Characters / Sword Art Online - Asuna Yuuki

Sword Art Online Main Character Index
Main series: Major Characters (Kazuto Kirigaya, Asuna Yuuki, Shino Asada, Eugeo, Alice Zuberg) | Aincrad | Alfheim Online | Gun Gale Online | Underworld (Integrity Knights, Dark Territory) | Unital Ring | Antagonists (Laughing Coffin, Nobuyuki Sugou) | Bosses | Others
Alternative Gun Gale Online Characters: Team LPFM | Team SHINC | Team MMTM | Others
Video Game Continuity | Gameverse Characters (Gameverse Main Characters) | Mobile Game Exclusives

This page details tropes for Asuna from Sword Art Online.

Note: Unmarked spoilers ahead.^note Especially from the web novels. If you're starting the anime, do not read this page!

Asuna Yuuki / Asuna (SAO, ALO, GGO, OS, UW, UR) / Titania, the Queen of Fairies (ALO) / Erika (ALO) / Creation Goddess Stacia (UW) / Star Queen (UW)

Voiced by: Haruka Tomatsu (Japanese), Cherami Leigh (English), Alejandra Delint (Latin American Spanish), Eva Bau (European Spanish)

^{Click here to see Asuna's Titania avatar}

^{Click here to see Asuna's ALO avatar}

^{Click here to see Asuna's Ordinal Scale avatar}

^{Click here to see Asuna's GGO avatar}

^{Click here to see Asuna as Stacia}

^{Click here to see Asuna's Unital Ring avatar}

"I don't want to lock myself in a room at the Town of Beginnings and slowly rot away. I'd rather stay the way I am until the last moment. Even if a monster beats me and I die... I won't lose to this game nor this world, no matter what."

The female lead and general Deuteragonist of the series as a whole as well as the central protagonist of Mother's Rosario. In SAO, she is the sub-leader of the frontline guild "Knights of Blood." Her speed and proficiency with a rapier is so advanced that she has earned the moniker of "The Lightning Flash". She would grow to fall in love with Kirito, where the two would marry in-game while dating in real life.

Following the clearing of SAO, Asuna became trapped in Alfheim Online by her corrupt fiancée, Nobuyuki Sugou, as Titania the Queen of the Fairies. Upon being rescued by Kirito and returning to the real world, Asuna decides to continue playing ALO with her friends but this time as a proper player with a new avatar.

After Kirito gets trapped in the Underworld, Asuna tracks down the Rath headquarters and eventually dives in herself using the super account, Stacia the Goddess of Creation.

