Now that I’ve finally found the time to catch up with both the Alicization anime and read the latest light novel volume, I’ve been remembering what a fun series Sword Art Online is. Alicization is such a change of pace from previous seasons; it’s basically a Shonen Jump battle manga at this point, and I’m completely okay with that. Plus, the latest volume of the light novel starts a brand new arc, so despite the fact that this series has been running for years, diving into Sword Art Online has been a fresh experience lately.
Getting back into SAO like this reminds me how much Reki Kawahara has grown as an author over the years. As I pointed out in an Anime News Network editorial in 2017, Kawahara first began writing Sword Art Online in 2001. As a recap, a rough timeline of Kawahara’s career would go like this:
Sword Art Online volume 1 (written for the Dengeki Taisho) -> Submission is scrapped, gets posted online instead -> the rest of Sword Art Online is posted online, up until partway through Alicization -> Kawahara takes break to write Accel World volume 1 for the Dengeki Taisho -> Finishes off Alicization in 2008 -> Accel World volume 1 gets published, Kawahara writes new volumes -> Meanwhile, the SAO web novel is edited and republished by Dengeki Bunko.
…This means that Accel World is a newer work than Sword Art Online, but nobody really pays that much attention to Accel World (not even myself, tehehe). Even so, I’ve always thought it was unfair to judge what kind of author Kawahara is now based on what he wrote over 10 years ago. Although Kawahara began writing the Progressive reboot series in 2012, it’s only in the Unital Ring arc starting from volume 21 that the overarching story of Sword Art Online continues past the web novel. That’s why I went into volume 21 with a heightened sense of curiosity. Just what kind of author is Kawahara nowadays?
SPOILERS FOR SWORD ART ONLINE VOLUME 21 BELOW:
Unital Ring takes place one month after the events of Alicization. Despite the fact that he’s behind on his schoolwork and also general life stuff (he hasn’t decided on a present for Asuna’s birthday, which is three days away), Kirito is back to playing VRMMORPGs, because of course he is.
At this point in the series timeline, hundreds of VRMMORPGs run off “The Seed”, the freeware program based on the original Sword Art Online game that can be used to create an infinite number of VR worlds. Alfheim Online and Gun Gale Online are only two of many VRMMORPGs created with The Seed. One day, every world created with The Seed converges, creating a mysterious survival game named Unital Ring.
As a result of the worlds converging, every player reverts to level 1. They also lose their items, equipment, magic and abilities (but not their Sword Skills). Although no one dies in the real world when defeated in the game, any player who dies in the game will not be able to log back in again. Also, whenever you log out, your avatar will remain in the game, completely vulnerable to attack. A mysterious announcement also informs all the players that “the first player will receive everything”, indicating that the game is a race.
When the worlds initially converge, causing the New Aincrad castle to fall to the ground, Kirito is with Asuna and Alice in the log house where they normally hang out in Alfheim Online. Although almost every player inside New Aincrad died when the castle fell, Kirito and his friends somehow manage to stick around, although they have to repair their log house within a time limit, otherwise it disappears forever. Since Kirito and Asuna have strong memories about their love nest, they make it their highest priority to repair the log house, and don’t appear to really care about the larger mystery of the world for now.
In other words, most of volume 21 is actually a rather laid-back adventure with no pressing goal beyond “save the log house”. Most of the story revolves around exploring the immediate surroundings for materials and levelling up survival skills. Among all the games showcased in the Sword Art Online series so far, Unital Ring seems like the most tedious one to play, although that is almost certainly an intentional design choice.
The tone and delivery of this volume reminded me a lot of Sword Art Online: Progressive, which is also a fairly unhurried adventure that takes the reader through each and every floor of the original Aincrad. The characters casually banter with each other as they slowly piece together the nature of the world. The ending of this volume makes the ties to Progressive even more obvious, because Argo the Rat, a side character from the Aincrad arc who got a lot more attention in Progressive, makes a surprise appearance at Kirito’s school.
In other words, Unital Ring so far has many of the same flaws and strengths as Progressive. On one hand, the dialogue and character writing has never been better. On the other hand, the pacing is as slow as a crawl. Remember the days when SAO arcs only took one or two volumes to wrap up? I don’t necessarily miss the rushed plot progression and half-baked character development from the early days, but surely there’s a middle ground.
One area that Reki Kawahara has recently promised to do better in is with the female characters. That can already be seen in this volume. There is no sexualising fanservice, for a start. Even when the characters lose their clothing and equipment, it’s only Kirito who goes around shirtless, and that’s framed as a joke. The romantic affections of Kirito’s harem are downplayed, and (with the obvious exception of his girlfriend Asuna) it honestly seems like they’re more interested in dunking on him than having his babies nowadays.
