Key Staff

Director - Tomohiko Ito

    (Occult Academy)

Character Design/Chief Animation Director - Shingo Adachi

    (Wagnaria!!, Megaman Star Force)

Music - Yuki Kajiura

    (Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero)

Animation Production

A-1 Pictures

Introduction

This may be a game, but we're not playing around.

Story

The year is 2022. Mankind has finally perfected virtual reality. And within the VRMMORPG (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) Sword Art Online, there was a player called Kirito. While he was enjoying the world of SAO, he and the other 10,000 logged-in players all received a frightening message from the Game Master—that the only way to escape from that world was to clear the game, and that a game over within the game would mean their death in the real world.

That was the frightening true story behind this game.

Kirito was one of the first players to accept this “truth”, and began his solo play, refusing to form a party, as he threw himself into the never ending battles that lay before him…

Characters

	Kirito VA: Yoshitsugu Matsuoka A solo player continuing to fight in the death-game that SAO had now become. Though he has girlish looks and a slender figure, he's one of the top-class fighters in SAO.
	Asuna VA: Haruka Tomatsu Asuna is young girl who serves as sub-leader for one of SAO's most prominent guilds, the “Knights of Blood”. Her magnificent swordplay has earned the name of “Flash”. She has a kind demeanor, but her will is strong.
	Klein VA: TBA A katana wielder leading the guild, “Fūrinkazan”. He's a friendly man, and one of the few friends the unsociable Kirito has.
	Agil VA: TBA A merchant who buys and sells all kinds of items. He's also a top-notch axeman and joins in defeating bosses too.
	Sachi VA: TBA A spear-woman belonging to the guild “Black Cats of the Full Moon”. She lives together with her comrades in the middle zone that's already been cleared.
	Lisbeth VA: Ayahi Takagaki A girl who runs the equipment shop “Blacksmith” in Aincrad. She's a close friend of Asuna's and her nickname is Liz.
	Akihiko Kayaba VA: TBA Akihiko is a talented game designer and quantum physicist. While he was the director of development for Sword Art Online, he was also the designer of Nerve Gear.
	Silica VA: Rina Hidaka Scilica is a beast tamer who controls the Feathery Dragon Vina as her familiar. She's become a bit of an idol within SAO.

Interview with Director Tomohiko Ito

Sword Art Online (SAO, hereafter) is an MMORPG. Have you ever played an MMORPG yourself, Director Ito?

I have. I thought about trying to role-play Kirito, so I just stoically leveled on my own, though (smile). There are several hundreds of people connected to it in real time, and I found it mysterious how people you met there would talk to you, even if they never knew you before. Also, there was one time where I found myself in a pinch during battle and this male character slipped me a healing item. I thought that was cool of him, but I have no idea who old or what gender the player actually was. It was fun to find myself trying to imagine what those people were like in their real lives. I'm also glad I was able to experience the descriptions and sensations of an MMORPG that come up in the original work. I'd like to make good use of that in the anime as well.

Then, how do you play to portray the appearance of an MMORPG world in anime?

Fantasy settings go very well with anime in the first place, so I wanted to convey that well first, and then try to add the sense that this is a game. Though I also worried that if we only depicted the virtual world, then it would seem like a regular fantasy anime. If it seems like some distant, unrelated world, it might be hard for viewers to empathize. So I thought that if we depicted it as an extension of the real world, and showed the real lives and troubles of the individual characters, it would give it even more depth.

With that in mind then, what kind of image did you have for the setting of this story, the world of Aincrad?

The first one I had at the beginning was a vague, “how about the ruins of South America?” Medieval Europe is a very common idea when dealing with fantasy, but I thought we could stray from that a bit and give it a different charm. It was less, “We should use South America!” and more, “Let's use a location that others aren't using much.” I've been there before on a personal trip, so I also thought we could make use of the pictures I took then and earn back some of the travel expenses (smile). Obviously that's not the entire image for it, and there are several West European locations that naturally appear as well.

How was the original author, Kawahara-sensei involved with the anime?

First of all, he joined us for nearly every one of our script meetings. There were times he couldn't attend due to a cold, but otherwise he joined us for all of them. He did more than just answer our questions for his opinion, and we were very grateful for the way he joined us as a member of script development. He also decided on a lot of things that hadn't appeared in the original work, like town names, for us, and giving us detailed explanations of Kirito's equipment stats. He even had names for each of the default equipment Kirito wore when he first logged in to the virtual world (smile). We were also happy that Kawahara-san took the initiative to tell us all these things.

