Updated May 12, 2024 by testing
Gaming concept in an anime? WHAT? We’re not kidding! Yes, there’s an anime called Sword Art Online where the main characters get trapped inside a virtual world or a gaming-world. How would you like that? Imagine getting trapped inside a game? Well, for those who’ve been playing games for a long time, this might be good news. But for those, who have never once played a game, this might be the worst news for them. If you like games then you might as well take a look at upcoming anime games!
Anyways, we only care about our main characters, aka Kirito and Asuna who are trapped inside the gaming world, their sole mission is to clear 100 floors of the game and at the very end, defeat the boss. OOF! These bosses really get on my nerves, they’re overpowered for no reason at all. Since the lives of our characters depend on this game, they have to be super careful to survive.
If you liked the plot of Sword Art Online, you must find out how to watch this anime. We’ve got you covered once again with an accurate watch order. Scroll down to find out the correct way to watch Sword Art Online! Let’s go!
HOW TO WATCH SWORD ART ONLINE?
RELEASE ORDER
T.V SERIES
- Sword Art Online Season 1 (2012)
- Sword Art Online Season 2 (2014)
- Sword Art Online Season 3: Alternative: Gun Gale Online (2018)
- Sword Art Online Season 3 pt. I: Alicization (2018-2019)
- Sword Art Online Season 3 pt. II: Alicization – War of the Underworld (2019-2020)
- Sword Art Online Season 3 pt. III: Alicization – War of the Underworld Part 2 (2020)
MOVIES
- Sword Art Online: Extra Edition (2013)
- Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale (2017)
ONAs
- Sword Art Online Fatal Bullet: The Third Episode – Pilot Ban (2018)
SPECIALS
- Sword Art Online: Sword Art Offline (2013)
- Sword Art Online: Extra Edition (2013)
- Sword Art Online 2: Debriefing (2014)
- Sword Art Online 2: Sword Art Offline 2 (2014)
- Sword Art Online Movie: Ordinal Scale – Sword Art Offline (2017)
- Sword Art Online Fatal Bullet: The Third Episode (2018)
- Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online – Refrain (2018)
- Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of the Underworld Reflection (2018)
- Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of the Underworld Recap (2020)
- Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night (2021)
CHRONOLOGICAL WATCH ORDER (RECOMMENDED)
- Sword Art Online Season 1
- Sword Art Online: Extra Edition
- Sword Art Online Season 2
- Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online
- Sword Art Online Movie: Ordinal Scale
- Sword Art Online Season 3 Pt. I: Sword Art Online – Alicization
- Sword Art Online Season 3 Pt. II: Sword Art Online – Alicization – War of the Underworld
- Sword Art Online Season 3 Pt. III: Sword Art Online – Alicization – War of the Underworld Part 2
PLOT + SUMMARIES
Sword Art Online Season 1
The very first season got our main characters trapped inside a game or a virtual world where they can’t escape unless they accomplish their goals. What’s the goal? The goal is nothing less than to clear 100 floors of this world. Oh, by the way, they also have to defeat the final boss. *goosebumps*
A game is always fair, it has rules and regulations in it. You just have to be smart enough to follow these rules and survive. Three months after the events in the death game, Asuna was held hostage by a spiritual successor of SAO which is “AlFheim Online” aka ALO. In ALO, people assume roles of the fairies. When Kazuto (Kirito) enters the game, he forms up a team with his sister, Suguha “Leafa” Kirigaya, in order to save Asuna from being held hostage.
Let’s get deeper into the game “Sword Art Online” and find out how it actually works? It can be played using a virtual reality console also known as NerveGear, this console was released along with the game SAO. Imagine you’re playing a beta-phase game which hasn’t been finalized just yet. OMG! How thrilling? You wish! Ask Kirito how things were for him in that world. Well, we’ll just see how Kirito adapts to that world. After entering the game, he gets to Aincrad. It is the place where the game takes place. Kirito becomes friends with one of the players named Klein. He also teaches Klein how to fight or defeat a boar.
