recalled a rumour about the appearance of Sword Art Online bosses appearing in Ordinal Scale. As the location of the boss battles was only revealed nearly at the last minute, the girls needed a method of transportation to reach one in time. Thus, they persuaded Kazuto to drive one of them with his motorcycle.

As Asuna won a game of rock–paper–scissors to decide who would ride the motorcycle, Kazuto and Asuna drove to the location of an upcoming battle, where they met with Tsuboi Ryoutarou (Klein) and his guild members, the Fuurinkazan. The moment the clock struck 21:00, Kagachi the Samurai Lord, Aincrad's 10th Floor boss spawned. At that moment, Yuna entered the scene via a drone and, announcing the start of the battle, began singing, which provided buffs to the players attending the battle.

During the battle, a player fired a rocket at the boss; however, the boss dodged it, thus it flew towards Yuna, who was behind the boss at the time, instead. At that moment, Eiji, the second-ranked player of Ordinal Scale, joined the battle and deflected the projectile, causing it to hit the boss instead. As the fight continued, Asuna noticed an opening and assaulted the boss. The moment Asuna passed Eiji, he whispered the term «Switch», which was often used during battles in Sword Art Online. A moment later, Asuna defeated the boss, thus becoming the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the battle, which earned her a kiss from Yuna and an extra ten thousand points.

In the aftermath of the boss fight, a member of Fuurinkazan noticed a series of pop-ups, which led him to a collectible in a parking lot. Just as the man retrieved the item, he was confronted by Eiji. As Eiji was emanating hostility towards him, the man drew his sword in preparation for a fight.

Meanwhile, in Asuna and Kirito's forest house in ALfheim Online, Asuna, Klein, and Kirito told Agil, Leafa, Lisbeth, Silica, and Sinon about their Ordinal Scale boss battle. After Kirito mentioned that Yuna had come to sing at the battlefield and Klein complained about not being able to get a ticket for Yuna's live concert, Agil and Sinon revealed that they had both won a pair of tickets for it. As neither Klein nor Leafa had any tickets, Agil and Sinon offered their spares; however, at that moment, Leafa dejectedly remembered about having a kendo training camp at the time of the concert.

The following evening, whiles browsing for a gift in her bath, Asuna received an invitation from Ryoutarou to join them for a boss battle near her home. However, when Asuna arrived at the venue minutes later, she learnt that one of the members of Fuurinkazan had become unreachable, thus she proceeded to the battlefield alone while the guild decided to remain outside to wait for him.

As the battle with the boss and an impromptu Yuna concert began, another boss suddenly spawned near the members of Fuurinkazan. Although the guild was faring well against the boss, they were suddenly assaulted by Eiji, who disabled all of Ryoutarou's guildmates with martial arts. At that moment, Ryoutarou unequipped his Augma and attempted to punch him, but this resulted in his arm being caught and broken by Eiji. After putting Ryoutarou's Augma on him again, Eiji offered the injured man to the boss while holding him by the neck, thus allowing the boss to defeat him.

The next morning, while waiting at the venue of the previous boss fight for Asuna to arrive for their date, Kazuto was convinced by Yui to train for upcoming Ordinal Scale battles. While practising, he suddenly noticed a hooded girl right next to him. The girl pointed in a specific direction, murmuring something inaudible before disappearing. Based on the hooded girl's mouth movements, Yui interpreted the inaudible voice to have been a request to search a specific place. At that moment, Asuna arrived at the scene, thus the trio headed to a nearby restaurant, where Asuna shared her suspicion that Eiji could have been Nautilus, a lower-ranking member of the Knights of the Blood in Sword Art Online. In the middle of their conversation, Yui suddenly interrupted, informing them that she had discovered something.

Having gathered the majority of the group at the log house, Yui reported her finding that the spawn points of the old Aincrad bosses in the city aligned with the positions of their boss rooms in Aincrad, thus enabling them to predict that the next spawn point would be Yebisu Garden Palace. Asuna, Lisbeth, and Silica showed interest in joining the next boss battle; on the other hand, Sinon had to work at her part-time job at the time, while Kirito showed no interest in participating.

That evening, Asuna, Lisbeth, and Silica came to Yebisu Garden Palace, where the boss of Aincrad's 12th Floor, The Strict Hermit, spawned at 21:00. During the battle, Asuna noticed that Eiji was present at the battlefield, thus she approached him to confirm whether he was Nautilus. In response, Eiji requested her to stop using that name, showing her that he was currently known as Eiji.

When less than three minutes remained till the end of the battle, a dragon similar to Pina appeared on the battlefield. Thinking that Pina had come to help, Silica approached the monster; however, to her surprise the dragon suddenly transformed into Dorz'l the Chaos Drake, the boss of Aincrad's 91st Floor, and began pursuing her. Fleeing the boss's attacks, Silica accidentally collided with Eiji, who pushed her back.