Most obviously, however, Silica gets her own subplot to shine. I’ve had a soft spot for her ever since her adorable karaoke scene in the Ordinal Scale movie, but she never really got much attention in the main story. But in this volume, she has a battle with a buff Amazon lady, and they become great friends because of it. I am all for Kawahara drinking the feminist kool-aid if it means more cute moments like this.
SPOILERS OVER. YOU CAN READ SAFELY NOW.
If you were to ask me if Unital Ring is an improvement over previous SAO arcs, then I would say that it is, generally speaking. However, it does feels strangely underwhelming after coming straight off the high stakes, high fantasy saga of Alicization. I hope that the series does not take too long to get to the overarching plot of Unital Ring. Even in the first volume, I found myself skimming over menial details like how the crafting system works.
Above all, Unital Ring feels like a refinement of SAO’s core appeal: worldbuilding, characters and adventure. I’m not sure if everyone will like the direction of modern Kawahara’s writing; it’s light-hearted fun rather than doom and gloom. But it’s so joyous, it reminds me why I’ve stuck with SAO in spite of all of its low points. When you get down to it, Kawahara is one of the best light novel authors in the business when it comes to making interesting game and fantasy worlds. Even if the games he envisions don’t sound fun from a design sense, watching the characters find joy in it is the fun.
Also, Kirito kills a bear while shirtless. That’s pretty awesome.
Note: The comments on this post contain spoilers, so if you haven’t read the volume yet, read at your own risk.
Frogkun.com 
When I first read it, I was kind of disappointed by it given that how climatic the end of Alicization was but given the time in rereading it again, I’ve warmed up on it. I’m more interested again given how this new character has appeared who is very much connected with Kuroyukihime from Accel World. I do wished that Kawahara made some screentime for Klein and Agil too given how underutilized they are aa characters and I also would like to see whether Eiji will play a part in this arc too. Also best girl appearing at the end was an honest surprise that got me excited.
Didn’t know the new character was linked to Accel World. Now I really have to catch up on that series.
My dude you really should. But all I’m gonna say is that there’s some seriously shady and weird ass shit happening in Accel World especially in volume 23.
I am really excited for this new arc! Sadly I have to wait until the polish version releases (which is the fast readable version of SAO to me). I haven’t really kept up with the SAO Novels, though I’ve started reading the Phantom Bullet Arc lately, as it started releasing in German, and I haven’t watched season 2 of the anime, and I realized, that even though Reki Kawahara’s writing is not the best, I still really get excited with his action scenes. So yeah, if Unital Ring promises more fun (lol) I’ll definitely check it out.
It’s so cool that you’re able to read SAO in so many different languages. I wonder how different it sounds in all those different languages.
This sounds pretty awesome.
Makes me wonder how the SAOA: GGO characters would react, though!
Also (I have no idea what happened in Aliciazation), it should be really interesting to see how Asuna/Siluca/Leafa/Liz react to GGO or other Sci-fi game settings. Sinon might have lost her GGO character and gear by converting her avatar, but she might not have, either (building a new one from scratch instead), but either way, seeing how she navigates a return to GGO would also be really cool.
The “your avatar stays in the game when you log out” premise is AMAZING, but despite Reki having much improved on writing characters and relationships, I do still think he’s not so good at really diving into the world-building implications and building plot from that (as opposed to using world-building to flesh out his Save The Cat arc cycles), so I kind of wish Keiichi Sigsawa or the folks behind Log Horizon would take a stab at the conceit. Really looking forward to the Nasuverse fanfic writers getting around to this arc, too!
Sinon hasn’t appeared yet, but I think that when she does appear, it’ll probably be in her GGO avatar because that’s her main game.
So far, even though the worlds have technically converged, it still feels like a stereotypical fantasy setting in the vein of Alfheim Online. I hope that the settings of other types of games get incorporated into Unital Ring somehow.
Thinking about how the various game mechanics would mesh hurts my head. Surely, some games would be OP in a merged setting, right? If the unique way they inflict/avoid damage was ridiculously different from the standard. The ALO peeps have a flying advantage, for example, and we already know how air power is tactically OP irl. And we know from the Fariytale Dance arc, that VR research into non-human avatar forms was in progress, so there might be games out there with really out there avatars that provide other unbalanced tactical advantages.
We have a glimpse of how such a thing might go irl with the Super Smash Bros. games, but the incessant balancing and tier debates for those games shows just how tricky it is to have such different types of characters interact!
The other option is to force all players to conform to the same engine, even if that changes a lot of the exact parameters top players are used to. The irl example of this is Mario Maker, where the physics engine is fundamentally the same, just with different skins, so a SMB1 level in Mario Maker doesn’t quite play the same as the same level built via a SMB1 romhack.
