Monday, May 30, 2016
Sword Art Online (also known as SAO) is a 2009 Japanese light novelseries written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by abec. The series takes place in the near-future and focuses on various virtual realityMMORPG 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. Three video games based on the series have been released on thePlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4. An animated film titled Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale featuring an original story by Kawahara has been announced and will premiere in Japanese theaters in 2017.
Sword Art Online has received widespread commercial success, with the light novels having over 16 million copies printed in several countries including Japan, the United States, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Thailand, Canada, and the United Kingdom.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.
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. On November 6, 10,000 players log into the SAO's mainframe cyberspace for the first time and discover that they are unable to log-out. They quickly discover from Akihiko Kayaba, the creator of SAO and NerveGear, they must reach the 100th floor of the game's castle and defeat the final boss if they wish to be free. Those who suffer in-game destruction or remove the NerveGear out-of-game will result in their real-life deaths.