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A-E

• The Ace: Asuna has a reputation for being the best at everything. On top of being drop-dead gorgeous, a gaming prodigy (see Inexplicably Awesome below), an exceptional leader (which earned her the second most important position in SAO - the vice-commander of the strongest guild), and being Famed In-Story (a celebrity on SAO with her position, skill and Dude Magnet status), she's also an academically gifted student who is top of her class, and one of the most athletic characters other than Leafa. She's also an Ojou that came from a rich influential family and a Supreme Chef (one of the few capable of creating tasty foods inside SAO).
• Action Duo: In Progressive, she's the Action Survivor to Kirito's Action Hero, having less experience with MMOs but compensating with her skill with a Rapier and aptitude for quickly learning the mechanics.
• Action Girlfriend: The first volume starts with her convincing him to join her to look into the most recent dungeon, which then sets the events of that volume's plot in motion. Incidentally, it also leads to their Relationship Upgrade.
• Action Mom: To Yui, as she is both a loving parent and a strong warrior.
• Action Survivor: At the beginning of SAO she was even more of one than Kirito, who at least has experience with MMOs to help him through SAO. Asuna has absolutely no experience with gaming of any kind, even naming her Avatar with her real name, and therefore has to rely on Kirito and Argo to learn the mechanics and had to get by with her surprising gift for Rapier combat.
• Act of True Love:
  • Instead of logging out with Alice, Asuna chooses to log Alice out on her own and stay in the Underworld, knowing that Kirito wouldn't make it to the alter before the Time Acceleration reactivated, and that he would be stuck in the Underworld for 200 years as a result.
  • Rather than one single act her absolute refusal to let Yuuki just fade away is a long series of these of the non-romantic variety, with her repeatedly going completely out of her way to make Yuuki's last few months as amazing as possible and then going on to more or less dedicate her own life to Yuuki's memory.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Goes from auburn/brunette in the novels to strawberry-blonde in the anime.
  • Her Undine ALO Avatar has blue hair and hazel eyes in the web novels, but cyan hair and eyes in other adaptations.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • The Manga adaptation of Progressive performs something of a Call-Forward to her duel with Yuuki in Mother's Rosario by adding a subplot where she gets the Martial Arts Skill, allowing her to use a Sword and Fist fighting style with her Rapier, as displayed during the Floor 2 Boss.
• Adaptational Jerkass: The Progressive retelling tones down her Nice Girl traits for being a whole lot more incredulous and exasperated by the events around her with bits of being a Deadpan Snarker and some smugness along the way, especially if it's hijinks involving Kirito. Progressive being a prequel to volume 1, this fits with her character arc for SAO because she was indeed more focused on clearing the game no matter what, at first.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • In the original web novels, Asuna was a hell of a lot more ruthless when lives were on the line, to the point of killing Kuradeel outright rather than hesitating to deal the killing blow in the light novels (which meant Kirito had to do it instead).
  • In the Progressive Novels, where the Illfang boss originates, Asuna comes off less as the Nice Girl we know her as and is generally more snarky and exasperated with Kirito's antics, fitting with her treating escaping SAO more seriously during the "Murder Case in Town Arc". In the anime however, she mainly just comes off as quiet and is shown to have a sweet side when she smiles in amusement at how she didn't notice that she could have seen Kirito's name if she just looked at her Health Bar since they were in a party.
• Adoptive Peer Parent: She and Kirito essentially adopted the AI Yui as their daughter and they're both still teenagers.
• All Amazons Want Hercules: When she initially tells Lisbeth that the guy she has a crush on is a more powerful player than herself, Lisbeth remarks that means he is on a very short list. Although Kirito maintains that he is not across-the-board better than her at combat.
• All for Nothing: Her dream version's attempt to get hitched with Kirito in "Holding Hands With You" proves to be this since, even in the confines of Kirito's dreams, ALO doesn't feature a marriage system, and there's a massive system error in the epilogue as a result.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • To Nobuyuki Sugou. While not as pronounced as Kirito, there is unlikely to be a person on the face of the Earth who Asuna despises more than her ex-fiancee. First off she is kidnapped by Sugou on her way of logging out of SAO, where she ends up trapped and caged as his prisoner, forced into revealing clothing for his perverted fantasies. When Kirito comes to rescue her, Sugou arrives and incapacitates them both, stabs Kirito through the back with his own sword with the pain absorber off to force him to watch, then subjects Asuna to a Shameful Strip while chained up and comes close to raping her. He also gloats that he'll use mind control to force her to fall in love and marry him.
  • To Vassago/PoH. As the vice-commander of the Knights of the Blood Oath and the Number Two Big Good in Aincrad, this puts her in direct opposition to PoH the leader of the Laughing Coffin murder guild. Like most of the Assault Team, Asuna is very bitter at PoH for the sheer number of deaths the man has been responsible for. On PoH's side, the very sight of Asuna in the Underworld is able to peak his interest to dive back in and hunt both her and Kirito down, wanting to kill them above all else.
• Arc Hero: While she shared the limelight with Kirito in the Aincrad arc, she takes central focus in the Mother's Rosario arc and replaces Kirito as The Protagonist while he takes a back seat.
• Armor-Piercing Question: During the Mother's Rosario arc, she asks Kyouko if she's ashamed of her humble origins as the daughter of farmers. Kyouko understandably loses her cool at that.
• Attempted Rape: Falls victim to this during the climax of ALO. Sugou, as his avatar ALO Oberon, attempts to molest Asuna in front of an impaled-on-the-ground Kirito, before the latter frees himself, obtains administrator rights from Kayaba's "digital ghost", and beats the crap out of Oberon.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: As the sub-leader of the "Knights of the Blood Oath".
• Badass Adorable: Hard to imagine the vice-commander of "The Knights of Blood" going Tsundere towards our hero? Just watch Season 1 Episode 5. She's also one of the most powerful VRMMO players ever known.
• Badass in Distress: During the early part of the ALO arc, she was trapped in the ALO virtual reality by her then-fiance Sugou, who kept her locked in a cage in the World Tree with various restrictions. She came very close to freeing herself, and her breakout attempt scored her an admin card that she dropped for Kirito and Yui, albeit unknowingly at the time; without this, they would've had no way to access the World Tree's upper levels and find her.
• Bag of Spilling: After a new game is formed in Unital Ring, Asuna loses all of the skills she learned in the previous arcs... except for Yuuki's OSS.
• Bathing Beauty: In Sugary Days 16.8 she takes a bath in their Floor 22 log cabin in Aincrad. When Kirito joins her, she impresses upon him the importance of daily bathing as they comment on all the subtle differences between how the sensation of water feels in the real world versus how it's rendered in Aincrad.
• Battle Couple: With Kirito, especially during the Aincrad arc. They show an uncanny understanding of each other in battle, and coordinate their movements perfectly.
• The Beastmaster: In Unital Ring, she ends up taming a Long-billed Giant Agamid, which appears to be a hybrid between a dinosaur and a platypus, that she calls Aga.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Asuna is one of the most attractive characters in the series, even being considered the World's Most Beautiful Woman back in SAO, and is also among the most noble and kindest. When she logs into the Underworld as the Stacia, Alice notes that everyone would have believed she actually was Stacia if she decided to act like it just because of her beauty alone.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: When Kazuto wakes up from full-dive after 2 years, he's frail and malnourished, with all his muscles atrophied. However when Asuna wakes up she looks pretty much the same as she always does. It's justified in that Asuna and Kazuto were in different hospitals, with Asuna's family being rich and able to afford a better hospital which was able to provide more advanced care for her.
• Best Friend: Lisbeth send to be one for her, being her oldest and closest friend in SAO and the one she relates to the most due to the two being of similar age.
• Beware the Nice Ones: If you fall into her good side, you'll see she is a really sweet girl. However, anger her and you'll be cut in half before you even see her coming.
• Beyond the Impossible:
  • About halfway through SAO, Asuna runs faster than the dexterity speed limit allows in time to rescue Kirito.
  • She stands up — despite unbreakable in-game paralysis — and takes Kayaba's fatal strike, dying (in-game), but saving Kirito. She recovers. Kayaba himself comments that this is impossible by the rules of the game; the rules that he coded. Power of Love? Yes. Reality Warper? Maybe.
  • In GGO, her touch also reminds Kirito that he has a handgun, not just a lightsaber. Despite the fact that he's in a game, and she's in the real world. Though this one isn't too far-fetched as based on what we've learned about Fluctlight, and the fact that Amuspheres (like Kirito was using) are less-powerful and don't block 100% of nerve signals. Yui even implies that Kirito would be able to detect the warmth of her hand even in-game.
