MOVIE REVIEW: Aria Of The Starless Night

Let’s not get it twisted : the late 70’s Kinnikuman deserves a dubbed revival, and though understandably hated by the faithful, One Piece on 4Kids was an excellent catalyst in my grade school years for me to still be reading the manga weekly here now in my twenties, but I have come to the realization after watching the latest “Sword Art Online Progressive” film, “Aria Of A Starless Night” ; that I just cant stand anime.

All the tropes were exacerbated in this film to a point that I rooted against the main protagonist and ended up ultimately despising the demographic that these films are aimed at.
Another school girl who gives the adult audience fan service multiple times in the first fifteen minutes, carrying on with some pseudo homoerotic fan-fic romance with her live strategy guide, who happens to be a classmate of hers and becomes her Yoda when they and a majority of the population get sucked into a V.R. game. The main antagonists name was Kaiba. He owned a gaming company just like Yu-Gi-Oh’s Kaiba. Oh, and I would be the least bit surprised if I looked up the cast of this film and found the voice actor to have contributed to both Kaiba’s – thanks to the revolving door of typecasting. Seeing Tekken get played between friends was cool and brought back great memories, but I would have rather seen that gamer girl (Misume) in a slice of life film completely absorbed in her life at the arcade than what was done here.

Fantasy does not take the win in this “Progressive”. Everything just appears so juvenile, aimed at it’s oblivious juvenile crowd who oxymoronically, put the “adult” in “adult swim”. “SOA Progressive” is nothing of that sort, while carrying a message to the viewers who live the gaming lifestyle that maybe they might want to put down the controller down and maybe go to a bar with some quarters (If you haven’t been to “The Arcade” in Wichita …). School may still be in for the college crowd, but it’s time to leave the girls alone. Lessons, but in no way is “Progressive” directly about any of these themes that I just mentioned, marking this film as a squandered opportunity, that could have did more than just touch on themes relevant to their limited audience –
C.V.R. The Bard

Score : 2/5

Director: Ayako Kōno

Adapted from: Sword Art Online

Production company: A-1 Pictures