Singapore-based licensing company ODEX Pte. Ltd. previously announced in December last year the upcoming anime movie of the popular series Sword Art Online is set to be screened in six countries in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, simultaneous with the Japanese premiere this month.

A representative of SM Cinema has confirmed to Anime Pilipinas that Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale will premiere this Saturday, February 18.

The special screening will be held at Cinema 2 of the SM Megamall in Mandaluyong City at 05:00pm, which will be a one-time screening only.

According to the cinema’s representative, the special premiere will have two different seating sections, Premiere and Deluxe, which will be priced differently together with corresponding freebies based on the section chosen.

Premiere is priced at PHP500, which will include a Sword Art Online paperbag, folder, A2 poster and two shikishi board with images of lead characters Kirito and Asuna.

Deluxe is priced at PHP350, which will include a Sword Art Online paperbag, folder, A2 poster and a shikishi board with Reki Kawahara’s signature.

You can buy tickets for Premiere seats at the ticket outlets at SM Megamall and online at smtickets.com, while tickets for Deluxe seats are available through SM Cinema ticket outlets only. Additional fees may apply.

Apart from the special screening, the representative also says that the upcoming anime movie would also have a regular screening at a later date, but it will depend on the demand of the moviegoers.

In 2026, two years since the SAO incident, a new game called “Ordinal Scale,” an Augmented-Reality MMO, is becoming popular among the players. But… strange things are happening in the game and Kirito and the gang are facing a new danger. (Synopsis from Aniplex of America)

Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale is the anime film adaptation of the highly-popular light novel series Sword Art Online, written by Reki Kawahara with illustrations by abec.

The novel was released by ASCII Media Works since April 2009 under their Dengeki Bunko imprint, which currently has 18 volumes. After the release of its highly-popular anime series in 2012, the franchise has expanded to multiple novels, manga and video games.

The upcoming film will be an original story that will take place after the “Mother Rosario” arc (Sword Art Online II), which will be written by Reki Kawahawa and directed by Tomohiko Ito. Character designs will once again be made by Shingo Adachi for anime studio A-1 Pictures.

Popular anisong singer LiSA, who performed Sword Art Online’s anime theme music, will sing the film’s theme music, “Catch the Moment”.

Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (as Kirito), Haruka Tomatsu (as Asuna), Rina Hidaka (as Silica), Ayahi Takagaki (as Lisbeth), Miyuki Sawashiro (as Sinon), Hiroaki Hirata (as Klein) will return to voice their characters in the movie.

The film will also include three new characters voiced by Sayaka Kanda (as AR idol Yuna), Yoshio Inoue (as the mysterious young swordsman Eiji) and Takeshi Kaga (as Augma developer Professor Shigemura).

The upcoming movie was launched during World Cosplay Summit last August, where the film’s trailer was played simultaneously in Japanese with English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Korean, and Thai subtitles.

Japanese publisher Kadokawa had announced in October that the movie “will be simultaneously released worldwide” on Saturday, February 18, 2017.

This article has been updated.