Part 2 of my blog post on SAO. Part 1 is here.

The usual caution: SPOILERS AHEAD! I’ll be talking freely about the four narrative arcs depicted in the first two seasons of SAO and the plot of Ordinal Scale.

The first season of SAO was probably the anime series of 2012. Following the success of the light novels, the first season, covering the Aincrad and Fairy Dance arcs, counts 25 episodes: 15 for Aincrad and 10 for Fairy Dance.
In 2014 the second season aired, covering the Phantom Bullet arc – 14 episodes – the Calibur arc – 3 episodes – and the Mother’s Rosario arc – 7 episodes – plus a recap episode at the end of the Phantom Bullet arc.

Things that I bought…

Dynit – the distribution company of SAO for Italy – has released a more “mainstream” version of the Blu-ray box-sets for the first two seasons. In comparison to the already existing sets, each set now cover an entire season, while the existing ones, which are still available as “collectors’ edition”, only cover one arc each, with the exception of the one covering both Calibur and Mother’s Rosario.

The two “mainstream” Blu-ray boxes

The two sets are pretty basic. There are no books, posters or whatever: just the disks. There are five disks for the first season and four disk for the second season. Every disk include, apart for the episodes, Sword Art Offline – essentially an after-show (Omake) – and various interviews with the staff of A-1 Pictures, the animation studio which make (as of today, with Alicization – War of Underworld Pt.2 still airing) SAO.
Each episode has both the Japanese and Italian dub^[1]. Subtitles are available for signs or writings only or for both of them plus dialogues, as usual for a Dynit edition.

At the time of writing, there isn’t a Blu-ray box of the same “mainstream” version covering Alicization; only the “collectors’ edition” is available, but I think it’s just a matter of time before a “complete Alicization” version (or whatever) will be ready, but War of Underworld Pt.2 has to come to an end before it’ll happen.

The Ordinal Scale Blu-ray, always from Dynit, comes with two very nice additions: a theater poster and a booklet containing a lot of information about the plot, the characters, and the crew behind the production, including a series of questions to the original voice actors.

Dynit edition of Ordinal Scale

Interview with Miyuki Sawashiro from the Ordinal Scale’s booklet

Secret Report, it says

On part 3 I will talk about SAO. For real.

[つづく]

¹ fun fact – I’ve never watched SAO with the Italian dub: I’m too accustomed to the Japanese one.

In 2020, for the most part, we stream content from the web. It’s easy, it’s convenient and it’s actually pretty cheap.
We can read mangas or we can watch animes online – many thanks to the official distributors or the scanlators/fansub groups for their work – on various platforms (legally or not, it’s up to you).

And still, by the way, this is what Amazon delivered yesterday:

Things that I bought…

It’s no secret there are some series I really like. One of those is Sword Art Online (from now on, SAO). I’ve seen the first serie back in 2013, and I liked it, but at the time I was too much into Evangelion to really enjoy it as much I did only in the last 3/4 years. Now, as SAO Alicization – World of Underworld pt.2 is airing in Japan – and I’m watching it with just a couple hours of delay on Amazon Prime, already subbed – and I’m waiting for a complete Blu-ray release of the complete Alicization Arc, I got the first two series’ Blu-ray boxes, the movie and, as the novels of SAO Progressive are not available in Italy, the first four tankobons of the manga adaptation.

I can watch every serie of SAO in HD on Amazon Prime – sadly, not the movie tough – so why I bought the Blu-ray boxes? Because this is my way of supporting an author and its work (present and future).
Around 10 years ago I decided that if a serie or movie I really like is or will be available on Blu-ray, I’ll buy it, but I’m not gonna buy DVDs in 2020. I’m currently writing this post on a 4K 32″ computer monitor, where watching a 1080p video is perfectly fine, a 720p video is still enjoyable but a 576p/480p video needs too much upscaling nowadays. This is the reason I haven’t bought the Full Metal Panic serie DVD box when Dynit started selling it.

Ok, and now the usual caution: SPOILERS AHEAD! I’ll be talking freely about the four narrative arcs depicted in the first two seasons (plus Calibur) of SAO and the plot of Ordinal Scale.

Aincrad is probably the most well known narrative arc of the whole SAO franchise and also one of the most loved ones – Asuna quickly getting on the top of everyone’s favourite waifus’ list sure came from the Aincrad arc – so, author Reki Kawahara decided to write a more detailed version of the first two light novels by starting the SAO Progressive project, completely depicting what happened during the two years our beloved characters spent in the game.
If you’ve seen the anime, you’ll have noticed that from episode two to episode five we’re taken from level one up to level fifty-six without knowing what happened in the meantime, like how Asuna joined the Knights of the Blood Oath or how Kirito gained his 14500 HP he claimed when helping Silica in episode four.
SAO Progressive tells us all the details, but in doing so changes the story quite a bit. The SAO Progressive‘s novels aren’t published in Italy, but the manga adaptation has been published this month, the first four tankobons being released in a very nice box by J-Pop (which is the name of the publisher. Yeah, the same as the musical genre, deal with it).

The first four volumes all have Asuna on the covers, and the box as well: nice!

As I wrote, there are some differences in the story, as always when dealing with different adaptations of the same concept. From the anime, we know that Asuna and Kirito didn’t see each other for a while after defeating Illfang the Kobold Lord together (they only met sporadically when planning large-scale attacks to defeat some bosses).
In the manga there are both differences in small and large details, from Asuna taking a bath in Kirito‘s bathroom (which seems to be one of the many “Oh-Yeah!” moments in the manga), to both of them defeating the boss of the second level together.
The drawings are so like the anime (having the same character designer surely helps!), sometimes I was thinking of looking at some storyboard or key-frame from the serie rather than reading a manga.
The italian edition kept (as usual) the original reading order. Translations were done correctly and I think are on the spot even with some English term differing from, for instance, the English translation (e.g. Asuna is called “Fencer” instead of “Flash”, which could be totally fine as she use a rapier, but I have yet to understand if it’ll be subject to change in the future, as I don’t know when Asuna gained her “Flash” nickname – “Saetta” in Italian, which translate literally to “flash of lightning”).

The hard part is when you consider what will be the final volumes count. The first four volumes cover the first and second level of Aincrad; as there are seventy-five levels to beat (should have been one hundred, but we all know how it went), that means we’re looking at about a hundred and fifty volumes just for the progression of the game, bu we should account for the various extras, like the quest with Silica, the one with Lisbeth, the murder-solving part, all the Yui-related events, Kirito joining the Knights of the Blood Oath and the Kuradeel matter… all things considered, we are probably looking at a hundred and seventy volumes long manga. At a rate of one volume every two months (it’ll never go this fast. Ever), should be finished in just a little less than thirty years.
Probably Sadamoto’s manga adaptation of Neon Genesis Evangelion will be a matter of “just a couple years” in hindsight.

[つづく] – (Aug. 21, 2020) Part 2 is here.