SAO: Progressive - Aria of a Starless Night, Retcons stuff

I finally got to see Sword Art Online the Movie: Progressive - Aria of a Starless Night now that it's up on Crunchyroll English Dub included.  And in execution it's very good, has most of what makes SAO fun and none of it's most egregious problems.  The issues I have with the movie are only as someone already somewhat of a fan of prior SAO content and wouldn't be relevant to someone watching it as a stand alone or choosing to start their SAO experience here, if that's you then the rest of this post really isn't relevant and I say you should go ahead and dive in, it's a better first impression for Normies then most of the original first season is.

And the principal new character of the film Misumi/Mito is good, I like her and her story in this movie.

There are two types of Retcons.  One is the kind that reinterprets or recontextualizes old events in a way that is not actually absolutely a contradiction, and when they fix continuity problems rather them causing them this kind I tend to be fine with or even like.  Mito's very existence can be considered this kind, she explains the paradox of how Asuna both never really played an MMO before and yet so quickly becomes one of the highest ranked players, she had a Beta Tester Mentor even before she met Kirito.

But sadly this movie also has the more conventionally bad kind of retcon, the kind that is definitely changing what happened.

First is how Asuna and Kirito's first meeting is moved up, and then what was their original first meeting is expanded on.  Some fleshing out of that specific scene could have been fine, but I really always liked that Asuna and Kirto's Meet Cute wasn't predicated on him saving her.

Now this next bit may be a misunderstanding, but it seems like they've also went and implied the Sachi/Moonlit Black Cats incident already happened on the first floor in this new canon.  If true that really does annoy me, to whatever extent I was interested in seeing more of Kirito in the Progressive Movies it was seeing Kirito between episodes 2 and 3, seeing more of how he was before that trauma became such a defining part of him.

But the thing is in general I wanted minimal Kirito in these movies, the premise of the series I already knew going in is a Light Novel/Movie for each floor which based on the original timeline means there should be more movies then the Infinity Saga of the MCU before we reach what Asuna was doing at the time of Episode 3. And the other part of the premise was that it's Asuna as the main/pov character now, which means the new material should be stuff Kirto wouldn't have been privy to, especially when retelling events we'd already seen.

And the way the original series presented things, Kirito and Asuna do first meet in episode 2 at the end of the first floor but most of the romantic development starts in episode 8 with episodes 5-6 being of debatable relevance.  In the original SAO Light Novel it jumps from the events of episode 2 to episode 8, everything in 3-7 is short stories published later.  So there is prior precedent for Reki Kawahara deciding to add interactions between Kirito and Asuna in between, but what happens in 5-7 is still consistent conceptually with them not being regular partners yet but only occasional acquaintances.

So the ending of this movie basically amending the ending of the second episode of the show so that Asuna and Kirito are still part of a party going into Floor 2 really bugs me.  I wanted the Progressive movies to be Asuna with maybe occasional cameos from Kirito.  More stories about Kirito and Asuna as a power couple there is plenty of room for at much latter points on the timeline.