After a few minutes, Kirito and Klein find out that they are trapped inside the game and can’t log out. The creator of the game, after sometime, says that he removed the option of logging out and how the players can’t leave the game unless they have cleared all the 100 stages and defeated the boss. What would you do if you were Kirito?
Would you be like him and use your brain to clear the stages? Or would you stop playing and wait for your own death? Man, sometimes these gaming concepts become very scary. Isn’t that right? The creator also exposes himself that he wanted to become the God of his own dominion and the only single way to get out of the game is to clear the 100 stages or levels. After one month, 2000 players were defeated.
Kirito attends a meeting held by Diavel who tells that he has found the boss of the first level out of 100. WHEW! Now, the players had to partner up and defeat the boss. Kirito manages to partner with a peculiar girl named Asuna. The very next day, all the players arrive at the boss’ room and battle with him along with his minions. When the health of the boss gets low, Diavel steps up and goes for the finishing attack to defeat the boss. Just like that, when Diavel is about to attack, he’s brutally wounded. Now, what will happen next? Will the players be able to defeat the very first boss in the game? To find out, watch Sword Art Online!
Sword Art Online: Extra Edition
The story of Sword Art Online: Extra Edition takes place many years after the events of Sword Art Online. Kirito meets a lot of people in this edition. He gets to meet Asuna Yuuki, Rika “Lisabeth” Shinozaki, and Keiko “Silica” Ayano at the Sword Art Online Survivor School. In this story, the girls go for a swim at the swimming pool. On the other hand, Kirito goes to the emergency counselling. It turns out that this emergency counselling is actually a trick played by Seijiro Kikuoka.
Seijiro has only one goal: to reuse the means of SAO just to find out about Akihiko Kayaba’s intentions. This single episode will fulfil your swimming cravings and you will get to see cute anime waifus. But what awaits Kirito and his emergency meeting? That’s what we need to be worried about! Isn’t that right? To find out the answers to this mystery, watch Sword Art Online!
Sword Art Online Season 2
With the progress in the game, the season of Sword Art Online keeps on getting more intense. We know that Kirito went inside the game and got stuck inside, right? But did you guys know that he plays another game called Gun Gale Online where he meets another girl named Shino Asada. He has to partner up with this girl in order to enter a tournament where they have to look for a guy who has the ability to kill people in real life by killing their avatar. How intense is that? OOF! This guy is known as the “Death Gun”.
Kirito along with his friends come back to ALO (Alfheim Online) to hunt for the Holy Sword named Excaliber. The owner of this weapon is known as the King of Frost aka Thyrm. They need this sword to restore Jotunheimr city back to its original state. Asuna, on the other hand, decides to join the party of a member of Sleeping Knights known as Yuuki Konno. She asks Asuna to join her for one last quest together. After a while, things get personal and Asuna realizes that Yuuki actually doesn’t have a very long time to live since she’s suffering from a terminal disease.
This season has 24 episodes total and let’s see why things went the way they did! Gun Gale Online is a new game that featured one of the top-ranked players, XeXeeD. In some bar, a guy named Death Gun shoots XeXeeD and that’s how he disconnects from his server. OMG! Is that a new way of logging out of the server? (OH, wait that was dark) Obviously, we know how Death Gun is ending peoples’ lives.
After one month of this incident, we get to see Asuna and Kirito having the time of their lives until a guy from the virtual division comes up and tells them how the XeXeeD guy died in real life. Imagine you’re inside a game from which you cannot log out and on top of all that, a person comes up to you and says that a guy died outside of the game just because his avatar died inside it. Isn’t that far beyond insane? OOF!
How did XeXeeD die? Well, in real life, he got acute heart failure. But we all know the reason behind his death inside the game. It was none other than Death Gun.
Now, everyone must be careful of Death Gun. Death Gun is looking for one of the most powerful characters in the Gun Game Online. Asuna realizes that the vertical structure of SAO represents the axis of time and space. Yes, you need a brain to realize what she’s talking about. Anyways, let’s see if Death Gun gets to meet our MC or not. There’s only one way of finding the answer, watch Sword Art Online! Also, let’s see what other mysteries are embedded inside this anime that needs unfolding.