We did get to see some of the GGO peeps help in Ordinal Scale, but since that was all against an external final boss, the PvP interactions didn’t come up. Which also brings up the prospect of characters being able to mix and match equipment and skills and such in Unital Ring. New combos and exploits to try out! Forget one particular game being OP, it’s a race to see who can come up with the most OP mixed configuration! ALO flyers with grenade launchers, really hammering that air force comparison home?
This is the option they take in Unital Ring. No flying ALO players with grenade launchers, unfortunately… Although reading your comment was very fun. Sounds like an entertaining fanfic idea in the making.
Alice is a cheat in this system. She does not have any bodily needs (except electricity), so she should not have to log out right?
Somehow with the pacing of Accel World and SAO, it is as if Kawahara wanted both to reach climax all together, and, revealing connection between both at the same time from different perspectives. Also this might also the reveal of the endgame for both series, which we can assume is pretty near, while might also reveal some teasers for his next work because, there’s no way he just gonna drop this “universe” he has been building, and there’s still so many irl tech thing that can be fitted into this particular “universe”. Also probably for people with multiple characters (such as Sinon with GGO character and ALO character) will most likely converted to either: 1. a mix of their characters traits, or 2. the one they’re most prominent with.
My guess is Alice and Yui (so far the only known artificial intelligence in UR) will have either a conflict or a matchup with the Cardinal of The Seed itself.
And at some point Kawahara will accomodate the characters of Underworld to UR, since many are considerably well developed (especially after Moon Cadle), somehow.
CMIIW
I need download now
Great review! but going to take a while for me to read all of this, hopefully, it is better.
When I saw this image with Amazon Woman I was instantly like “OMG I wanna marry her”. I hope this feminism in Kawahara’s new SAO arc is actually good, doesn’t end on clothes only, but also tries to avoid harmful themes like women in refrigerator, and that maybe, MAYBE with change in Japanese laws he will finally stop being afraid of saying out loud that Kirito is raging polyamorous bisexual who is in love with many people at once, and Eugeo was one of those people. (My heart broke when I saw tumblr pictures comparisons of Asuna’s death and Eugeo death and Kirito’s reaction to both. Nobody can convince me he isn’t LGBTQ at this point). I cannot wait to see this arc animated, but I wonder how long I will have to wait to actually see that. Maybe quicker will be just starting reading that, than waiting for anime adaptation xD
Ah, and I also wanted to say that I feel your pain. So many people hate SAO, while I really adore it despite it’s flaws (and I am usually very prone to point those flaws out, because media scholar duty) and I really cannot understand the hate. Especially now with Alicization being so friggin well written storyline (not counting some issues like racist dichotomy between sides and a lot of dark skinned people dying). I can see the development and even SAO, despite all its flaws, was interesting story to be told. (Is it bad to say that I hope Amazon Lady won’t die in Unital Ring and that I will finally see some non-hinted representation?) Anyway, wanted to say that I feel the same pain each time someone tried to talk me out of liking SAO and that I am not ashamed that I like SAO and nobody will make me.
Had me until you went into the feminist angle. Nothing is wrong with fan service, sexualizing characters or having a harem of girls. I can understand wanting more from the female characters but there is nothing wrong with the above. The characters can be written however he wants them to be.
You misunderstand. I have no problem with fanservice or harems. I love that shit, and I agree that Kawahara can write what he wants. Just give me the good Silica content. Don’t get so intimidated by the word “feminist”, it ain’t a dirty word
thb I don’t like the way reki was taking the series in alicization… I mean why would he make UW a cyberpunk world?? Also that 200-year-old kirito doesn’t give me good vibes…Is there any chance of a war between humans and “HUMANS”
True but the ending of SAO season 3 was good as of this date but now my alternate universe can be realized with Evil Kirtio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqTsWCknJxU&t=876s
link with your answer Devils go to this time stamp 13:13 .
if you want to know more contact me on Xbox or leave you reply to my comment
Xbox name EGGMAN 1321 or discord name Kiyo#7360
For now I will leave you with a link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO2fIFecyHs
and a name for what will be added to the new SAO universe of mine ( Tiberium ) .
I was just checking if asuna and kirito were still going strong and as i expected they are. Also i wanted to see if alice was still being annoying seeming to want to get with him. I know kirito and asuna are together for the whole thing cos they’re supposed to get married irl at the end of the series (the creator said this) but its hard to like alice when she acts like she did in the finale
Can’t wait for it to be animated.Still,I am interested to know if Alice will still show her romantic affections towards Kirito just like in the two final episodes of Alicization. Still,it would be nice to see the group in a new adventure.
And what do you mean by girls interested on dunking on Kirito?
“Novody really pays attention to Accel World, including myself theyeheydhdhddhhdhdhdhdh”
1. AW is one of the top selling LNs in Japan 25 volumes deep still
2. Then it’s your loss, AW is light years ahed of SAO in quality