Tell us a little bit about the characters. First, what was your impression of Kirito?

I was jealous of Kirito. To be frank, I was jealous that he's strong and popular with women (smile). But, while he knows that he has to escape from the virtual world, Aincrad, he also feels more at home in that virtual world than in reality. I'm sure there are a lot of people who share that feeling in his world, but perhaps Kirito is their representative.

Then what about the heroine, Asuna?

Asuna is a good woman. Even at our stage event during Anime Contents Expo, I said “Asuna is a good woman” in front of (Haruka) Tomatsu-san, who plays her character (smile.) She's basically the perfect woman, isn't she? She's kind, beautiful, she's a good cook, and loved by her peers. It's usually hard to approach such perfect characters, but I grew attached to her as I drew the storyboards. Surprisingly, she has her faults too. When I was convinced that Asuna was cute, I felt that many would enjoy this anime.

What were your impressions of Yoshitsugu Matsuoka-san and Haruka Tomatsu-san, who play the roles of Kirito and Asuna?

While Kirito is introverted and naïve, he can take charge when he decides to, yet we also wanted to avoid having his voice sound too manly or masculine. Amongst all the people who auditioned for the role, Matsuoka-san fit our image the best. When we heard Tomatsu-san at the audition, not only did fit the character, she was very good. I doubt there are many actresses her age who can match her level of skill. Matsuoka-san and Tomatsu-san both give us nothing to worry about, and I can't wait until off-recording begins.

Speaking of Anime Contents Expo, you all actually made Elucidator (Kirito's sword) and displayed it?

It's convenient to have a sword on hand as reference for the animation, so we originally planned to buy a cheap one. Elucidator is a little long for a one-handed sword, but we wanted to know what it was like to swing such a sword, and how it would move. Then our producer, Kashiwada-san, said, “Then why don't we make the real thing?” And he even talked about making Asuna's Lambentright in addition to Kirito's Elucidator. When we don't have events, all our animation staff uses them to practice their sword skills (smile).

Kawahara-sensei's other original work, Accel World, was animated before SAO. Did you pay any mind to that fact?

Paying it too much mind wouldn't do any good so we just focused all of our efforts on SAO without giving it much attention. Rather than pay it mind, I'd prefer to send them a cheer of “Let's both make them fun together!”

Lastly, would you please tell us what you've felt so far as production made its way to its present state?

We have animators I can trust, a highly skilled action animation director, and I felt really blessed to have the team we do. Especially with our art staff. The anime has several different worlds in its setting, so we had to ask them for a lot of material. But that's something the work demands, and there'd be no point to the anime if we didn't take good care of that. We asked the impossible more than usual, but our art directors from Bamboo answered our expectations and their quality is wonderful. When the art for our PV was done, I could truly feel the progress we'd made. This is a work with people who have been fans since the light novels, and those who became fans when the website went up, so we're under a lot of pressure to try and meet all of their expectations. But we will do our best to respect the original work, so we hope that everyone will watch the animation when it's done, and enjoy our hard work.

Cast

Kirito

Yoshitsugu Matsuoka

Asuna

Haruka Tomatsu

Lyfa

Ayana Taketatsu

Yui

Kanae Ito

Silica

Rina Hidaka

Lisbeth

Ayahi Takagaki

Staff

Original Creator

Reki Kawahara

Original Character Design

abec

Director

Tomohiko Ito

Character Design

Shingo Adachi

Sub-character Design

Tetsuya Kawakami

Chief Animation Director

Shingo Adachi
Testuya Kawakami

Action Animation Director

Ryuuta Yanagi
Takahiro Shikama

Main Animator

Atsushi Saito

Monster Design

Ryuuta Yanagi

Prop Design

Yuta Tsuchiya
Takahiro Shikama
Shigeru Chiba

Art Director

Yusuke Takeda (Bamboo)
Takayuki Nagashima (Bamboo)

Art Setting

Yuho Taniuchi (KUSANAGI)

Color Design

Kazuko Nakashima

Director of Photography

Gaku Hirooka, Atsushi Usuda

Sound Director

Yoshikazu Iwanami

Effects

Yasuyuki Konno

Sound Production

Dax Production

Music

Yuki Kajiura

Animation Production

A-1 Pictures

Project Generalization

GENCO

Production

SAO Project

Gallery