• Big Good: In the non-canon Hollow Fragment game, she ends up leading the Knights of Blood and the rest of the raid team due to Heathcliff glitching out and disappearing.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Mother's Rosario arc briefly hints at this, as not only does she have a very strict mother and a father who's out of touch with his family, but all her various relatives are competing with each other and used to be with her, until she was trapped in SAO for two years.
• Birds of a Feather: One of the reasons she gets together with Kirito is that the two are very alike. Both of them are the strongest players in SAO, both have cases of Chronic Hero Syndrome, both act as an older brother or sister to other players, both are strong believers in each other and refuse to give up on hope, and both have similar thought patterns. Asuna once remarks that she and Kirito were so similar that it was like she married herself.
• Blood Knight: Implied. In ALO, Asuna earned her title of "Berserk Healer" for her tendency to leave the healing to another mage while she herself joins the fray, rapier in hand. This is backed up by narration in "The Day After", where during the fight against Wadjet the Flaming Serpent in New Aincrad, she was tempted to whip out her rapier join the others in attacking her, but held back due to being the only mage at the time.
• Braids of Action: A circular braid around her head known as a Plait Crown; very Lady of War.
• Brainy Brunette: Asuna isn't just a good fighter but a very dedicated academic student in real life. Raised by an upperclass family, Asuna had high expectations from her family to perform well, going to prestigious private schools and had very little time to have fun. It wasn't after the SAO incident that she finally gained a love for VR gaming and dedicated a lot of her time to having fun with her friends.
• Breakout Character: While Kirito is The Hero, Asuna is easily the more popular character and her being a strong female lead was in part what drove the initial success of the series. Despite her detractors, Asuna is still widely considered to be one of the most influential anime characters in The New '10s, and quite possibly the most iconic Sword Art Online character.
  • Though her roles in the Fairy Dance and Phantom Bullet arcs were fairly less than the original SAO arc, Asuna got more time to shine with the Mother's Rosario's arc, where Asuna is given her own arc and takes over as The Protagonist from Kirito, while she herself is given a lot of backstory and Character Development. Subsequent arcs continue to have Asuna retain focus, such as Ordinal Scale where she initially overshadowed Kirito or the Alicization arc where the story is simultaneously told from Kirito and Asuna's perspectives.
  • She's the character most likely to be featured in games aside from Kirito (sometimes even over Kirito). She has an app all to herself called "Wake Me Up Asuna" where she serves as a digital assistant. She was also chosen to be part of FOVE's VR experience where players can meet Asuna, which Haruka Tomatsu took part in. Asuna was also used to promote the Monster Strike crossover with Haruka Tomatsu dubbing over footage from the anime to advertise the game.
• Bully Hunter: Just like her husband, she hates those who victimize the weak. When she sees some rogue players in SAO trying to steal "tax money" from some kids, she doesn't hesitate in teaching them a lesson.
• Call-Forward: In Integral Factor, Asuna starts showing signs of leadership on Floor 11 by strategical planning out how to deal with the Floor Boss. Kirito remarks she would make an excellent guild leader.
  • In her opening moments spent in Aincrad as shown by the Aria of A Starless Night Motion Picture, Asuna speaks to an NPC with her characteristic respectful and kind manners that she shows people in general, as a foreshadowing of how she would regard and treat A.I like her daugther Yui and the denizens of the Underworld as real human beings.
• Calling the Old Woman Out: When she finds out that her mother tried to use a New Year's celebration as an excuse to play matchmaker for another Arranged Marriage with the son of a banking family, Asuna is anything but pleased and calls Kyouko out on it. When her mom tries to force the issue and say Asuna should respect her decisions, Asuna retorts that Kyouko also tried to set her up with Sugou Nobuyuki, and look how that turned out. Given Sugou is a sore spot for Kyouko, she unsurprisingly asks Asuna not to mention his name again and disagrees with her dating Kazuto, at which point Asuna has had enough and walks out on the conversation, but not before giving her an Armor-Piercing Question about Kyouko's dead parents.
• Career Versus Man: Played with. Her mother expects her to marry a man wealthy enough so she can have the stability necessary to have a career of her own without financial risks, which is implied to be what she did. Asuna on her part, does want a career of her own, but also be with the man she loves.
• Character Development:
  • Starts off as a lonely girl who is distressed over being trapped in a VR world and not knowing the first thing about gaming. After the Time Skip she's established as the vice commander of the top guild, being a strong leader and very assertive in getting her way.
  • The biggest one occurs in the Mother's Rosario arc. After the events in Aincrad, she discovers she doesn't have the same self-confidence in the real world as she has inside VR. Something that holds her back, specially in her relationship with her mother. Her friendship with Yuuki allows her to overcome her insecurities and mature as a person.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • In Volume 1 her Action Girl traits were toned down, making her Tsundere traits stand out more. However, as the series marches on, her Action Girl persona takes the forefront (with the exception of during the ALFheim arc).
  • The anime adaptation got hit pretty hard because of this in the first season. Since later volumes tell events from the Aincrad arc in a non-linear fashion, but the anime tells them in chronological order, Asuna's characterization flip-flops a bit. For example, in episode 11, Asuna shows that she is afraid of ghosts. However, previously in episodes 5 and 6 the story also involves the possibility of ghosts, and yet she doesn't even flinch. That's because while the events of episode 11 were originally told on volume 2 of the light novel series, the events of episodes 5 and 6 were told in volume 8.
• Chef of Iron: She's an extremely skilled swordswoman, and has mastered her Cooking skill. She is thus very handy with a kitchen knife.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • She has shades of this from time to time, though it's understandable considering how many women are around her boyfriend. One example is in episode 19 of season 2, when she finds out that the mysterious warrior challenging people to a duel wasn't a man as she envisioned, but a girl. She then gets mad at Kirito and thinks he lost on purpose because of that.
  • She also gets jealous at Alice to the point where both of them are exchanging Death Glares at each other at the end of Alicization after she saw the latter attempting to make advances on Kirito by hugging him tightly while riding in his motorcycle.
  • In Hollow Fragment she gets huffy whenever there's the slightest hint that Kirito has gotten too close to another girl. Lisbeth or Silica making moves on Kirito will cause her to lash out, while she's immensely unhappy with Kirito becoming close friends with Strea and Philia out of the blue. All of them are still friends and she's quick to be friendly to Philia, for instance, in their first meeting (after Philia says she's not interested in Kirito, of course).
• Clothing Damage:
  • When a certain character (Sugou) rips off her top with the intention of raping her in front of Kirito.
  • Happens literally in "Accel World VS Sword Art Online", when she and Lisbeth come in contact with a mace made of a rare mineral that destroys armor, and both of them end up falling on top of each other without a stitch on.
• Color Motif: She's almost always dressed in white inside the virtual world. Red is usually her secondary color, though in ALO it's switched for blue because she is an undine there.
• Combat Medic: Her ALO build; as an Undine healer, she hasn't forgotten how to use her rapier. More than once she's switched from healing to taking down the level boss, earning her the rather embarrassing nickname of "Berserk Healer".
• Combat Pragmatist: In her duel against Yuuki, she's not above cheap-shotting her with a gut punch.
• Coming of Age Story: This is her development in the Mother's Rosario arc. She becomes a much more mature and self-assured person at the end.
• Companion Cube: After Asuna got a Wind Fleuret on the First Floor, she quickly grew attached to the Rapier, being reluctant to replace it when Kirito informs her that it'll probably lose viability around Floor 3, instead melting it into ingots and using it to make her Chivalric Rapier under Kirito's advice^note  He told her about when he faced a similar dilemma with his first mountain bike when he outgrew it and needed a new one, to which the bike shop owner simply removed the crank bolt and put it on his new bike so it'll "carry it's soul"., with her repeating the process to create "Wintry Stroke", and finally her signature "Lambent Light".
  • She's also shown to be absolutely devastated whenever she ends up losing it, the first time as the "Wind Fleuret as a result of the Weapon Upgrade Scam, and later on as the "Chivalric Rapier" after it's stolen by a Sly Shrewman on Floor 5, though she recovers a bit quicker in the latter case.
  • The Progressive anime films adds an extra layer to this despite her getting it later, as in it, Asuna gets the Wind Fleuret from Mito during the Illfang fight.
• Composite Character:
  • In-universe. Her Unital Ring avatar looks similar to her Undine account, but with the trademark Pointy Ears from ALO being replaced with human ears like in SAO.
  • Two Downplayed examples in the anime film of "Scherzo of Deep Night".
    • In the original, Shivata got caught in the jaws of Fuscus when the group attempted a tactical retreat, necessitating that the group find and attack the boss' weakpoint to release him. The film looks like it's about to go in the same direction, only for Asuna to push him out of the way and get caught instead.
