SAO Has Hit a New Low

[00:03] Ah, I can already see the comments. Jeff roasting SAO in big 2026. Rent must be way past due. But counterpoint, if this was about rent, do you really think I would have dropped $110 just to watch a Sword Art Online movie?

[00:18] No, I I didn't stutter. unanswered slash butterfly is the latest film in the anime franchise that defined modern gamer isekai and the only legal way to watch it is by shelling out for the ultimate edition of the new Echoes of

[00:34] video game. Now, some might argue that really means the movie is only worth $20 since that's the upcharge from the deluxe edition, which itself charges you 20 bucks for the privilege of pre-ordering some DLC and unlocking the

[00:47] game's perma death mode, aka the only reason half the fans even want to play it without having to complete the whole campaign first, which is actually more valuable than it sounds since that campaign consists of the exact same

[00:59] gameplay loop from the 30inut free demo stretched out for over 30 hours going through that twice might make me activate real life's perma death mode. But of course, that raises the $70 question of whether two total biomes,

[01:12] seven total enemy types, and 12 metric tons of padding is worth the game's base price. And if you don't think it is, but you want to watch the movie anyway, too bad, $110, please. Would you want to watch the movie anyway, though? Would

[01:27] anyone? That's the question I'm here to figure out today. And the answer is no. This movie is not worth $110. It's not worth 20. It's not even worth pirating. It is the single worst piece of SAO media I have seen and it's not

[01:42] particularly close. You could not in fact pay me to watch this film again. Though thankfully someone did pay me to watch it the first time. Star Forge Systems. This video's sponsor makes the sickest anime PCs that any weeb or gamer

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[03:09] their summer sale and get the computer of your dreams today. Now, before I could watch Unanswered Butterfly, it was my understanding I had to first watch Sword Art Online Progressive because I'd heard the new movie was part of that

[03:22] alternate timeline. I don't know where I got that from. They have nothing to do anything to do with the original show. It's in its own unique timeline set right after the game that it comes with. But despite that, it does have a bit in

[03:38] common with SAO Progressive since both are stories meant to fill in the blanks from the early floors of Einrred with a focus on Asuna and her friends over Kyito. The difference being that Progressive uses that change in

[03:51] perspective to tell a more interesting and tense death game story with a steady sense of character progression and more robust, likable supporting cast where the other players in the game actually matter. Whereas Grunge uses it to tell a

[04:05] story about how Kyito is the most badass gamer to ever live and what if he became a player killer. Wouldn't that be terrifying? Starring one of the most insufferable Moa blobs ever overdesigned and a Reddit mod who's faking a

[04:18] disability to make that girl pay attention to him. Her name is Emmyune and like 80% of the time she's on screen, it feels like she's being directed by Zack Kger. So, we're going to do it again. And this time, we're

[04:31] going to go even even happier and with your mouth open.

[04:48] whining. To be fair, she does have quite a bit to whine about. Her whole party got wiped out by something offscreen after all. And then Kyito showed up with an orange plumb bob over his head for some reason. Did he murder them?

[05:02] at least half the movie pretending like it's plausible anyway. But then who could the real killer be? The only other guy who was there. But he was on screen. He couldn't have been offcreen. Real headscratcher this one. Especially if

[05:18] you've seen the rest of which seems like a pretty safe bet for anyone desperate enough to buy this. Because then as soon as Emmy Run's only male friend, Rex, opens his weirdly off-putting little incel mouth, you'll be thinking, there's

[05:31] noing way they just did the exact same twist from PHANTOM BULLET AGAIN, RIGHT? twist from PHANTOM BULLET AGAIN, RIGHT? NO SHOT. This is that lazy.

[05:44] childhood friend doesn't turn out to be the secret serial killer and then creep all over her while threatening to stab her. He's her college-aged tutor.

