At the Sword Art Online: Fulldive 10th-anniversary memorial event held on November 6 at Tokyo Garden Theater, it was announced that the franchise is getting a new original anime film. The teaser video revealed at the event announced that the move will be a completely new work, but nothing more has been detailed.
The event also revealed an animated opening video, which was directed and storyboarded by Hiromu Oshiro at Production I.G. He is also credited for the CG direction, grading, photography, and editing.
Sword Art Online: Fulldive is a 10th-anniversary memorial event for the Sword Art Online anime adaptation that marks the day of the Sword Art Online game’s official launch in fiction.
The event has gathered the voice cast of the series, including Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Haruka Tomatsu, Miyuki Sawashiro, Rina Hidaka, Kanae Itou, Aoi Yuuki, Ai Kayano, Hiroaki Hirata, Hiroki Yasumoto, and Inori Minase. Unfortunately, Nobunaga Shimazaki pulled out from the event a few days earlier after testing positive for Covid-19.
Music artists that perform for the anime also made appearances at the event with a special performance, including Eir Aoi, ASCA, ReoNa, Runa Haruna, and Yuki Kajiura.
▍About Sword Art Online Anime
The anime is based on Reki Kawahara’s Sword Art Online light novel series. ASCII Media Works has been publishing it with abec’s illustrations since 2009, and it currently has 27 volumes with more than 30 million copies available. The same publisher is serializing a spin-off light novel titled Sword Art Online: Progressive, which revolves around the events in Aincrad that were not shown in the original light novel series because of the time skip.
The story is set in the year 2022 when gamers rejoice as Sword Art Online – a VRMMORPG (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) like no other – debuts, allowing players to take full advantage of the ultimate in gaming technology: NerveGear, a system that allows users to completely immerse themselves in a wholly realistic gaming experience. But when the game goes live, the elation of the players quickly turns to horror as they discover that, for all its amazing features, the game is missing one of the most basic functions of any MMORPG – a log-out button. Now trapped in the virtual world of Aincrad, their bodies held captive by NerveGear in the real world, users are issued a chilling ultimatum: conquer all one hundred floors of Aincrad to regain their freedom. But in the warped world of SAO, “game over” means certain death – both virtual and real…