    • In the films climax, instead of going alone to grab them more drinks, Kirito is accompanied by Asuna to get them, leading to them both being ambushed by PoH. As a result, she ends up being the one to call PoH's bluff of them not being in a safe zone and his dagger being coated in Level 5 Poison, in part thanks to the pendent Mito gave her which grants a poison resistance, giving her the confidence to call the bluff.
• Cool Big Sis: She acts this way to most younger characters, particularly towards Lisbeth and Silica online and in real life, though Suguha and Sinon aren't excluded. She definitely acts as this towards Yuuki, who calls her "sis." The only younger character she isn't this towards is Kirito; around him and him alone she assumes the hidden persona of a sweet and vulnerable little sister, despite being a full year and seven days older than her husband.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: When the 21-30th floors of Aincrad were opened in ALO, Asuna, her friends and fifty other players rushed right to the floor boss, where they watched in awe as Asuna single-handedly took out the boss, kicked it to the side, and rushed onward to the 22nd floor. The reason was to purchase the small wooden house in the middle of the forest, the same house herself and Kirito briefly lived in, back in SAO.
• Custom Uniform of Sexy: A rare case where it was customized by the other members of her guild. They guilt-tripped her into wearing it due to how much it cost.
• Cuteness Proximity:
  • In The Day Before she's immediately enamoured by Toto, the canine quest NPC for the "Three Treasures of the Wicked Witch of the West" quest, wanting to pet him even when Kirito tries to stop at the risk of it being trap, and using her (correct) deduction that he's related to the flying log cabin as an excuse to pet and cuddle him. She also holds him for the majority of the quest, even while fighting. Kirito outright states she was suffering a Charmed Status.
  • In the Progressive manga, she's immediately enamoured by the Wolf Handler's pet wolf after it barks and wags it's tail like a dog, giddily petting it and later washing it herself when it barges into her and Kizmel's bath.
  • One event in Millennium Twilight has her petting Sinon's ears and tail with a lot more enthusiasm that Sinon would have liked, especially with how they're given real sensations.
• Damsel in Distress: In the Fairy Dance arc, she is locked in a cage within Alfheim Online by the Big Bad, who happens to be the Game Master (so she couldn't merely log off) and rescuing her is the catalyst for the arc.
• Damsel out of Distress: During Fairy Dance, she was no idle damsel. Despite knowing that she was in the hands of a man with full power over the world, complete access to her real body, and willing to use his power at the drop of a hat, she pretended to be subdued long enough to make him drop his guard, memorized the passcode to get out of her cage, and fought with everything she had to either log out or at least gain a weapon that could be used to fight back. It's true that she relied on Kirito, but both had relied on the other several times in the past, and since she was carefully monitored after her escape attempt, she was given literally no chance to do anything else.
• Declaration of Protection: She promises to protect Kirito after saving him from Kuradeel's murder attempt.
• Defiant Captive: When she was Sugou's captive in ALO, he asked for her love. She said he'd have to make due with her "disgust and hatred".
• Defrosting Ice Queen: In the early days of SAO, Asuna was very cold and distant, taking being trapped in a death game very hard. She approached the game with a very disciplined manner and was concerned only with leveling up and clearing floors. Over time being with Kirito helps her to mellow out into a Nice Girl.
• Demoted to Satellite Love Interest: Zigzagged. She starts as a badass, give-no-fucks Action Girl and one of the most powerful and well-known players in SAO, who does slowly soften overtime as her relationship with Kirito goes on; to a Badass in Distress in ALO; a supporting character in GGO outside being Kazuto's girlfriend; gets major focus in the Calibur arc; becomes The Protagonist in Mother's Rosario; then the narration is split between Kazuto's adventure in Rath's secret Underground server there and Asuna's search for him in Alicization.
• Deuteragonist:
  • In the Aincrad arc, to the point where her and Kirito's relationship supersede the arc's main plot for a time. Even more so in Progressive where she and Kirito both share the spotlight and she sometimes takes over the POV.
  • Even more significantly in the Mother's Rosario arc where she actually takes over the role of main character while Kirito takes a backseat.
  • In the Alicization arc she ends up being the tritagonist, with the story once again being told from two perspectives: from Kirito trapped in the Underworld with Eugeo and Alice, and from Asuna in the real world trying to find Kirito.
• Determinator: During her duel against PoH in the Underworld. Despite being so weaken that she could barely stand up, and after a little bit of encouragement from Yuuki's spirit/memory, not only does she regain her strength, but to totally wipes the floor with PoH using Mother's Rosario. And although PoH still manages to survive thanks to his sword draining the energy from the deceased Flughtlights, Asuna keeps going until she physically can't move anymore. And even then she still manages to reach for Kirito before he snaps out of his Angst Coma.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Near the end of the Aincrad arc, she dies in Kirito's arms after taking a fatal blow for him in the final battle. She gets better once Heathcliff is defeated but remains trapped in virtual reality due to Sugou's manipulations, triggering the Fairy Dance arc.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Her speed, both attack and movement. In VRMMORPGs, you can concentrate to speed up attacks significantly. However, if you do it even slightly incorrectly (which gets more and more likely the more you are trying to speed up the strike), you cancel the attack and get frozen for a split second. By the time Asuna first meets Kirito, she (as a rookie) has faster attacks that even he does. Similar rules (though usually without a possible freeze penalty) apply to movement, and Asuna has one of the highest movement speeds of any SAO player.
  • Her cooking skill in SAO is maxed out. It's very difficult to max out any skill and cooking is non-combat, which makes it even more difficult. Even someone like Kirito, who spends all his waking hours fighting, only has a couple fighting skills maxed out. This means she can eat like a princess every day, with common ingredients, while other players have the bland fare sold by NPCs.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In Volume 7, she's not exactly happy about being pitied by her cousins, knowing that it's in large part because they no longer consider her a rival to them in academics.
• Doting Parent: Towards Yui. To Asuna, Yui-chan is her sweet little angel and the greatest gift she could have ever asked for. Ever since Kirito developed a Mobile app that allows her to maintain contact with Asuna in real life, mother and daughter have become practically inseparable online and offline. In the Extra Edition, Rika even teasing says Asuna is this trope despite being a teenager, which Asuna playfully takes as a compliment.
• Dude Magnet: In SAO, she says she has received many confessions and proposals from guys. She also has two stalkers.
  • In "The Day After" during the fight with Wadjet the Flaming Serpent, Liz brings up how guys would always approach Asuna whenever they hung out in town back in SAO after the leader of a party they're fighting with is accused of hitting on her by his friends.
• Dynamic Entry: Asuna appears, practically out of nowhere, running slightly faster than the system's speed cap, and knocks the player-killer who had paralyzed and was slowly killing Kirito into the far wall.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Aside from the opening and ending credits, Asuna had a blink-and-miss-it cameo in Episode 1, where she is seen in the crowd listening to Kayaba's tutorial.
• Earn Your Title:
  • Lightning Flash: A rapier in one hand without a shield in the other is fast enough to kick a whole lot of ass, and she's no slouch with her feet, either. At one point, she briefly overcomes the system speed cap to save Kirito.
  • Berserk Healer: Take a shot every time she asks another healer in her party "Can I leave the healing to you?"
• Embarrassing Nickname: She's not a big fan of her "Berserk Healer" nickname. When she loses her magic skill after Unital Ring begins, she gladly relinquishes the title when Kirito teases her about it.
  • A Running Gag in the "Holding Hands With You" event in Rising Steel is all of her and Kirito's (player) opponents for the dress parts referring to her as Berserk Healer, to which she politely asks them to not call her that as an afterthought.
• Emergency Weapon: After Kirito got poisoned by Johnny Black and got sent to the Underworld, Asuna took to carrying around a multi-tool with a two-inch knife in it for the sake of convenience, and so she can protect Kirito if a similar incident threatens to occur. This causes Kirito some concern out of fear that she could be arrested for excessive self-defence, but she refuses to budge on the matter.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Played for Drama as at least two girls are implied to hold romantic feelings for Asuna, Mito is all but outright stated to be a lesbian with her being clearly jealous of Kirito's growing closeness to Asuna, while Yuuki's Pseudo-Romantic Friendship with Asuna seems slightly but noticeably less "pseudo" on Yuuki's side, assuming that the implications are in fact true, the pair never really act on their feelings due to the Incompatible Orientation, and in Yuuki's case the fact that she only had a few months left to live and didn't want to put Asuna through any unnecessary pain.
• Everyone Can See It: Nearly everyone can see that Kirito and Asuna are an item long before they realize their feelings for themselves.

