After 12 years since the Sword Art Online anime aired, the real world has finally caught up to the popular science fiction adventure anime. Today, November 7, 2024 marks the day when the incident in Sword Art Online was resolved and to commemorate the iconic moment, the franchise has released a special video of a breaking news broadcast segment announcing the occasion. The franchise streamed the first 14 episodes of the first season, leading up to the exact moment protagonist Kirito cleared the game in the anime.
Hisanori Yoshida of Nippon Broadcasting is the newscaster in the video, and the segment was streamed at exactly 2:55 PM in Japan, after the moment where Kirito finished the final battle. The video features a telling the audience that the first VRMMO game in the world has been completed and more than 6,000 trapped players have been logged out of the game, resolving the incident. More precisely, there was a total of 6,147 players freed from the virtual reality. Watch the special video below:
A special illustration was also released to commemorate the Sword Art Online occasion:
The animation of the entire Sword Art Online series was produced by A-1 Pictures. The first season aired in Japan between July and December 2012, and was followed by Season 2 in 2014. The anime franchise returned in 2017 with the theatrical release of Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale. They were all directed by Tomohiko Ito.
Manabu Ono directed Season 3 titled Sword Art Online: Alicization, which premiered in 2019. Two spin-off films Sword Art Online: Aria of a Starless Night, and Sword Art Online: Scherzo of the Deep Night were released in theaters in in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Both films were directed by Ayako Kono.
What is Sword Art Online about?
Sword Art Online anime is based on the science fiction adventure light novel series written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by abec. The light novel series began serialization ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Bunko imprint from April 10, 2009. 28 volumes have been published, and 30 million copies are in circulation.
Yen Press, which licensed the Sword Art Online light novel series in English, shared a story description for the series:
In the year 2022, gamers rejoice as Sword Art Online – a VRMMORPG (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) like no other – debuts, allowing players to take full advantage of the ultimate in gaming technology: NerveGear, a system that allows users to completely immerse themselves in a wholly realistic gaming experience. But when the game goes live, the elation of the players quickly turns to horror as they discover that, for all its amazing features, SAO is missing one of the most basic functions of any MMORPG – a log-out button. Now trapped in the virtual world of Aincrad, their bodies held captive by NerveGear in the real world, users are issued a chilling ultimatum: conquer all one hundred floors of Aincrad to regain your freedom. But in the warped world of SAO, “game over” means certain death – both virtual and real…
All episodes of Sword Art Online anime are currently available to stream on Crunchyroll.