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online is one of the spin-offs of the anime. It tells us the revival of VR games after the sudden drop due to the events of Sword Art Online where 10,000 people were stuck inside the game and couldn’t log out of their servers. The story of this spin-off revolves around Karen Kohiruimaki who’s just a university student and has a complex when it comes to her height. She starts to play the VR game called Gun Gale Online and this game gives her what she always wanted, a cute, small avatar to play with. Let’s see how things go for Karen Kohiruimaki in this game!
Sword Art Online Movie: Ordinal Scale
The story of Sword Art Online Movie: Ordinal Scale takes place in the year 2026, where Aguma is introduced. It’s quite similar to AR, also known as Augmented Reality, where the player gets to experience real-world objects enhanced through computer generated information. I know this all sounds too complex. However, it might not be very complex for some of the smartypants out there.
Anyways, Asuna, Lisabeth, and Silica want Kirito to play the OS even after hearing that the bosses have appeared. Just like that, Kirito joins Asuna in a fight against the boss who’s known to be a samurai lord at Akihabara. At that location, an idol appears who gives players a buff effect as she sings. Kirito is unable to accomplish his goals since he doesn’t
have real world strength and abilities. Isn’t that a bit scary?
Eiji is another ranked player who helps the group in defeating the boss for good. The very next night, Asuna joins Klein along with another group for a boss fight at Yoyogi park. This all happens as they’re waiting for their one last group member. Let’s see how things go for this team. If you want to know what happened next, watch Sword Art Online!
Sword Art Online Season 3
This is the beginning of Alicization. Kirito, in a VR environment, spends time with his friends named Eugeo and Alice. These three fellows get lost in the boundary of Human Territory which is also known to be the dark territory. Well, Alice ends up falling and accidentally touches this dark territory. Since she broke one of the rules, she has to be executed by the Integrity Knights. Isn’t that too much? Imagine seeing your friend getting executed right in front of you. OOF! Kirito tries his best to save Alice from being taken. On the other hand, Eugeo stands still as if he feels nothing.
When Kirito wakes up in the real world, he has no memory of what had happened. After a while, inside Gun Gale Online, Kirito, Sinon, Asuna, Lisabeth, Silicon, and Klein come across a very suspicious squad who fled after one of their members was taken down. After this battle, Sinon thanks everyone for joining him. In the real world, she invites Kirito and Asuna to an upcoming tournament called BoB Tournament.
Both of them agree. Kirito says that he’s been involved in the testing of a Full-Dive technology called Soul Translator. When Asuna and Kirito go back, they get attacked by someone called Johnny Black. He’s the only survivor from the Death Gun incident who ended up injecting Kirito with poison. OOF!
Kirito also goes back to the underworld meeting Eugeo. However, they have no memories of one another. After helping his friend with the task of chopping the Demon Tree, Kirito gets taken to Eugeo’s village where he finds out that his sword skills are back! Kirito also finds a place to stay and he realizes that he needs to find more and more information about this place before he gets back to the real world.
While our boys were chopping the Demon Tree, Eugeo tells Kirito the reason why Alice was taken away by the Integrity Knights. He also tells him he got the sword from the End Mountains. Thus, he used the sword to cut down the Demon Tree. Late at night, Kirito converses with Alice’s younger sister, Selka, and reveals what he heard about Alice from Eugeo. He’s such a considerate person for clearing things out with Alice’s younger sister. Isn’t that right? After some time, Kirito and Eugeo can’t find Selka. They assumed that she must have gone to the End Mountains to find her sister. Little did she know that she’d be captured by the goblins there. Just like that, Eugeo gets paralyzed due to the fear.