F-J

• Fading Away: Happens when Asuna breaks free of admin paralysis and takes a blade meant for Kirito. Unlike most players who have the death animation instantly playing, Asuna first starts to fade having time to tell Kirito she was sorry before finally going out with a smile.
• Famed In-Story: She's a celebrity in SAO for being the prestigious vice-commander of the strongest guild, the second strongest player in the game with the moniker "Lightning Flash" due to her speed, as well as being a rare female player. In fact during the Aincrad arc she was even more famous than Kirito, with virtually everybody in SAO having heard about her.
• Fan Disservice: Sugou strips and molests her right in front of Kirito during Fairy Dance's climax, making it one of the few instances where her nigh-nudity is not played for titillation.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Both in the game, and real life, she's a fantastic cook who is also feminine.
• First Girl Wins: Asuna is the first of the many girls in Kirito's (virtual) life, and the only one to win his affections. While Sachi was possibly Kirito's first love, he actually met Asuna first.
• Fountain of Youth: Happens in the Memory Defrag event "Asuna's Great Adventure", where she gets hit by a monster's debuff that turns her avatar into a child. She gets the child treatment from all her friends, which greatly annoys her. It also makes her ''think'' like a child, where she hates everyone treating her like a kid and tries to act tough, while being overconfident in her abilities and not thinking rationally.
• Fragile Speedster: Apparently enforced by SAO's engine; while grilling Kirito about not using a shield with his one-handed sword, she mentions that she doesn't use one because it slows down her rapier attacks. In other words, a rapier-wielder has to choose between attack speed and a defensive tool, and Asuna chose speed.
• Friend to All Children: She has unconditional kindness towards young children, as shown by her interactions with the charges of the orphanage, Silica, Yuuki and of course, her daughter Yui.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Defied. In Progressive on Floor 5 when Argo challenges her to a mock duel in the baths, Asuna asks if she can wear a swimsuit, and even insists on making one for Argo before they start.
• Gamer Chick: Played with. She's one of the rare female players trapped in SAO, but she was never actually a gamer prior to this and was just trying out virtual reality for fun. But being in SAO gave her a new love of gaming and once she's back in the real world she's all too keen to continue gaming with her friends.
• The Gift: Unlike many of the players trapped in SAO, Asuna never had any prior gaming experience. Yet despite being a newbie, she somehow has impossibly fast speed and reflexes, eventually becoming the second strongest player of SAO alongside Kirito. Asuna must either have a natural talent for VR games, or applied the same mentality she had towards academics to SAO or maybe both.
• Girly Bruiser: She's feminine and more than a few times she's taken down foes Kirito couldn't handle.
• The Glomp: Gives one to Argo when they reunite in Unital Ring.
• A God I Am Not: As Goddess of Creation Stacia, Asuna dislikes it when the Underworld residents refer to her as a god, instead insisting she is a human just like them.
• Godiva Hair: When Sugou rips her top off, her hair still conveniently acts as a censor.
• Godlike Gamer: While not to the extent of Kirito, Asuna is also deemed to have The Gift when it comes to VR gaming. She is shown to possess impossibly high speed even back when she was a complete newbie, with Kirito feeling she was a natural despite the fact she lacked the most fundamental knowledge about the game interface. When she actually set her mind to it, she easily became the second strongest player in all of SAO after Kirito.
• Go-Go Enslavement: Her outfit as Titania is pretty revealing. Sugou was probably the one who designed it that way.
• Good Is Not Soft: She might be the nicest girl around, but if she has to get her hands dirty in order to protect those she cares about, she doesn't even flinch.
• Good Parents: She and Kirito are this to Yui. They shower Yui with love, always try to make time with her, does everything to keep her safe, and all-in-all their little girl feels she has the best parents in the world.
• Go Out with a Smile: In the final battle of the Aincrad arc, she dies smiling to Kirito after Taking the Bullet for him. Fortunately for her, Heathcliff's defeat and subsequent deletion of the Aincrad server brought her back from imminent death.
• Gratuitous English: While infiltrating Rath as Mayumi Reynolds, Asuna speaks in English because Mayumi Reynolds is an American student.
• Guile Hero: Not as prominent as her husband, but she has her moments.
  • In the Progressive Manga, she, Argo and Agil planned out a Batman Gambit to force the Legend Braves into confessing their part in Upgrade Scam so all the blame won't go the Nezha and prevent any punishment PKs, since they'd be more reluctant to kill an entire group of players. As Kirito points out however, there's no way any of them could have planned on Joe trying to accuse Nezha and the Braves of Accidental Murder, which is only saved by Lind's quick thinking.
  • When she loses her Chivalric Rapier in the Floor 5 catacombs to a Sly Shrewman, she attempts to get it back by dropping junk items she has in her inventory on the Floor to bait any Sly Shrewman to come out, then killing it to see if she gets the one who has it. Later on, when she stumbles upon Morte meeting with an accomplice, they happen to kill the Shrewman and claim her rapier. She manages to get it back by screaming loudly, causing them to drop the rapier in surprise so it can get stolen by a Sly Shrewman, which she then immediately jumps in to kill, getting her precious Rapier back.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Her avatar in ALO, an Undine. Her other ALO avatar Erika, a Sylph, has grass-green hair.
• Happily Married: To Kirito in SAO, according to the game's mechanics; she describes it as the best time of her life. In the real world, they're simply dating for the time being, though it's definitely implied they're working toward it in real life as well.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: In the anime, when Lisbeth wishes her good luck in her relationship with Kirito. Averted in the novels, where once Liz has met Kirito, Asuna quietly confirms her interest in him instead.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • In Progressive, she suffers one when her Wind Fleuret is supposedly destroyed as she's trying to upgrade it. When it happens, she becomes incredibly despondent and, after Kirito drops her off at her Inn Room, she looks to be on the verge of tears. Thankfully, she snaps out of it when Kirito discovers that it was actually stolen and gets it back for her.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Of the Taking the Bullet variant. She jumps in the way of a blade meant for Kirito and dies for it.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Despite her incredible strength inside the virtual world, she doesn't consider herself "a real warrior", especially since the confidence she has in VR doesn't translate well in the real world for her.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Yuuki quickly becomes a special person to her, and they think of each other as "sisters", through its subtly implied to not be "heterosexual" on Yuuki's part.
• Huge Schoolgirl: Asuna is the tallest girl out of the main cast, at a good 168 cm, especially tall for a person her age, nationality, and gender.
• I Choose to Stay: Knowing that Kirito wouldn't be able to log out before the Time Acceleration reactivated due to Gabriel holding him up, Asuna chooses to remain in the Underworld and spend the resulting 200 years with Kirito.
• I Hate Past Me: After she meets Kirito, Asuna begins to take a dim view of her past life with her family.
• I Have Brothers: The only reason she was in SAO in the first place is because her older brother purchased the game along with the Nerve Gear, but didn't have time to use it on the official launch day. So she burrowed it, just for that day.....
• Image Song: She has a total of six. "My Independent Destiny", "white flower garden", "Tomorrow's Rosario", "Sing All Overtures" (which is sung by Kirito, Yui, Silica, Lisbeth, Leafa and herself), "Sleepless Legend" (Sung with the Sleeping Knights), and "Sora e to Ateta Tegami" (a duet sung with Yuuki).
• Impossibly Delicious Food:
  • Thanks to her Supreme Chef abilities, she manages to make an Impossibly Delicious Stew with a ragout rabbit, a super rare S-Class ingredient found by Kirito.
  • Everything that she cooks is this to Kirito, S-class ingredients or not.
• Improvised Weapon: Staff in this case. When Kirito mimics Cardinal's ability to summon doors to get Asuna and Alice's help, asking the former to keep Admina's research facility from self-destructing, Asuna uses a kitchen knife that she was using to cook instead of the Stacia Account's rapier to direct her powers to lift the base off the ground and out of range of the self-destruct bomb.
• Inexplicably Awesome: Despite being a complete newbie player, her speed is unrivaled and surpassed that of even Kirito. She also becomes one of the top players in the game by the end of it. No explanation is given as to how she does this, as she doesn't have Kirito's excuse of having the experience of a beta-player or even any prior gaming before.
• Informed Attribute: Just about. When she decides to face off against "Zekken", the others ask if she'll use "Asuna", her usual Undine account, or "Erika", her knife-swinging Sylph account. This is the first time it's even mentioned that she has another account, and it never gets brought up again until she needs to talk to her mother in ALO and has her use "Erika" to speed things up.
• Insatiable Newlyweds: Essentially what happens during his honeymoon with Asuna. The Sugary Days sidestories continue to cover select events from their honeymoon over the next few days: in 16.6, as the two of them are fantasizing about having a big marriage ceremony after clearing Floor 100, they are both struck with a sense of melancholy when they remember all the players who have died, and move to make love again just to take in the fact the other is really there. In 16.8, the two of them are bathing across one another in their log cabin's tub, and as Kirito stretches his legs out to get more comfortable, he ends up accidentally poking and prodding at a sensitive part of her, and it isn't long before they're all over each other again.
• Insistent Terminology: Even after they've been dating in real life for a year, she still keeps calling Kirito by his character name instead of Kazuto, his real name. It appears to extend to all of the friends she met online, calling them by their gamer names even when she knows their real name.
• In the Hood:
  • During her introduction she hid her face with a hood. Kirito doesn't know what she looks like until the first floor boss raid. She wears it for a lot longer in Progressive. She also wears a hood later in the SAO arc, during her "honeymoon" with Kirito, because she is a lot more recognizable than him and she doesn't want to be mobbed by fans.
  • She wears another one while living with Kirito on Floor 25, whenever she left the house, as to avoid drawing attention to herself given how famous she was.
• Irony: Asuna is a veritable cataolgue of contradictions.
  • For starters, this is a girl who starts Sword Art Online(in Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night) not knowing even the basic ettique, much less gameplay, of Massive Multiplayer Onine Games, who in two years time becomes an expert player seconded only by her former shut-in gamer husband Kirito.
  • Her disastrous entrampment in the death-game of Sword Art Online happens precisely on the second of Thirteen Hours Thirteen Minutes; and yet emerging from the game married to the love of her life with a sweet and adorable daughter, she consideres it the best thing that has ever happened to her.
  • For a girl groomed to be a maturely-feminine Yamato Nadeshiko and prime marriage material by a rich and upper-class family, Asuna's dearest female friends are not only from lower social classes (with the exception of Mito, who attended the same prestigious private girls school as she did), but are all tomboys to some extent, most notably with Liz, Mito, and Yuuki who also happen to be the three Asuna is closest to.
  • Most notably of all; for a girl who is practically the ideal of the warm, kind, gentle and loving mother in contemporary Light Novel and Anime who cares for and nurtures the emotional well being of her daughter Yui while taking into account how her nature as a Mental Health A.I. affects her, Asuna is herself raised by a cold, unsentimental, pragmatic and cynical human-shaped block of ice who only wants her daughter to be respectable pawn who can be easily married off to a rich neglectful jerk, her own emotional well being be damned, and who completely disregards the trauma and growth Asuna went through in SAO.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate: Unlike the majority of the other players trapped in SAO, Asuna was never a gamer. The Nerve Gear actually belonged to her brother, who by chance had to take a business trip at the time of the game's launch. Asuna merely borrowed the gear for a day to accept her best-friend Misumi's invitation to meet her in the virtual world for one afternoon. However, she ended up being trapped in said game for two years, where she would become one of the strongest players and second-in-command of the highest ranking guild.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed, but she starts off as one in Progressive. Understandably stressed out and frightened by her current circumstances, she starts off being incredibly abrasive towards Kirito, who doesn't endear himself to her with his instances of Accidental Pervert and general attitude, and she can be fairly quick to anger, especially at the ALS and DKB's more selfish and Jerkass actions in contrast to Kirito's attempts at patience. That being said, she does grow closer with and bond with Kirito, albeit into a Vitriolic Best Buds relationship with occasional Ship Tease, and eventually evolves into a straight Nice Girl who is kind and polite to people they meet.
• Jousting Lance: During the Fallen Elf attack on Castle Galey, Asuna jumps in armed with a Two-Handed Lance, which was given to her from the armory by Bouhroum.

