Anime movie released from Dec/2022, its long title abbreviated to "SAO".
As it is known, it is a prequel to the TV anime work of the popular light novel work.
It is quite a long-running anime work, with SAO season 1 (25 episodes, Jul-Dec/2012), season 2 (24 episodes, Jul-Dec/2014), SAO Alicization (24 episodes, Oct/2018-Mar/2019), SAO Alicization War of Underworld (23 episodes,. Oct-Dec/2019, Jul-Sep/2020), and SAO Ordinal Scale (theatrical spinoff, 2017), which follow the same lineage.
This "Progressive series" is a series consists of movie version only and positioned as a prologue to season 1.
In this Sci-Fi story, players of a virtual action game are unable to return to the real world unless they clear the game world, and the story revolves around the main character Kirito (voice: Matsuoka Yoshitsugu), the strongest swordsman, and his partner Asuna (voice: Tomatsu Haruka), a swordswoman.
This work depicts the prequel to the game, the story of how Asuna came to the game world, which was never depicted in the TV series.
The female warrior depicted as a quasi-protagonist in the PV and poster is Mito (voice: Minase Inori), who is also Asuna's best friend in the real world. In former Progressive series "Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night(Oct/2021)", Mito leaves the front line.
This 2nd series of Progressive series a continuation of that story.
The story itself is simple and easy to understand: the pliers unite to return to the real world, but there is a nuisance who brings conflict into the mix, and the protagonists(Kirito and Asuna) resolve the conflict.
This time also, the battle scenes are full of power, and the voice casts give realistic performances.
