Whenever someone says that the 2012 juggernaut, Sword Art Online is one of, if not, the worst anime in existence, it's really easy to want to point at more broken, insipid, and pointless pieces of shit that have come out before or since. Personally, Hand Shakers, Arifureta, Darling in the FranXX, and Irregular at Magic High School are some of the first things that come to mind. However, those people are likely only talking about season 1, as unless they're completionists, they tend to not even care about watching anything else in the franchise in fear of wasting even more time. People don't tend to watch the continuation of a show they consider among the worst of all time. That makes our job so much easier as we can introduce them to this ill-conceived recap film that sucks by even those standards, and tell people that things can always get worse. It’s not much worse, mind you, but still.

What's worse than Sword Art Online: Extra Edition being tedious by even recap standards is the fact that the writers decided to justify its existence by taping an Alphein filler adventure to the back end of this monstrosity and cutting between recap footage and the girls from the main series getting to know each other over a pool party. If you thought the main series was boring, then this is like listening to an hour-long lecture for a class you couldn’t give half a billionth of a fuck about. The whole damn thing is so drawn out, and the added content brings a new dilemma you don't get with most recaps. If you want to marathon or otherwise consume all of the main SAO anime canon for some godforsaken reason like I did, you're gonna need to subtract 2 hours from your life with this bad boy to see like 30 minutes worth of mew material. If not for that, this would probably be an hour-long special no one but hardcore SAO fans and completionists watched instead of being something most people backtrack to when they remember this thing exists and is considered a sequel to SAO 1 and the prequel to SAO II.

There are strange decisions made all over the place. For example, they cut from one scene in episode 4 to a minute later in the exact same scene and conversation.Sure, it’s best to try to save some time and only really keep the bare essentials if they’re going to try this at all, but this is a head-scratching edit. On the opposite side of the spectrum, earlier in the recap, they keep the entire ending of episode 1 instead of cutting it when Kirito runs away after Klein left for the first time, which is strange since the recap is wasting time that could be spent recapping things faster and more neatly. The constant cutting between SAO 1 content and the new scenes also results in some heavy tonal whiplash with absolutely no time to brace yourself or be eased in by a scene as it starts changing tones.It doesn’t help that the events of SAO proper are, to put it lightly, really fucking dumb. However, it’s nonetheless jarring when we cut from, say, Kirito mourning the death of someone he really cared about, to Suguha’s feet splashing about as Asuna towes her across a pool.

Part of the problem is due to how the first arc was not really written in chronological order despite the anime adaptation assembling it that way, so the recap inherently feels more jumbled and like a lot of what’s in it means absolutely nothing. However, this recapm doesn’t even go through that order as almost everything in the first arc barring the beginning and end get shuffled depending on who’s telling the story or which part of a conversation introduces an event from the series. Inevitably, a recap won’t contain the pathos or a lot of the spectacle of what it’s summarizing, which is why recaps often feel like an absolute waste of time only meant to give production teams another week to finish the next episode of a TV show. This being a 101-minute special makes the bulk of it being a recap feel even more pointless, regardless of them attempting a framing device of Kirito being effectively coerced into an interview to tell the bulk of the story, or the other framing device of the girls telling Suguha how they met Kirito during the SAO 1 side-story episodes.

It’s not even worth delving into contradictions in the new scenes, like how Kirito says you can’t beat floor bosses on your own when he pretty much did just that at least once or how the first boss wiped out half a raid when we only see one man in the entire group die. Before anyone tries to argue that the clip doesn’t do it justice and that the show must have shown others die, there was only one casualty in the fight during the SAO proper. Suguha’s swimming lessons get resolved in an afternoon and are basically just the backdrop to the girls talking about how they met the legendary Kazuto of the Kirito is Always Right Foundation It means nothing in the last 20 minutes, anyway. The Alphein quest that makes up the last 20 minutes is an excuse to get the gang back together to do a thing while hijinks happen and we learn a little bit more about Suguha. She then gets sidelined because, remember, Kirito’s the main character, not Suguha. What, are you stupid?

These excursions are mildly cute at best but are otherwise drier than a desert. It honestly feels like they didn’t want to make 2 episode-length OVAs so these 20-ish minute pool and Alphein mini-stories get this shitty, awkward recap attached to turn this thing into a feature-length “movie” that’s treated like a special. There’s no other reason I can see for this when either way, this is a blatant attempt to tie fans over while they wait for SAO II to come out.

SAO was never good with its characters, and this is no different. Barring Kirito really not wanting to be interviewed by and being agitated by a guy in a suit who will be a mainstay in the series, Everyone’s about the same as always. Kirito’s a boring lead, Asuna is a lame tsundere in a relationship with Kirito, SIlica's a flat-chested bubbly girl who loves Kirito, etc. etc. Actually, Asuna drops the tsundere act altogether and becomes a milquetoast nice girl that’s somehow even more dull than before. Now that Suguha’s done with her arc from Alphein, she’s left to be a boring girl who hasn’t gotten over Kirito. Don’t worry, this won’t be relevant or be its own arc for her, moving forward. The special also damages the one character I actually liked, that being Lisbeth, or “Rika” as she’s known IRL. Sure, she retains some of her smug snark factor, but having her only be there to tease people and then squeeze Suguha’s tits and contrast hers with the nonexistent cups Silica --or Keiko because real life-- has, like the perv this recap reveals her to be, is eye-rolling. The finale of SAO 1 already reversed her only character arc, so I guess it’s no surprise that he one female character who didn’t just feel like a trope or a mess of awkwardly-handled drama ideas gets turned into the pervert with tits trope LNs are somewhat fond of. Klein’s been relegated to a similar role, that being another pervy comic relief character like he sometimes was in the show itself, At least that makes more sense, even if it’s similarly annoying. Oh, and all of the character arcs outside of Suguha's are cut out, too, which makes sense for a recap, I suppose, but nonetheless adds to how pointless this damn special was. Poor Agil wasn’t even mentioned in the recap before being thrust into the last 20 minutes…

The last thing to touch on is the audiovisuals. There are a couple of decent new tracks snuck into the recap as well as in the new scenes proper. The ED, "Niji no Oto" by Eir Aoi, is a solid song despite not being as good as OP 2, which is turned into an extended insert song for this special. Some tracks somehow still feel reused despite the recap sometimes taking liberties with the show’s music, but I need to at least try to list some positives, don’t I? Meanwhile, the visuals are as decidedly mediocre as in the TV show. There are a couple of decent action cuts, but the action is still somewhat stilted and the drawing quality is somewhat inconsistent. The environments are also less interesting than in many portions of the show. Perhaps this isn’t considered a movie because this would be pitiful by animated film standards when it’s already on the level of a middling, inconsistent, television production.

I guess the one advantage this film/special has outside of the fact that it doesn't have a new sexual assault scene is that it's about ⅙ the length of your average SAO season at almost 2 hours. However, it doesn't really matter when it's almost 6 times less entertaining than a frustrating mess of a series that's only good when you're looking for a gateway title and don't know any of the technical aspects behind animation, directing, or storytelling because you’re 14 years old! When the highlight of your special is the first OP of season 1, you might as well scrap the whole damn thing. At best, Sword Art Online: Extra Edition is background movie fodder. Still, there are way better options in terms of films you leave on as white noise. It would have seriously been better as a 2-episode filler OVA tackling side-stories. It would’ve been droll, regardless, but that’s still better than being shackled to a broken recap of a terrible series. Anyone could have told you that, though. The idea of SAO being bad has sadly been treated as somewhat of an axiom by the community at large, after all.