K-O

• Lady of War: Wields a rapier in SAO and has a fighting style focusing on speed, making for a very graceful fighter.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: In Ordinal Scale, she loses all her memories of her time in SAO after being stuck by a OS boss by shielding Silica. She gets them back at the end.
• The Leader: Aside from her fighting skills, Asuna's biggest asset in combat is her leadership, being a mixture of the Charismatic, Levelheaded and Mastermind variety, while briefly being the Headstrong type.
  • Charismatic: Whenever Heathcliff left Asuna in charge, she successfully commanded the Knights of the Blood Oath as a strong and assertive leader, to the point where almost everyone on the SAO Frontlines showed something of Undying Loyalty and respect to her, even if they were from Rival Guilds like the Holy Dragon Alliance. This even extends to those who aren't used to working under her, as shown in Ordinal Scale where she takes charge of the players and successfully takes down several bosses that spawned.
  • Levelheaded and Mastermind: As Sub-Commander of the KoB, she was capable of planning multiple boss raids and, so long as she’s used to the game’s mechanics, can make effective plans and strategies on the spot that put each Player’s strengths to good use and making good use of her Charisma to make sure no one steps out of line. With her practically in charge of plans, the Frontlines never suffered a boss-related casualty since Floor 25 up until Floor 74, and that was because an underleveled guild rushed in upon finding out where the boss was with no formal strategy and being tired from the journey.
  • Headstrong: Initially, she was borderline obsessed with clearing SAO and getting back to the real world, which led to her never giving herself time to have a proper break, and making morally ambiguous strategies like using NPCs as bait for a boss while everyone else attacks it, a far cry from the Adoptive Peer Parent to an adorable AI. After spending time with Kirito and learning to treat the virtual world as “real”, she largely drops this aspect.
• Leg Focus: During certain moments, Asuna's legs receive much attention, such as when Kirito carries her on his shoulders or when they bathe together.
• Leitmotif: "Luminous sword" is used as her combat theme. She also shares "Light Your Sword" with Yuuki.
  • There's also her "Stacia Theme" when she uses her creation powers in Underworld.
• Light Is Good: Wears white colors, in contrast to Kirito's Dark Is Not Evil.
• Lightning Bruiser: She's not nicknamed The Lightning Flash for nothing, you know? Not only is she absurdly fast, her strikes are insanely powerful.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Kirito. Their relationship is very serious, to the point that they cannot live on if one of them dies. Asuna outright declares if Kirito were to die then she would take her own life.
• Lonely at the Top: In SAO, as second-in-command of the Knights of Blood, she demanded iron discipline and a steel will among all the members, and thus never smiled in front of them as an example. However, while the members followed her orders, she noted that it was out of fear, not respect. This is also the reason why Asuna never joined another guild in ALO, not even a small one between Kirito and their mutual friends.
• Lonely Rich Kid: This is explored in the Mother's Rosario arc. Ultimately, it's difficult being a rich girl. She's forced to get involved in her parents' business related endeavors, has to deal with extremely high expectations and having her personal life restricted, and her parents have planned her entire life out even down to Arranged Marriage. She was never a gamer prior to SAO and only borrowed her brother's Nerve Gear to visit the virtual world for a day, but ended up being trapped in there for 2 years.
• Magnetic Hero: In severe contrast to Kirito, she is intensely charismatic and can get just about anyone to follow her lead.
  • In Aincrad, she commanded the loyalty of the most powerful clearers in the game. Heathcliff left most of the operations to his second, so she was the one they were listening to.
  • In Alfheim, she duels Yuuki and after that the entire Sleeping Knights guild seeks her guidance in fighting a floor boss.
  • In Ordinal Scale, she starts issuing orders mid-battle to total strangers and is obeyed without question.
• Magical Barefooter: She is barefoot in her Titania attire, which only has a white strap as footwear. While it's likely meant to reflect her "Fairy Queen" avatar as per lore, Sugou designed the clothing. So Barefoot Captives is more appropriate.
• Magic Kiss: While Kirito has most of his past memories already recovered prior to his fight against Gabriel, a kiss from her causes him to remember the Johnny Black incident. This scene was Adapted Out from the anime, though.
• Magic Knight: Her ALO moniker is the "Berserk Healer". Despite being a magic using Undine Healer, she's no slouch when it comes to melee combat either. She has a tendency to leave healing to someone else, drawing her rapier to charge into battle.
• Make Way for the Princess: In the Progressive Manga. After she reluctantly interjects and opposes people's idea to hunt down Argo for "reliable" information on Illfang, revealing herself to be The Squadette for the Floor 1 Boss Fight, many of the Clearers establish themselves as more interested in her appearance than her fighting abilities, with Diaval even dubbing her "the princess" they need to protect, much to her chagrin. Needless to say, this attitude drops after they see her fight.
• Male Gaze: As the resident Ms. Fanservice, there are plenty of close-ups of her bust, legs or butt.
• Mama Bear: Yui is "[her] pride and joy", if her little girl is in danger then Asuna will go through thick and thin to rescue her, as shown in Accel World vs Sword Art Online.
• Master Swordsman: In SAO she mastered the One Handed Rapier skill, a skill line considered very difficult to use.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Asuna has displayed several Beyond the Impossible feats as listed above. It's left vague whether her achieving this is through dumb luck, The Power of Love, or if she actually possesses special abilities.
• Meaningful Name: Yuuki means "Courage" and Asuna can be translated as "For Tomorrow".
• Mini Dress Of Power: Virtually all of her in-game outfits feature a skirt. It's especially significant in her SAO outfit where it reflects her membership and position as vice-commander of the Knights of the Blood Oath.
• Moment Killer: Unintentionally and without even being aware, but when Lisbeth is about to confess her feelings to Kirito, Asuna rushes in and hugs Lis having been worried sick about her friend's absence. This also makes Lisbeth realize that Kirito is already taken by Asuna so she backs off.
• Ms. Fanservice: Being the most prominient female character, Asuna's often the most prominent fanservice character in promotional materials, and she's often the subject of bath scenes, especially in Progressive.
  • When Kirito asks to spend the night (just for comfort), she strips down to her bra and panties before he can explain.
  • As Titania, she's baring a lot of skin. Once again, this is Sugou's fault.
  • Deconstructed in the Fairy Dance arc, in which her beauty attracts sexual deviant Sugou and it causes one his underlings to molest her.
  • It's more prominent in the Hollow Fragment game, where she gets quite a few nude scenes including reluctant skinny dipping and wearing a Naked Apron on Kirito's request.
  • The game adaptation loves putting her in revealing situations, the biggest one being in Accel World VS Sword Art Online. Lisbeth accidentally made a weapon that instantly destroys armor, which includes all forms of clothing, both Asuna and Lisbeth fall over and brush against said weapon, ending up naked on top of each other.
  • We get little snippets of this later in the series, like when she was talking to Kirito about a quest in ALO while she was in the bath, though she was covered. In Ordinal Scale she has another bath scene with this one actually showing her private parts (in the Blu-ray home release).
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: Due to being an Adoptive Peer Parent for Yui and still a teenager herself, Asuna could easily be mistaken for being Yui's older sister.
• Nice Girl: Sweet, kind and caring. Just don't get her mad.
• Not So Above It All:
  • In Hollow Fragment, prestigious vice-commander and famed "Lightning Flash" Asuna decides to play in the public fountain and splash fight with Kirito. Kirito is quite surprised Asuna has this childish side to her.
  • In Progressive, she can sometimes appear as if she's the Blue Oni in her and Kirito's partnership due to her more straight-laced personality and exasperation with his more bizarre antics. However, that doesn't stop her from being just as prone to them at times.
• Official Couple: With Kirito since the very first light novel. They were married in SAO (according to game mechanics) and start dating in real life.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While Kirito and Alice were meeting up with Argo to investigate the meeting at Tiss Ruins, Asuna accompanied Liz and Yui in going to the Bashin Tribe to offer them residence in Kirito Town. When Yzelma, not unlike what she did with Silica, challenged them to prove that they could protect the town and provide safety to the Bashin, Asuna fought her one-on-one and beat her, which earned her the large woman's respect and compelled her to step down as her group's leader so she could join the expedition to Kirito town.
• Ojou: She's quite rich, and her father owns RECTO, the parent company that made ALO and the Amusphere.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Others won't stop reminding that Asuna used her Real Name as an Alias, especially from Kirito/Kazuto.
• Online Alias: Asuna, the same as her real given name. She didn't know that she was supposed to choose something different.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: Implied to go through this in "The Day After" when her "Soul" leaves her body to meet with Sachi's Virtual Ghost, with the narration stating that she could no longer feel the texture of her mage uniform on her body. The Manga version outright depicts it as such.