Collapsed, Silica was about to be struck by the dragon, when Asuna suddenly shielded her from the attack. Thus, instead of hitting Silica, the dragon slashed Asuna, depleting all of her hit points and causing her to collapse the moment a yellow sphere was launched from her Augma. Having witnessed the incident, Kirito rushed to Asuna and attempted to confront Eiji in rage; however, in a split second, Eiji entered close range, pointing his sword at Kirito's throat. Moments later, the dragon interrupted their conflict just as the battle timer struck zero, causing both bosses to leave the battlefield.

At 2am midnight of the day, Asuna contacted Kazuto to come to Forest House K4 and told him she was losing her memories of her time in SAO. Hearing this, Kazuto brought Asuna to a hospital to get her diagnosed. Receiving the diagnosis, they learned that her brain had been scanned for SAO memories, causing synapses of her brain cells containing related memory to contract, caused Asuna to lost her memories in SAO and it could affect further brain functions. They were also told that similar incidents had happened to other players too, with all victims being SAO Survivors that were playing Ordinal Scale. As Kirito believe the syndrome is realted to fighting against SAO monsters in Ordinal Scale, he urged SAO survivors not to play the game to prevent them from losing their memories on online discussion board but was laughed off by the community.

At the next battle, Sinon met Kirito and joined the battle. During the battle, Yuna appeared and gave everyone a buff except Kirito. Shortly after the fight started, a SAO Survivor was knocked out and Yui attempted to follow the flow of data from the player's Augma to find its destination but was blocked by the system. On the battlefield, Kirito recklessly tried to defeat the boss himself and was almost knocked out himself, but was saved by Sinon’s assist with her sniper rifle. After the battle, Kirito met with the hooded girl again who pointed somewhere in the distance before disappearing again. Kirito asked Yui to analyze the direction she had pointed and discovered that the location the girl pointed at was Touto Institute of Technology in Ookayama. This location was the workplace of Professor Shigemura Tetsuhiro, Eiji's mentor and the developer of Augma.

Under Kikuoka's arrangement, Kazuto joined a seminar featuring the cons of VR and why AR are superior to VR, lectured by Dr. Shigemura. During the Q&A session, Kazuto asked for opinion from Dr. Shigemura about the potential danger behind AR by giving his opinion about VR would realize virtual world and AR would virtualize real world, which the professor avoided the question and immediately ended the seminar. Kazuto then followed Dr. Shigemura to his room and questioned him about Eiji and Augma's ability to scan and damage one’s brain, but he avoided the question again with the statement that every SAO survivor wanted to forget their experience during the SAO incident and gestured Kazuto to leave. While leaving the room, Kazuto noticed a photo of a little girl, named Shigemura Yuuna on his desk. After leaving, Kazuto called Kikuoka to discuss this matter and discovered Shigemura Yuuna was a daughter of Dr. Shigemura and have been killed in SAO, meanwhile Shigemura called Eiji to tell him to dispose of Kazuto.

As Asuna's home was near Touto Institute of Technology in Setagaya, Kazuto visited her. While Asuna was preparing tea for both of them, he explored her room and accidentally activated many pieces of automatic equipment, including a drawer that contained Asuna diary. Reading the last entry, he realized the full extent of the ordeal she was going through due to her memory loss, and when Asuna was back to the room, he promised Asuna to bring back her memory.

Kazuto met the hooded girl again in Meiji Jingu, who revealed herself as Yuuna and informed him that he cannot defeat Eiji with a rank as low as his. Following this revelation, Kirito decided to continuously solo bosses to rank up, with the help of training video provided by Kirigaya Suguha.

<!--On the day of Yuna's concert, Kazuto, who was already ranked 9 in Ordinal Scale, headed to the stadium's basement parking lot to answer Eiji's challenge mail and to confront him. During the battle, Kirito managed to rip Eiji's equipment that assisted him to move and react faster. Shortly after the equipment had been ripped, Kirito was able to defeat Eiji, who was not experienced in AR fights without the support of his equipment. After his defeat, he revealed the reason behind his actions, namely that he was close to Yuuna while they were trapped in SAO, and also told that the concert was a trap to gather all SAO Survivors. According to him, Shigemura planned to capture the SAO memories of the survivors gathered there to rebuild Yuuna as an AI using the SAO boss monsters and drones placed throughout the stadium, employing wireless energy transfer from the drones to the Augmas of those present to trigger a NerveGear-like pulse that would potentially kill everybody inside. After their talk, Shigemura also stole Eiji's memories from SAO after he deemed him useless to the plan.<--transition is still off. When / why did Kirito leave?->

As the concert ended and Dr. Shigemura released lots of different SAO boss monsters into the venue in AR, the spiritual Yuuna appeared in front of Dr. Shigemura to attempt persuade him to suspend his plan of scanning everyone in the hall to revive Yuuna as an AI as that would damage their brain and she does not wish to revive in this form. Dr. Shigemura rejected her wish, claimed the real Yuuna would not request this and he had prepared to face the consequences of his action. Hearing this, Yuuna faded away from the control room and headed to the stadium where everyone was engaged in a battle.

