New Sword Art Online Manga Expands Ordinal Scale With Stuff the Movie Couldn’t Show

If you love the 2017 Sword Art Online original anime film, Ordinal Scale, then you absolutely have to pick up its manga. It’s an absolutely gorgeous manga that feels like a native manga story – not simply an adaptation of the film. And that makes sense given work on the manga version of the story began way back even before the original film came out. As a direct-to-book manga, in some ways it fills the void in the Sword Art Online source material.

Unlike many popular anime, Sword Art Online’s source material are the light novels. Given Ordinal Scale is an original film written for the screen by Sword Art Online’s author, Reki Kawahara, no light novel form exists for it: making the Ordinal Scale manga the best next thing for devoted fans of the series wanting a little more depth than the movie could show.

Fantastically, Ordinal Scale delivers just that, complete with gorgeously illustrated pages and artworks that fill in gaps in the movie. Although the manga volumes were released years ago in Japan, they only started getting their English print as of 2025, with new volumes rolling out regularly. Below, we’ll explore the gorgeous, original art of the Ordinal Scale Manga series and how it shows things even the movie didn’t.

Reading the Ordinal Scale manga is like watching the extended edition of the movie

My absolute favorite thing about the Ordinal Scale manga series isn’t just the gorgeous original artwork present in its many beautiful pages: it’s the addition of stuff that the movie left out. So much flavor and context is added that you never see in the movie that really help tell the story and make it come alive. And that’s high praise given Ordinal Scale was essentially perfect as far as Sword Art Online movies go.

You get meaningful, visual transitions that help bridge the gap between what’s happening in Ordinal Scale and events that happened in Aincrad. While there are many examples of this, just as an example, at one point in the story we see a flashback that was not included in the Ordinal Scale movie or even the original Sword Art Online anime that shows a key moment from Asuna’s perspective.

I’m tempted to spoil even more of these moments are from the manga right here in this article, but I really think these hidden, golden nuggets are better experienced in context of reading the manga rather than seeing them on my blog, so you’ll just have to pick up the volumes yourself to experience Ordinal Scale in a whole new way.

Suffice to say reading the Ordinal Scale manga is to the experience of watching the Ordinal Scale film that watching the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions are to watching the theatrical cuts.

Hopeful Chant makes its way into Vol. 4 of the manga

Speaking of content not included in the film: as a bonus, a somewhat legendary Sword Art Online short story from the Aincrad days gets a manga adaptation in Vol 4 – the latest English version volume which was just released May 26, 2026. Without spoiling too much, this story – originally entitled “Hopeful Chant” when released in Japan – focuses on Yuna and Eiji and their adventures in Aincrad, where they played a pivotal role in a very important battle.

This is a big deal to Sword Art Online fans in the States and other parts of the world where the Hopeful Chant short story was only ever available via fan translations. Seeing it fully fleshed out in manga panels is a treat hardened fans will thoroughly enjoy.

The Ordinal Scale manga adaptation still has one volume to go

*Cover is of the French version – English cover yet to be revealed

If you are new to the Ordinal Scale manga series, the good news is you can still get in on the fun: the final volume still has yet to be released in English. Preorders for the final volume are already up on Amazon, although the official English cover has yet to be revealed. Get it same day of release on Tuesday, November 24, 2026. I can’t wait to see what bonus content this volume has in it that the movie left out!