[06:03] flavor of where every guy who's not Kyito, Agel, or Klein is either a high school bully or a secret murdering psycho rapist, this is the blast from the past you've been waiting for. The high school bully role is filled by this

[06:17] nameless dude who stands around their friend's funeral with Sharpi over here being all like, "He losers, your friends are dead." Classic Biff. Normally, I wouldn't be sympathetic to these sorts of

[06:30] characters, but after hearing her speak, I'd shove Emmy Run in a locker, TOO. I'd shove Emmy Run in a locker, TOO. [screaming]

[06:50] lap dog, so all it takes is a whiff of meat to make her stop whining. Unluckily though, that doesn't make her any more bearable. [laughter]

[07:03] single clip, but the thing about Emmyune is she never shuts the up. She's so yappy. Sometimes she interrupts herself in the middle of interrupting herself.

[07:16] in the middle of interrupting herself. [screaming] concert reminds Emmy Rune of the time Rex came over to tutor her and she was

[07:31] all like, "Studying sucks. Mom won't let me play video games. All I'm allowed to do is stare at this motion graphic of an idol on my iPad and also have it on the TV for some reason." But then Rex was all like, "Actually, life is like a

[07:44] video game." which encouraged her to level up to a B on her next test and earned the privilege of playing SAO at launch. And when she told Rex about that several days later, Yori's face was still on theinging TV. So, I guess she's

[07:59] like trying to burn it into the display. I don't know. Anyway, after the concert, we find out Yori's guild's recruiting people to clear Eron, while this other guild/cult run by a shady live streamer lady is handing out newspapers

[08:12] proclaiming that if you get a game over the right way, you'll actually wake up instead of dying, which I presume ties into the plot of Echoes of Einr cuz it's got all to do with this movie story that finally almost gets started 13 minutes

[08:27] in when they see Asa swinging around a new sword at Lizbeth's shop. >> prompting Rex to explain why he only ever uses a shield. See, he's got full

[08:44] dive nonconforming syndrome, a rare disorder that causes his muscles to lock doesn't affect any of his other motor functions in any way. And if you hear that and think, "Hey, that sounds super duper made up," congratulations. You're

[08:59] smarter than literally every other character in this story. With their gear upgraded, they go off to fight a random boar. Then on the way back to town, they stop to yell at Kyito in case you forgot in the last 15 minutes why everyone is

[09:13] mad at him. Then some wolves show up and Kyito kills a bunch of them and they're like, "Dang, if we want revenge on that guy, we got to get way stronger." And guy, we got to get way stronger." And then 22 minutes in, we actually start

[09:25] the main story when they ask to help them get better. So she teaches Emir to parry and then they fight a boar and then they fight a different boar and then they buy a hair accessory and then they fight some tentacle monsters

[09:40] [music] which goes exactly how you'd expect. Emir how to do a linear. And then they fight a big deer with the Orie's party

[09:54] tie-in to the video game. During which those high school bullies show up to make fun of everyone again, but then Rex throws some knives at the deer and Sharpi gets all horny watching him. And you better remember that cuz it's going

[10:07] to be really important later. But then, even though that's the only fight in the show so far that he wasn't useless in, he starts getting all sulky about how useless he feels. thanks to his fake condition he made up, prompting Emmy to

[10:19] try to cheer him up with somehow her most irritating bit yet.

[10:42] cure that very night, which would seem suspiciously convenient to anyone who had a single functioning brain cell if such a character existed in this movie. A mythical sword imbued with the blessing of the goddess that is said to

[10:55] cure any ailment. And even though that's like thinking you can fix real life epilepsy with Valer Hammer of the Ancient Kings, they all decide it's worth fighting an owl bear over. Then when it predictably doesn't work,

[11:08] Emmyune decides that's the perfect time for the Crash Out to end all Crash.

[11:33] >> Now, I know Rex's madeup disability is made up, and you know his madeup disability is made up, but she doesn't know that. Meaning that Emiron is canonically the kind of person who would tell a paraplegic friend, "Gh, I'm so

[11:48] sick of waiting for elevators. learned to [ __ ] walk, idiot. To be fair, she's not quite horrible enough to let that slide without baking her friend an apology cake later. But she is horrible enough to do that with a bunch of rare

[12:02] that they spent months gathering together and then yell at him for being disabled again when he gets upset about that.