Kirito managed to get into the arena and fought the monsters with his companions. Asuna's condition worsened, as the bosses triggered the survivors' fear, which are indicated on a meter in the middle of the venue, and it was revealed that when the meter reached 10,000, the scanning program in Aguma would be activated with elevated output by using drones in the venue as additional power source via wireless charging. And as a Fatal Scythe almost defeated them, Hooded Yuuna appeared in front of them and shield them with her shield and told them to defeat the 100th Floor of Aincrad’s original boss using Augma capability to initiate FullDive. Before Kirito, Lisbeth, Silica, Agil, and Sinon initiate the FullDive command, Kirito gave Asuna a ring as promise to come back.

Kirito, Agil, Silica, Lisbeth and Sinon entered the Ruby Palace on 100th Floor in Aincrad, where they began to battle «An Incarnate of the Radius», the true final boss of SAO. As they were about to be overpowered by the boss, Asuna dove in and joined the battle. With the help of Yui, Leafa, Klein, Sakuya, Eugene, and Alicia Rue from ALO and Dyne, Behemoth, and 2 other players from GGO also dived into the Ruby Palace and helped them. Yui also restored the saved game data of the SAO survivors from game data's copies in Ordinal Scale server and gave Sinon her avatar along with her GGO equipment, allowing them to turn the tables on «An Incarnate of the Radius». And as the boss was killed with Kirito dealing the last attack, Kayaba's voice congratulated the players, and Kirito is rewarded a sword that is powerful enough to kill boss monsters in one slash.

Kirito returned to the stadium as his Aincrad avatar in virtual projection, combined his newly achieved position as the number one player of Ordinal Scale with wielding the sword that he obtained from defeating the 100th Floor boss. The hooded Yuuna also start sang to motivate the survivors and the monsters were eventually eliminated. Meanwhile, Kikuoka and his squad moved in to apprehend Shigemura, who was found in Argus' server room.

Hooded Yuuna returned the memories of the survivors and, and as she was made of floor 100th boss data from Aincrad and the boss data has been reset due to being defeated, she disappears.

Some time later, Kirito and Asuna fulfilled their promise to see the meteor shower in Ooyama. Asuna returned the ring to Kirito, asking him to put it properly on her ring finger this time.

After the movie's credit, it was revealed that Kikuoka did not arrest Shigemura, who was shown to be the mentor to Kayaba and Sugou Nobuyuki as well; rather, Kikouka saw potential in Shigemura's AI system and recruited him to help work on Rath.-->

New Characters

 * Yuna (Shigemura Yuuna)
 * Professor Shigemura Tetsuhiro
 * Eiji (Nochizawa Eiji)

Named Bosses

 * Kagachi the Samurai Lord (10th Floor Boss)
 * The Storm Griffin (11th Floor Boss)
 * Zehghi the Flame Caller (11th Floor Field Boss)
 * The Strict Hermit (12th Floor Boss)
 * Dorz'l the Chaos Drake (91st Floor Boss)
 * The Dire Tusk (18th Floor Boss)
 * Waheela the Black Wolf (28th Floor Boss)
 * Xodera the Merciless Razor
 * BuuRaa the Vile Flesh
 * Z'y the Brutal Demolitionr
 * Armadillon the Burly Blaster
 * Barlon the Barbarous Barber
 * Igor the One-armed Squelcher
 * Gosirsa the Bullheaded Tormentor
 * Asvasirsa the Horseheaded Tormentor
 * The Flameeyes
 * The Fatal Scythe
 * The Gleam Eyes (74th Floor Boss)
 * The Skull Reaper (75th Floor Boss)
 * An Incarnate of the Radius (100th Floor Boss)

Locations

 * 22nd Floor of Aincrad
 * Yuuki family residence
 * Argus office
 * Mall
 * Akihabara Urban Development X (UDX)
 * Forest House K4
 * Kirigaya Residence
 * Yoyogi Park
 * Yebisu Garden Palace
 * Touto Institute of Technology
 * Saitama mountain
 * New National Stadium
 * Rath's base

Preview
Teaser=|-| Trailer 1=|-| Trailer 2=|-| Trailer 3=|-| Trailer 4=|-|

Trivia

 * Many of the products featured in the movie actually exist.
 * An "SAO will return" teaser was shown at the end of the movie after its post-credit scenes.
 * Despite Kazuto's statement that he had never visited Asuna's residence in Volume 9, which takes place after the movie, he visited her residence twice in the movie.

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