About Sword Art Online
Sword Art Online is a Japanese anime adapted by studio A-1 Pictures from Reki Kawahara's hit light novel series. It opens in the year 2022, when thousands of players strap on the NerveGear headset and log into Sword Art Online, the worlds first fully immersive virtual reality MMORPG. The thrill of a floating castle called Aincrad curdles into horror when the games creator, Akihiko Kayaba, reveals that the logout button has been removed and that anyone who dies in the game, or whose headset is forcibly removed in the real world, will die for real.
Trapped with ten thousand other players, a solo gamer named Kirito sets out to climb all one hundred floors of Aincrad and beat the game, the only way anyone can be freed. Along the way he forms a bond with a skilled fencer named Asuna, and the two become partners in both battle and life. Their fight to survive turns a death game into a story about connection, loss, and the will to keep going against impossible odds.
After the Aincrad arc, the series moves through new virtual worlds and storylines, including the fairy realm of Alfheim Online, the gun based battleground of Gun Gale Online where the sniper Sinon is introduced, and the vast simulated world of the Underworld in the Alicization arc. Across each setting Kirito and his friends confront new threats while the technology blurring the line between the digital and the real keeps raising the stakes.