[12:26] almost dies having to be rescued by Asuna, while Rex goes off to join that cult, which Sharpi and Biff are also in now, apparently, and now they're you're probably thinking, "Hey, I thought this was supposed to be like a

[12:42] serial killer murder mystery or something." to which the movie responds, "Oh [ __ ] dude. You're right. Thanks for reminding me." So, at the 53 minute mark, those high school bullies come running up like, "Hey, our whole party's

[12:55] getting serial killed right now, and also Rex is there." And so, Asuna and Emmyune run in to save them, finding everyone else dead and Rex under attack by a pack of those demons from the Scooby-Doo movie. And after they're

[13:08] immediately get back to being the immediately get back to being the [ __ ] worst.

[13:25] ending it. But what does she get for helping these [ __ ] A story about her boyfriend murdering a bunch of dudes in cold blood, which obviously she doesn't take well and wants to go off and ask him about, but Emmyune refuses

[13:37] to let her leave unless she duels her for it first. And at this point, I kind of think it goes without saying that our yappy excuse for a protagonist can't go without saying some [ __ ] for more than two straight seconds in that fight.

[14:05] some kibbiting from Rex, which officially puts her right near the tippy top of's gamer power scale, which is about to become very relevant as Asuna runs off to find her boyfriend anyway while the cult guild whips itself up

[14:19] into a Kyito Lynch mob. After a wee bit of melodramatic monologuing,

[14:31] in the guildstead with a poison sword. And she doesn't bat an eye when Sharpi asks her to record it for a snuff film either. And indeed, after she ambushes the Black Swordsman, Rex finds that very snuff film in their shared inventory,

[14:46] clearly showing her stabbing Kyito just offcreen, which is where the killer was. Maybe it was Kyito all along. No, of course not. After Rex gives her the old,

[14:58] "Where my hug at girl," Emmyune finally begins questioning his narrative. And all it takes is like two seconds of pushing to make him reveal the birthark on his forehead. That's really shocking for some reason that the movie never

[15:11] bothers to explain. And start monologuing. And boy howdy does he ever monologue. [laughter]

[16:32] posting all over twitter.com. >> Well, you know what they say. Can't bake a pie without losing a dozen men. Oh, you're an irredeemable monster.

[16:44] What took you so long, idiot? >> We're only on floor three, and he's already got a code name for his evil scheme.

[17:24] briefly interrupted by Kyito swooping in to save Emmy, cuz obviously they faked the snuff film. Rex ain't done monologuing either, but first he's got to drop a smoke bomb and run off to enact his dastardly plan with the help

[17:38] of Sharpi, who is suddenly inexplicably crazy and evil.

[17:50] to explain how Kyito got the orange plumb bob at the start of the movie though, which is uh he just randomly stole some [ __ ] from Asuna's house while running out on her to deal with the player killer thread alone and then he

[18:03] ran into them while it was still orange. So, you know, just a total coincidence. The most satisfying kind of solution to a mystery. So, what is Rex's evil plan then? Well, he posts a bunch of maps to really dangerous areas on the bulletin

[18:18] a special item here that'll let you log out of the game." And then everyone in all just believe it and immediately run off to get killed. That means Kyito and Asuna have to go save everyone while Emmyune runs off to confront Rex alone

[18:34] in the dungeon where he's hiding, which buys him enough time to monologue a buys him enough time to monologue a marriage proposal at her.

[19:09] the 7 minutes it apparently took them to sneak up on him during his last monologue. It only takes Kyito and Asuna three to save everyone across the entire floor from all of the traps that Rex set and then run in to save Emirune from the

[19:24] monsters that he summoned when she said no. And we only find out about the evil plan like 1 minute before that. So that entire subplot takes up half the screen time of just his first monologue. And again, he does have more in him. While

[19:41] Kyito and Asuna stay back to save a trust up Sharpi from some more monsters, Emir rushes into the weirdly boss-free dungeon throne room to confront her former teacher, who of course makes a whole thing out of that.

[20:10] >> Girl, you are the last person who ever gets to say that to anyone. Also wouldn't be a male SAO villain if he didn't waste an entire attack window just to creep on her. [crying] [sighs]

[20:43] preoccupied to come in and save her this time.