P-T

• Pale Females, Dark Males: A clothing example with Kirito. She wears white colors while he wears black clothing.
• Parental Substitute: To the AI Yui, who essentially adopted her and Kirito as parents.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: A good few times towards Kirito in the form of a slap, namely in Progressive.
  • The first time this occurs canonically is when, while borrowing Kirito's bath in his home on Floor 1, he ends up seeing her putting on her underwear after Argo, who visited out of nowhere and wanted to borrow the bathroom herself, opens the door to give him a view, unaware that she was there. She responds by knocking him out.
  • Threatens this on Floor 2 when he has her take out everything in her inventory, underwear included, and rummages through it to find her stolen Wind Fleuret, but this is Averted when he presents her precious rapier to her.
  • Subverted on Floor 6. She tries to do this after a misunderstanding leads to them both entering Castle Galey's bath without their swimsuits and bumping into each other, but Kirito stops her since Castle Galey isn't considered a Safe Zone and attacking him will make her cursor orange, leading to a Suggestive Collision.
  • A surprisingly subdued example in the next Volume. Despite waking up to find the two of them in each other's arms, due to the lack of second bed forcing them to share, she simply punishes him by taking his fish at breakfast.
  • In Volume 1, she rushes to Floor where she planned to meet Kirito to escape Kuradeel and ends up literally crashing into Kirito, which causes his hand to slip under her breastplate and grope her breast. She's quick to slap him, sending him skidding against the ground and crashing into a nearby pillar.
  • After she misinterprets his asking if they can spend the night together after Kuradeel's betrayal, she ends up stripping to her underwear in front of Kirito under the assumption that he wanted to... consummate their relationship. Kirito is quick to clarify that he meant that he wanted to do so in case of another attack and, in response, she attacks him while calling him a dummy. Fortunately for him, the fact that they were in a Safe Zone prevents him from actually getting hit.
  • Notably does not engage in this beyond verbal protest during their honeymoon in Sugary Days, letting Kirito be more amorous towards her than usual because of the occasion.
• Physical Goddess: As Creation Goddess Stacia in the Alicization arc and played straight during Kirito's 200-year rule in UW.
• Plucky Girl: Not even capture by Sugou broke her spirit. If anything, it only made her steel herself even more against his advances.
• Power Gives You Wings: In Ordinal Scale and the Alicization anime, when she uses the Mother's Rosario attack, she grows angelic wings.
• The Power of Love:
  • When asked by Kirito about her faster-than-possible dash in SAO, she declares it was "an act of love."
  • It's this same power that allows her to go Beyond the Impossible yet again, where she breaks free of admin induced paralysis and takes the bullet for Kirito in a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Prefers Going Barefoot:
  • In the light novels, when she escapes from Sugou's jail in her barefooted Titania avatar, Asuna ponders this is a good thing for extra stealth and recalls how she used to slip off her shoes to sneak up on monsters in SAO. (She also remembers how she tried to do it on Kirito during a "surprise attack game", only for her to get caught and tickled to death for the inconvenience.) Aside from this mention, however, this trait is never shown on screen or page.
  • Her character bio as [Walking in the Water] Asuna in Rising Steel has her express an enjoyment of walking barefoot on the beach.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: What she wears with her school uniform, reflecting her ojou status again.
• The Protagonist: She has the Mother's Rosario arc to herself.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Develops one with Yuuki during the Mother's Rosario arc. The "romantic" undertones are milder than in other examples, but Yuuki still lampshades it, suggesting that they should "get married" as a joke. Asuna even gets a bit flustered, and Yuuki has to calm her down reminding her that she has a boyfriend already anyway. Lost Song and Hollow Realization just adds on the subtext with Asuna getting depressed when she thinks she's becoming a burden on Yuuki's happiness due to her growing friendship with Strea and capped off with Yuuki giving her a bouquet of flowers to show how grateful she is for her help.
• Real Name as an Alias: In SAO, though apparently this was because she was new to MMO games at the time, and didn't realize that when the game was asking for a name, it meant an alias for her character name, not her real name.
• Red Baron: In SAO, she is known as the "Lightning Flash." In ALO, she's known as the "Berserk Healer."
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Asuna has been on the receiving end of this a few times.
  • Her Knights of the Blood Oath outfit shows quite a bit of skin, but she ends up wearing it due to being guilt tripped into it after her guild payed a lot to have it made for her.
  • In Fairy Dance arc she's forced to dress as Titania by Sugou, who wears a Stripperific Go-Go Enslavement outfit.
• The Rival: Alice regards her as this for Kirito's love, and the feeling is very mutual this time on Asuna's part. Asuna and Alice can get along with each other and have little issue fighting together, but when Kirito enters the equation they can start to show signs of animosity towards the other, such as when Kazuto and Alice met Asuna at RATH and the two ended up glaring at each other over how the former was hugging Kazuto from behind since they were both riding his bike.
  • Though their rivalry can potentailly get ugly in the near future, as directly taking Asuna's place in Kirito's heart is next to impossible, Alice has taken the underhanded, backdoor-option of becoming Yui's teacher in swordsmanship, with the goal of having the little girl eventually recognizing her as the true mother in her life instead of Asuna.
• Royal Rapier: In SAO, her primary weapon and it fits considering that she is an Officer And A Lady. One of them is made by her friend Lisbeth, "Lambent Light". She continues using a rapier in ALO despite being a healer.
• Rule of Symbolism: Just like Kirito, Klein and her friend Mito, the first monster that Asuna slays onscreen (specifically/chronologically, in the Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night Motion Picture), The Yellow Wasp, is reflective of her personality; Swift and Elegant, and will dash forward with unstoppable momentum when given proper motivation.
• Samus Is a Girl: In Aria in the Starless Night, Kirito originally mistook her for a guy until she speaks. Before that, she awed him in regards to the speed of her Linear skill. It's also possible that most of the people at the first boss battle didn't realize her gender until her cloak was discarded. This is also what happens in the manga version.
• Second Love: To Kirito. This helps him get over Sachi's death and the fall of his first SAO guild.
• Seen It All: Her reaction to Kirito's Spell Blast, a feat of incredible control and precision that everyone thought was impossible? Mild amusement.
• Sexual Karma: She has a positive sex life with Kirito. Unlike most examples, the reason Their First Time goes so well is actually justified because it is noted that in Aincrad, the game system ends up muting or at least downplaying the less enjoyable aspects of sex. The Sugary Days short story series also indicates they made good use of their honeymoon time. Contrast this with the multiple villains throughout the series who can't seem to stop sexually assaulting almost every cute girl they see, which sees them dismembered.
• Sexy Surfacing Shot: The Blu-ray/DVD release of Ordinal Scale shows a long, lingering shot of her full rear as she gets out of her bath after texting Kirito.
• Shameful Strip: Gets subjected to this by Oberon in Episode 24, where he rips her top off before licking and sexually assaulting her in front of the incapacitated Kirito.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: When she gets into a sword clash with PoH and he talks about his "love" for Kirito and how he'll do anything to wake him up, even if it means killing everyone present, she, after some encouragement from Yuuki and her friends, says this in response.
  Asuna: I won't to lose to someone like you, who only knows how to hate.
• Sickening Sweethearts: Occasionally when she and Kirito are being especially affectionate in front of their friends. Lisbeth at several points has expressed irritation at it.
• Signature Move: The Mother's Rosario technique, once she learns it from Yuuki.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Asuna becomes a couple with Kirito. The man who has proven to her of his bravery, humility, kindness, selflessness, and peaceful nature. One of the critical reasons why she developed feelings for him was because she felt that he gave her a place in SAO.
• Sixth Ranger: Becomes this to the Sleeping Knights guild in Mother's Rosario because they needed one more super-strong person to fill out their roster.
• Sorry That I'm Dying: She apologizes to Kirito as she lies dying in his arms after Taking The Sword Slash for him in the final battle of the Aincrad arc. She gets better.
• Spell My Name With An S: Her SAO moniker is variably translated as "Flash" or "Lightning Flash"^note In the Japanese version her title is actually Senkō which literally translates to "Flash", but both the dub and certain subs added "Lightning" to her title.
• Spoiled Sweet: She belongs to a rich family. Before starting SAO, her family lavished plenty of attention and affection on her, but at the same time she had high expectations to fulfill. However, she behaves friendly with everyone and is very kind to her family's house servants.
• Spotting the Thread: In Extra Edition, she's the first to realize that the "pearl" they took was actually an egg and that they're the quest's titular Deep Sea Plunderers.
• The Squadette:
  • Asuna was The Leader of Team B in the KoB and, at least around the time of Hopeful Chant which takes place when the Clearers are preparing to fight the Floor 40 Boss, was the only female player among them.
  • During the early days of SAO, as shown in Progressive, Asuna is this until at least Floor 5, at which point Liten was scouted by the ALS. Needless to say, she stood out among them and, like with the stigma Liten faced when trying to join parties as a Tank, they weren't portrayed as being confident in her fighting ability and mainly seemed glad to have a girl in their ranks.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's nearly as tall as Kirito (who's around 172 cm), hovering around 169~170 cm.
• The Strategist: Her main role in the Sleeping Knights guild during the Mother's Rosario arc is guiding them. She's the one to come up with the strategy to beat the floor boss and discovers its weak point.
• Strong and Skilled: She started off as Unskilled, but Strong, having never gamed in her life before. But she was immediately shown to be exceptionally fast and strong, with speed that even Kirito couldn't keep up with. However after the two year Time Skip, her fierce dedication to clearing the game granted her extensive skill and experience. She also ends up as the second/third best player in SAO and one of the top players on the Assault Team, being only just behind Kirito and Heathcliff. It's noted that her time on the Assault Team also translated over to ALO where she is able to use her experience there to make her character stronger in a new game.
• Super-Speed: She's extremely fast even by the standards of the game. It eventually earns her the moniker "Lightning Flash". She once ran so fast she surpassed what the dexterity speed limit allowed.
• Supreme Chef: In SAO, she mastered the non-combat cooking skill to make food that tastes like the real world. In the real world itself, she has the same level of skill. Kirito certainly thinks so.
• Switching P.O.V.: The SAO: Progressive manga tells the story from her point of view.
• Team Mom:
  • She serves as one to the Heroes of Aincrad, always looking out for her younger friends and showing concern for their well being. It helps that she's a literal mom to Yui.
  • Yuuki says Asuna sounds like her mom in Accel World vs. Sword Art Online when Asuna is insisting on finding out about Yuuki's health.
• Tears of Joy: In the Alicization arc, she's the first person to shed tears in response to Kirito's return.
• Technical Pacifist: During the Floor 5 Arc in Progressive, Asuna has trouble getting used to the idea that she may need engage PvP at some point, especially with her and Kirito being caught in the crosshairs of Player Killing Conspiracy. She's incredibly reluctant to attack in a practice first-strike duel she requested against Kirito, who stops it early out of consideration for her. She's later able to have a mock duel with Argo, but they were using fruit for substitutes for actual weapons. By Floor 6, she's grow accustomed to it enough to fight back against Morte and his accomplice when they try ambushing her and Kirito during a quest.
• Tender Tears: She frequently cries because of her kind and sensitive personality.
• 13 Is Unlucky: As shown in a Freeze-Frame Bonus of the Aria of A Starless Night Motion Picture, the exact fateful moment that Asuna logs into Sword Art Online (as shown in her HUD interface) is 13 Minutes Past 1, or more ominously in 24-hour-time, 13:13 Hours.
  • Two years later, having emerged from the ordeal Happily Married to the love of her life, as a mother to a kind and adorable little girl no-less, Asuna for her part has come to consider this unfortunate accident to be the best thing that has ever happened to her.
    • In the Sword Art Online Progressive 2: Scherzo of a Dark Dusk Motion Picture, she acidentally loses her Treasured Rapier gifted from Mito while falling down a pit trap in a Level 5 Dungeon, on the second of 21:13 hours... Which ironically allowed her to stumble upon a secret meeting between the founding members of the Laughing Coffin player-murdering guild, which not only resulted in her retrieving the prized Rapier, but also allowed her and Kirito to stop them from fermenting a tragic and bloody civil war between The Dragon Knights Brigade and the Aincrad Liberation Society.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: As she never knew Kirito had joined a guild, she has this reaction after he tells her the story of what happened with the Black Cats of the Full Moon.
• Through His Stomach: She uses her cooking skills to win over Kirito. And, boy, does it work! She can even control him by deciding what will be cooked for dinner.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Girly Girl to other female leads (and close friends) Leafa, Sinon, Yuuki, and Alice.
  • Leafa is a sport loving tomboy who rarely acts like an elegant lady.
  • Sinon steers clear of girly things and prefers to spend her time reading in the library.
  • Yuuki would much rather be in the outdoors swinging her sword than doing romantic stuff, and being Ambiguously Bi she generally has no interest being girly.
  • Alice is a stoic Lady of War who knows little about life outside battle.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Implied in regards to A.I.s. At the beginning of SAO, she quickly grew close to Kizmel, an allied NPC of the Elf War Quest who treated her and Kirito as if they were her younger siblings and would often praise Asuna when she did a good job, causing Asuna to look up to the older(?) girl, wanting to please and spend time with her and becoming depressed whenever they were forced to split up as part of the questline. By the time of Floor 56, where she’s been Subleader of the KoB since Floor 25, she doesn’t hesitate to suggest using NPC villagers as a bait for a Field Boss, as if her time with Kizmel never happened. Whether this is due to stress and desperation, or something happening with Kizmel at the end of the Elf War Quest is unknown as of yet.
• Trademark Favourite Food:
  • Asuna seems to have a thing for sweets. Especially cheesecake in SAO Progressive.
  • In the games, she is especially fond of cream topped bread which becomes especially significant to her. In Hollow Fragment she remakes it for Kirito and Yui, due to how special it was to her as it was what she ate when she first met Kirito. While in Hollow Realization, she appears to have a craving for it. She sneaks off on a quest in order to get cream and eats it on rye bread before even completing the quest, where Kirito catches her gorging herself in an alleyway.
• Tranquil Fury: Often times when Asuna is mad at Kirito, she won't raise her voice, smiles sweetly, while the impending moments pass when Kirito knows she's going to kill him.
• Traveling at the Speed of Plot: When Kirito is poisoned by Kuradeel and is on the verge of dying, Asuna runs so fast she breaks the game's dexterity speed limit and is just in time to save him.
• Tsundere:
  • The "Sweet" or "Dere" type. Sweet and kind until you piss her off. Although in her first appearances, she looks more like a "Harsh" or "Tsun" type. But that's just because Kirito originally constantly got on her nerves.
  • During SAO (especially before she and Kirito officially got together), she was very quick to anger and had a tendency to violently threaten Kirito if provoked. She often used kitchen utensils of all things as weapons.
  • Every trace of her tsundere traits are pretty much gone after she and Kirito got together.
  • Ironically, in Hollow Realization Asuna herself explicitly denies being a tsundere when the subjects gets brought up.
• Two First Names: Her surname Yuuki is a valid given name. In Volume 7, she meets and befriends a girl named Yuuki Konno, who gets confused when one of Asuna's classmates addresses Asuna as "Yuuki-san."

