Sword art online

Sword Art Online (Japanese: ソードアート・オンライン? Hepburn: Sōdo Āto Onrain) is a
Japanese light novel series written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by Abec. The series takes place in the near future and focuses on various virtual reality MMORPG worlds.

The light novels began publication on ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Bunko imprint from April 10, 2009, with a spin-off series launching in October 2012. The series has spawned eight manga adaptations published by ASCII Media Works and Kadokawa. The novels and four of the manga adaptations have been licensed for release in North America by Yen Press. An anime television series produced by A-1 Pictures aired in Japan between July and December 2012, with an Extra Edition episode aired on December 31, 2013, and a second season, titled Sword Art Online II, aired between July and December 2014. Four video games based on the series have been released on the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4. An animated film titled Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale featuring an original story by Kawahara premiered in Japan and Southeast Asia on February 18, 2017, and was released in the United States on March 9, 2017.

Sword Art Online has received widespread commercial success, with the light novels having over 19 million copies sold worldwide. The anime series has received mixed to positive reviews, praised for its animation, musical score, and exploration of the psychological aspects of virtual reality, but criticized for its pacing and writing.

Overview
See also: List of Sword Art Online characters
Setting
The light novel series spans several virtual reality worlds, beginning with the titular world of Sword Art Online. Each world is built on a game engine called the World Seed, which was initially developed specifically for SAO by Akihiko Kayaba, but was later duplicated for ALO, and later willed to Kirito, who had it leaked online with the successful intention of reviving the virtual reality industry.

Plot

In 2022, a Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG) called Sword Art Online (SAO) is released. With the NerveGear, a helmet that stimulates the user's five senses via their brain, players can experience and control their in-game characters with their minds. Both the game and the NerveGear was created by Akihiko Kayaba.

On November 6, 10,000 players log into the SAO's mainframe cyberspace for the first time, only to discover that they are unable to log out. Kayaba appears and tells the players that they must beat all 100 floors of Aincrad, a steel castle which is the setting of SAO, if they wish to be free. Those who suffer in-game deaths or forcibly remove the NerveGear out-of-game will suffer real-life deaths.

One of the players named Kazuto "Kirito" Kirigaya is one of 1,000 testers in the game's previous closed beta. With the advantage of previous VR gaming experience and a drive to protect other beta testers from discrimination, he isolates himself from the greater group and plays the game alone, bearing the mantle of "beater", a "beta tester" and "cheater". As the players progress through the game Kirito eventually befriends a young girl named Asuna Yūki, forming a relationship with and later marrying her in-game. After the duo discover the identity of Kayaba's secret ID, who was playing as the leader of the guild Asuna joined in, they confront and destroy him, freeing themselves and the other players from the game.

In the real world, Kazuto discovers that 300 SAO players, including Asuna, remain trapped in their NerveGear. As he goes to the hospital to see Asuna, he meets Shouzou Yūki, Asuna's father, who is asked by an associate of his, Nobuyuki Sugou to make a decision, which Sugou later reveals to be his marriage with Asuna, angering Kazuto. Several months later, he is informed by Agil, another SAO survivor, that a figure similar to Asuna was spotted on "The World Tree" in another VRMMORPG cyberspace called Alfheim Online (ALO). Assisted in-game by his cousin Suguha "Leafa" Kirigaya and Yui, a navigation pixie (originally an AI from SAO), he quickly learns that the trapped players in ALO are part of a plan conceived by Sugōu to perform illegal experiments on their minds. The goal is to create the perfect mind-control for financial gain and to subjugate Asuna, whom he intends to marry in the real world, to assume control of her family's corporation. Kirito eventually stops the experiment and rescues the remaining 300 SAO players, foiling Sugōu's plans. Before leaving ALO to see Asuna, Kayaba, who has uploaded his mind to the Internet using an experimental and destructively high-power version of NerveGear at the cost of his life, entrusts Kirito with The Seed – a package program designed to create virtual worlds. Kazuto eventually reunites with Asuna in the real world and The Seed is released onto the Internet, reviving the VRMMORPG industry.

Soon after, at the prompting of a government official investigating strange occurrences in VR, Kazuto takes on a job to investigate a series of murders involving another VRMMORPG called Gun Gale Online (GGO), the AmuSphere (the successor of the NerveGear), and a player called Death Gun. Aided by a female player named Shino "Sinon" Asada, he participates in a gunfight tournament called the Bullet of Bullets (BoB) and discovers the truth behind the murders, which originated with a player who participated in a player-killing guild in SAO. Through his and Sinon's efforts, two suspects are captured, though the third suspect, Johnny Black, escapes.

Kazuto is later recruited to assist in testing an experimental FullDive machine, Soul Translator (STL), which has an interface that is far more realistic and complex than the previous machine he had played to help develop an artificial intelligence for the Ministry of Defense (MOD) named A.L.I.C.E. He tests the STL by entering a Virtual Reality cyberspace created with The Seed package, named UnderWorld (UW). In the UW, the flow of time proceeds a thousand times faster than in the real world, and Kirito's memories of what happens inside are restricted. However, Black injures Kazuto with suxamethonium chloride. The MOD recovers Kazuto and places him back into the STL to preserve his mind while attempts are made to save him.

Media

Light novels
See also: List of Sword Art Online light novels
Reki Kawahara wrote the first volume in 2002 as a competition entry for ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Game Novel Prize (電撃ゲーム小説大賞? Dengeki Game Shōsetsu Taishō, now Dengeki Novel Prize), but refrained from submitting it as he had exceeded the page limit. He instead published it as a web novel under the pseudonym Fumio Kunori. Over time, he added three further episodes and several short stories. In 2008, he participated in the competition again by writing Accel World, this time winning the Grand Prize. Aside from Accel World, he was requested to get his earlier work, Sword Art Online, published by ASCII Media Works. Kawahara agreed and withdrew his web novel versions. Working with illustrator abec, the first volume was published in print on April 10, 2009, and 19 volumes have been published as of February 10, 2017.

Kawahara also writes the Sword Art Online: Progressive series, which covers Kirito's adventures on the first few floors of Aincrad. The first volume of Progressive was released on October 10, 2012, mand four volumes have been released as of December 10, 2015. The first volume of a light novel series based on Sword Art Online titled Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online, written by Keiichi Sigsawa with illustrations by Kouhaku Kuroboshi, was published by ASCII Media Works on December 10, 2014. An original 100-page prequel novel to Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale written by Kawahara, titled Hopeful Chant, was released to people who watched the film in Japan during March 4–10, 2017.

At their Japan Expo USA panel, Yen Press announced the rights to publish the light novels; the first volume was released on April 22, 2014. Yen Press later announced their license of the Sword Art Online: Progressive series, which is scheduled for release in 2015. The novels are also published in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. With more than 16.7 million copies in print worldwide, there are future plans for publications in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and others.

There are a number of dōjinshi, written by the series' original author Reki Kawahara under the pseudonym Fumio Kunori, titled Sword Art Online Material Edition (ソードアート・オンライン・マテリアル・エディション?). An 80-page assemblage of some of the Material Edition volumes was published on February 13, 2011; the latest release is Material Edition volume 19 on May 5, 2016. The author has also created some other dōjinshi including Lisbeth Edition, Silica Edition and Pina Edition under cooperation with Kurusu Tatsuya from ponz.info. It is reported that these dōjinshi gain traction from the involvement of the original author in its creation process, as well as from supplying more details on characters from the original work.