[20:58] Obviously, they can and do survive it quite easily. But she does keep them busy enough that Emmy has to worm her own way out of his clutches, which she does by telling Rex she'll marry him and then sucker punching his psycho ass when

[21:12] he goes for the ring. I do actually really like the animation of that sucker punch. And I guess now is as good a time as any to clarify that I have very few complaints about any of the CGI in this movie. Polygon really brought their

[21:24] agame here and it might be their best work to date. It's just a crying shame work to date. It's just a crying shame it's all attached to this script.

[21:44] thing in this fight by putting a cute little twist on Emmy Run's extremely anime habit of calling out her special attack names every time she uses them, which she does once more here, only to launch a different attack from the one

[21:58] that she's saying, thus faking out the villain who thinks he knows all her moves. A classic fighting game conditioning gambit that is only slightly ruined by the fact it takes her approximately an entire month to

[22:11] actually land the attack she fainted into during which she calls out the entire name of the different attack, thus rendering the ruse comically pointless. Nevertheless, it does connect, breaking Rex's sword and

[22:24] leaving him begging her to kill him, then faking her out and throwing a dagger and then changing his mind and begging her to kill him again. Then Kyito and Asuna arrive. He gets a little bit more monologuing in and some random

[22:37] deers spawn in out of nowhere and push him off a cliff for no reason. The end. I'm not joking. That is actually how they wrap the movie. they wrap the movie. [screaming]

[22:53] two-cond scene of Sharpi wandering around a tavern calling out for Rex in a mindbroken haze because apparently that's how hard she fell for him in the two total minutes they were on screen together.

[23:14] Bullet resolved its version of this twist because instead of waiting around for Kyito to save her from her creepy killer friend, this heroine more or less gets to save herself. Very SAO progressive of them. But in practice, it

[23:28] ends up being substantially worse than the worst part of the show. partially due to the deer thing, but mainly because of course that heroine is Emmyune, and I simply do not want to see good things happen to her or bad things

[23:43] or anything. She is profoundly, almost incomprehensibly annoying and unlikable in a way that future generations of extremely patient waifu scientists must one day study. And if I never hear her make a shrill moa

[23:59] blob noise again, it will be too soon. But tragically, it does seem like this won't be the last that we see of her and only dogs hear of her because right before the credits, we see Rex, who predictably survived his fiery

[24:13] offscreening, getting recruited by a dude from Laughing Coffin. On the bright side though, this film has finally definitively proven that it is in fact possible to create a worse Sword Art Online protagonist than Kyito. And for

[24:28] me at least, there's another bright side, which actually has nothing to do with this movie, even though I thought that it did. This project finally pushed me to watch Sword Art Online Progressive, and those movies are

[24:40] actually really good. Not amazing. I'd give the first one an 8 out of 10 and the second like a low seven. But it really is impressive just how much the story can be improved simply by slowing it down and shifting perspective to the

[24:54] substantially more interesting character that is Asuna. Just grounding the action in the POV of someone who's not instantly the best guy in the game does so much to help the horror aspects of the story hit home. And her relationship

[25:09] throughine that gives the boss encounters in each movie some real emotional weight. Hell, it even makes Kyito himself more tolerable. The shift in dynamic from guy who runs around picking up a pseudoarm by being a stoic

[25:24] badass to guy whose only friends are his wife's friends because despite being a badass, he's low-key still kind of a loser is just way more entertaining and endearing. He benefits so much from sloughing off the burden of audience

[25:39] insert and actually getting to be a character. So, while obviously I would not recommend spending $100 on this movie, I do actually think those ones are worth 4 hours in your Crunchyroll subscription. If all my SAO roasting has

[25:54] ever made you curious to try the real thing out, they are definitely the best version of it. In the same way that this movie is definitely the worst. With that said though, there is still some pretty darn bad content that I haven't yet

[26:09] gotten around to roasting. the other part of alysization in which the Jesus meme becomes more literal than you can possibly imagine and it's a race to see if he can resurrect in time to defeat the literal CEO of racism from America.

[26:25] So, let me know in the comments below if you'd like to see me take one more crack at the old horse corpse or if you're happy to just let it lie with this happy to just let it lie with this video. I'm Jeff Thu, mostly retired SAO

[26:37] hater, signing out from my mother's basement.