U-Z

• Unskilled, but Strong:
  • At the beginning of the Aincrad arc, Asuna is a complete newbie who isn't familiar with basic game features. Yet her speed was so fast that she was able to surprise Kirito.
  • This crops back up when she logs into the Underworld as Stacia, albeit Downplayed to her own combat experience by that point. Being a Physical God, Asuna naturally has extremely high stats which compliment her fast-paced, rapier style and allows her to briefly go toe-to-toe with Alice, and the account's powers include being able to create chasms and holes in the ground to swallow up enemies. However, she notes that Alice was so skilled that the Stacia account's high stats were the only reason she was able to match her, and her relative inexperience compared to the Knights shows during the battle against the American players, where she ends up stabbed and losing an arm, but able to survive thanks to the account's high durability, and has to be saved by Iskahn while the rest of the Knights appear to go through the same battle with no noticeable damage, likely thanks to their greater experience.
• Unprovoked Pervert Payback: Generally Downplayed. While there are times when Asuna, mostly in Progressive, will attack Kirito for perceived perversion as opposed to anything more concrete, it's usually because of either him doing something he didn't think through when interacting with her or him Not Helping His Case. Sometimes both.
  • When they first meet after he carries her out a dungeon after she passes out, she's quick to attack him and challenge him to a fight under the presumption that he did things to her unconscious body. To be fair though, he was a complete stranger and she likely spent her time up to that point dealing with the repercussions of being one of the few girls playing SAO.^note  in fact, the Progressive Manga shows a scene where two older men flirtatiously try getting her to join them for a drink, with one noting that she's about his daughter's age as she's walking away
  • In "A New Day", when investigating the cause for her instances of "Avatar Disconnect", Kirito traces his finger against her hand to check her sensations, causing her to moan. Upon realizing what's happening, she immediately knocks him away.
• Uptown Girl: Her family is quite rich while Kirito belongs to the middle-class. This is one reason why her mother objects to their relationship.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: She is quick to confront threats to her husband, if her saving Kirito from Kuradeel is any indication.
  • When she logs in as Stacia, Goddess of Creation, she's quick to use her newfound Terrain Altering abilities to open a chasm to swallow the attacking Dark Knights, despite them being Artificial Fluctlights, who she views a real people in spite of their origins. While this is hinted to eat her up inside, she's resolved herself to do anything to protect Kirito.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Shaping up to become this with Alice. While Alice is jealous of Asuna’s close relationship with Kirito and Asuna doesn’t appreciate her making advances on him, something which leads to them arguing or exchanging Death Glares, they both trust each other on the battlefield and manage to grow close when they sat down to discuss their respective memories of Kirito. Kirito's even surprised at how well they get along and work together in Unital Ring, worried about them getting into another fight at any time.
• Water Is Womanly: Asuna, a kind, feminine young woman who's also a great cook, has an Undine avatar in ALO, gaining recovery magic and water spells to supplement her swordsmanship, as well as a blue and white outfit complete with light blue hair.
• Weak, but Skilled: In Unital Ring, not only did she have her stats reset, but she opted to point her skill points towards the Sagacity Skill Tree, which revolves more around magic than close quarters combat, and she continues to wear light iron armour. However, her skills with a Rapier repeatedly prove to be as sharp as ever, with her effectively protecting Kirito Town from the invasion by Schulz's attack force alongside Alice and Silica, and beating the Bashin Tribe leader Yzelma to convince her and some of her tribesman to move to Kirito town.
• Weakness Turns Her On: In "Aincrad Side Story: Secret Battle", she comes under the impression that Argo managed to get some dirt on Kirito and wants to find out for what's Implied to be this reason. In actuality, the "juicy info" Argo got is that the two of them were seen napping together.
• When She Smiles: Kirito says he will never forget the beautiful smile Asuna gave him after accepting his proposal.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She has a phobia of astral-type monsters.
• World's Best Warrior: She is essentially the female equivalent of Kirito in Sword Art Online. And doubly so in Alfheim Online when she inherits "Mother's Rosario", the Ultimate Technique and final legacy of her beloved friend Yuuki.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: In SAO, along with the many things she excels at, one of the key aspects to her claim to fame is the not-so-subtle fact that she is a remarkably beautiful young woman. She states she has received many confessions and proposals from guys and also has two stalkers. In the Underworld, Alice herself states that despite Stacia just being the avatar Asuna logs in as, with just beauty alone, Asuna would have no problem convincing everyone that she actually was Stacia if she wanted to.
• You Are in Command Now: In the gameverse, after Heathcliff's defeat and disappearance on Floor 75, Asuna is left in charge of the Knights of the Blood Oath and leads them for the rest of the game.
• You Remind Me of X: Asuna explicitly reminds Yuuki of her late older twin sister, which is what helps them to develop such a close bond. Indeed, Yuuki accidentally refers to Asuna as "Nee-chan" during battle due to how similar the two are. Yuuki's doctor even remarks her sister was very much like Asuna.

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