The newest addition to the Sword Art Online franchise, Sword Art Online The Movie –Progressive- Aria of a Starless Night, hit Japanese theaters late last month. However, unlike past iterations, instead of taking us further into the future, this one takes us back to the beginning and the floating castle of Aincrad.
In the broadest sense, Aria of a Starless Night shows us things we have already seen—namely the first days of the death game up through the clearing of the first boss. The same events are more or less covered in the first two episodes of the 2013 Sword Art Online TV anime. However, there is one huge difference between the TV show and the new film: the main character isn’t Kirito. It’s Asuka.
The film’s cold opening happens in the final moments of the Sword Art Online beta test on August 31, 2022—as the strongest beta testers rush towards a boss room to gather the last little bit of information they can before the servers go offline.
The film proper, on the other hand, begins on October 14, 2022 and shows bits and pieces of Asuka’s life—i.e., the family pressure she feels at home, the somewhat superficial friends she has at school, and her relationship with her one true friend, Misumi Tozawa. From there, the film moves on to the launch of Sword Art Online on November 6, 2022 and covers from the first day of play through November 27, 2022—detailing the story of how and why Asuka becomes a solo player.
The back half of the film takes place over the course of a two-day period: December 3 and 4, 2022. It covers the second meeting of Kirito and Asuna, the First Floor Boss Strategy Meeting, and the boss fight the following day.
In general, the first half of the film is largely original—as it focuses on the relationship between Asuka and Misumi, their real lives, and their first few weeks in Sword Art Online. The second half of the film is a combination of scenes from the original anime, and the novel on which the film is based Sword Art Online Progressive Volume 01. However, things aren’t a one-for-one copy as it retains Asuka as the viewpoint character and some events are truncated or reordered—not to mention a few other spoiler-tastic changes I won’t go into here.
Sword Art Online The Movie –Progressive- Aria of a Starless Night was released in Japan on October 30, 2021. It will be released in theaters in the US and Canada on December 3, 2021.
Top image source: アニメ ソードアート・オンライン 公式 on Twitter.
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