Ordinal Scale (arc)


 * This page is about the Ordinal Scale story as a whole. You may be looking for the movie, its manga adaptation, or the augmented reality game.

Ordinal Scale (オーディナル・スケール) is a side story in the Sword Art Online series that takes place in-between the Phantom Bullet and Alicization arcs.

Introduction
In the year 2026, a highly-advanced augmented reality console known as the Augma entered the market as an alternative to the most widely used virtual reality console, the AmuSphere. With the introduction of Ordinal Scale (OS), the first Augmented Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (ARMMORPG) for the Augma, the new console quickly became popular.

On April 24, 2026, having learnt about rumors of Sword Art Online (SAO) monsters appearing in OS from his friends, Kirigaya Kazuto (Kirito) decides to participate in a boss fight alongside Yuuki Asuna and Tsuboi Ryoutarou (Klein). As the players participating in the battle struggled with the boss, the second-ranked player in the game, Eiji, suddenly joined the fight, helping change the tide of battle.

Meanwhile, as Asuna becomes more and more interested in playing the game, SAO Survivors find themselves losing their memories from their Sword Art Online days after encountering Eiji...

Trivia

 * Ordinal Scale is the first animated story in the Sword Art Online series to not be based on any novel or side story previously written by the author. Although the movie does not have a novel counterpart, the events of Ordinal Scale were later incorporated into the light novel canon