On the other hand, Kirito tries his best to save Eugeo as they fight Goblins together. As the goblin leader is approaching. Eugeo and Kirito are badly wounded. They suddenly get deja vu. Now, our enraged boy, Kirito, decides to step up and brutally kill the goblin leader. Just like that, they save Selka from the goblins. Selka, in return, heals Eugeo’s wounds by transferring some of Kirito’s energy inside Eugeo. During this transfer, Kirito gets a weird hallucination that some woman is waiting for him and Eugeo at the top of a central cathedral. Who could this woman be?
Anyways, Eugeo recovers and he feels like he’s gotten stronger. After seeing Kirito’s swordsmanship, he asks Kirito to teach him how to use a sword. Thus, Kirito trains him and shows him how to cut down the Demon Tree using a sword. Since Eugeo enjoyed swordsmanship, he decided to become a swordsman in the future.
After a while, Kirito and Eugeo leave for the central cathedral hoping to find Alice. Is it Alice from Alice in Wonderland? Or Alice in Borderland? We’ll find out soon. Anyways, Kirito gets poisoned by Johnny Black. He gets taken to the hospital, the doctors let his dear ones know that he’s doing fine. Kikuoka wanted to transfer Kirito to a better place where he could breathe freely and recover. Asuna comes to pay him a visit too but they’re not allowed to see him yet.
With the help of their friends, Asuna tracks down his location but finds out that he must be taken abroad. Asuna contacts many other people since she was genuinely worried about Kirito. Will she be able to see Kirito ever again? To find out, watch Sword Art Online Season 3. A lot of mysteries are yet to unfold, Let’s see what happens next! This unique anime has many unexpected events taking place. So, you should definitely watch it.
MAIN CHARACTERS
Now, we’re going to be talking about some of the main characters in Sword Art Online. So, let’s see what are the special qualities of our main characters and how are their personalities. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Kirigaya Kazuto
Kirigaya Kazuto or Kirito is one of the main characters in Sword Art Online. He’s one of the guys who got stuck inside Virtual Reality. He couldn’t get out of his server and as a result, he had to clear 100 levels of the Sword Art Online game. It was a newly created game, I mean, come on. It’s like he literally tested the game by himself.
Anyways, he’s a great swordsman, his skills are second to none. He absolutely loves helping out others. Even when the game had just started, he helped out a guy. In fact, he taught Eugeo swordsmanship. He’s a kind and cool person whom you can rely on. So, we all surely need a friend like Kirgya Kazuto. Isn’t that right? The chemistry between Kirigaya and Asuna is so cute. It will literally melt your heart! To find out more about this character, you need to watch Sword Art Online!
Yuuki Asuna
Now, we have one of the main characters named Yuuki Asuna. She’s also known as “your infamous waifu”. As soon as she was introduced back in the day, everyone claimed her to be their “Waifu”. She’s surely gorgeous and has a kind heart. Asuna has always been there for Kirito and she loves helping him out. When nobody knew where Kirito was, she got super worried and did her best to find him. As for her abilities, she uses a rapier to stab someone. She’s quite strong and plays Sword Art Online smoothly. If you want to know more about her, watch Sword Art Online!
Sinon or Asada Shino
Sinon is one of the archers. We can use two words to define her. One is calm and the other one is cool. So, yes, she’s calm and cool at the same time. Sinon is quite able since she can use any object by making it through her spell. Imagine having this kind of superpower. Isn’t that crazy? She mostly uses her emotions during the battles and is seen relying on them while fighting others. How cool is that?
Eugeo
Eugeo is one of Kirito’s friends who was quite passionate about becoming a swordsman after seeing Kirito in action. He was taught swordsmanship by Kirito. He’s a warm-hearted individual who has helped Kirito several times. Their friendship is really nice too. He’s very considerate and you can definitely rely on him during battles too!
CONCLUSION
That’s it for Sword Art Online Watch Order. I hope you guys enjoyed reading this blog as much as you enjoyed watching SAO (only if you have watched it). Don’t forget to let us know your thoughts about this anime in the comments down below. Make sure you watch this banger anime. See you guys on the next blog!
