Characters / Sword Art Online - Kazuto Kirigaya

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 the main protagonist himself, Kirito, in Sword Art Online.

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

Kazuto Kirigaya (born Kazuto Narusaka) / Kirito (SAO, ALO, GGO, OS, UW, UR) / Star King (UW)

Voiced by: Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (Japanese), Bryce Papenbrook (English), Luis Leonardo Suarez, Diego Becerril (child) (Latin American Spanish), Darío Torrent (European Spanish)

^{Click here to see Kirito's first ALO avatar}

^{Click here to see Kirito's second ALO avatar}

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

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

^{Click here to see Kirito's Underworld avatar}

^{Click here to see Kirito's Unital Ring avatar (SPOILER)}

"I got this... I can do this! This world can't beat me! I will survive!"

The Black Swordsman (no relation to the other one). The Beater. The Dual Wielding Demon. The Hero of Aincrad. The Gilded Hero. The Star King.

The Light Novel Hero.

The overall Protagonist of Sword Art Online. Born Kazuto Narusaka to Yukito and Aoi Narusaka on October 7, 2008. His parents died in a car accident when he was a toddler, but was promptly adopted by his aunt. From a very young age, Kazuto developed an extraordinary ability with computers in general, and at age 10, he was able to hack into the Japan's National Registry, where he found out about his adoption. After this discovery, he started to distance himself from his family and started to compulsively play MMO-RPG games under the nickname "Kirito" as a mean of escapism.

At 14 years old, he gets to be a beta tester for the first Virtual Reality MMO-RPG ever created: "Sword Art Online". However, when the game is officially launched, he gets trapped inside of it along with the other 9999 players. Knowing how the game works thanks to his experience as an MMO player and beta tester, Kirito vows to survive in SAO no matter what.

However, due to his trust issues, he decides to make it as a solo player, rather than trying to socialize with other gamers. That changes temporarily when he joins a small guild called the Moonlit Black Cats, where he seems to manage to feel comfortable enough to start opening out to other people. However, Kirito decides to hide his true strength and his past as a Beta tester out of fear of alienating them, which later on indirectly gets his guild mates killed. Blaming himself for their death, Kirito decides even more strongly to write off relating to other players almost entirely for a long time.

Thanks to his extraordinary abilities as a gamer, though, Kirito becomes one of the strongest players in SAO, which gets him to be known as "The Black Swordsman". Eventually, he earns the Unique Skill "Dual Wielding", which allows him to equip a second sword in his off-hand.

Upon escaping from SAO, Kirito finds himself getting caught up in a lot of Virtual Reality related crimes from different MMO-RPGS, including Alfheim Online, Gun Gale Online, and Ordinal Scale. This would eventually lead to him being recruited by Rath as a tester for military VR equipment, where he was hired to dive into a virtual world known as the Underworld inhabited by Artificial Intelligence that are intended for military use. However due to an attack he ends up being trapped in this new world.

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A-E

• Accidental Pervert:
  • In SAO, he accidentally gropes Asuna after she falls on him when she used a Teleport Crystal while running away from Kuradeel. She responds with a slap.
  • Later in GGO, he sees Sinon in her underwear, thanks to a gender mix-up.
  • Happens a lot in the non-canon games, with Kirito frequently ending up in a situation where he looks like a pervert and has to explain his way out to avoid facing an angry girl's wrath.
  • Lots of times in Progressive.
    • When he lets Asuna use the bath in his Floor 1 home, he just so happens to get a visit from Argo, who after a brief talk wants to use his bath as well. When he tries and fails to stop her from opening the door, he ends up getting a full view of Asuna putting on her underwear. You can guess how this ended.
    • On Floor 2, after Asuna's Wind Fleuret is stolen by Nezha under the guise of breaking in an upgrade attempt, Kirito rushes in after discovering what happened and tells her to access her menu and use the hidden "Materialize All Items" command before the Rapier's ownership transfers to Nezha, which she does. Unfortunately, "all" happens to include all of her underwear, which he then proceeds to shuffle through trying to find her sword. He's just barely able to avoid her wrath by finding the Wind Fleuret and and showing it to her.
    • One time while he's having a bath in the Dark Elf camp and mulling over what to do about Morte, the player two-timing the ALS and DKB, Kizmel enters without him realizing. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, Kizmel is an Shameless Fanservice Girl due to Dark Elf culture and is largely unbothered by him being there, even asking him to wash her back while being totally oblivious to his discomfort.
    • Due to the amount of traffic, Kirito and Asuna decide to travel through Rovia, the main town of Floor 4, via the rooftops of the buildings and boats, causing some cheers to go around. At one point, the both of them leap onto another building, but Kirito doesn't make it all the way and has to hang onto the ledge. When Asuna comes to scold him, he looks up and realizes that the cheers weren't for their parkour routine.
    • In Volume 3 while sneaking into a Fallen Elf hideout, he and Asuna hide inside a crate to evade the high-levelled Fallen Elf NPCs. However, the crate they ended up choosing is very cramped and puts them in an awkward position, with Kirito's hand slipping under Asuna's chest plate to grab her breast.
    • When they reunite with Kizmel on Floor 6 at Castle Galey, she suggests that they have a bath, but Kirito is reluctant due to the Dark Elves' preference for mixed bathing. In response, Kizmel reassures him by showing that the baths had to two different changing rooms for men and women, putting Kirito under the impression that it was a separate bath. Unfortunately, it turns that they were just changing rooms that led to the same bath, and he ends up bumping into Asuna, neither of them wearing swimsuits like on Floor 4 due to the misconception. Then, when Asuna moves to slap him and risks getting a red cursor due to Castle Galey not being a safe zone, he moves to stop her and ends up falling on top of her, just as Kizmel comes in.
    • At the beginning on Volume 6, Kirito wakes up to find Asuna asleep in his arms, the both of them having been forced to share a bed at the end of Volume 5, and immediately panics. While he tries to remove her and get out of the bed without her noticing, she ends up waking up anyway. As a result, he's begrudgingly forced to give Asuna his fish at breakfast.
    • The same bath mistake ends up happening later when the three of them enter the bath with Myia, a Quest Ally NPC for the diverged Curse of Stachion quest. Kirito enters the bath first and sits down to relax, and the girls are unable to see him when they after, leading to Asuna mistaking his lap for a root and sitting on it.
    • While reclaiming their weapons from from the Harin Tree Palace's dungeon, both he and Asuna re-equip their swords before he grabs Kizmel's broken saber and the Elven Stout Sword he lent her. But in his haste to grab it he ends up accidentally pulling out another sword from it's shelf that nearly drops to the floor. Asuna's able to catch it but nearly loses her balance, prompting Kirito to hurriedly extend an arm under her chest, causing him to feel her chest armour get an idea of her... buoyancy. Fortunately, Asuna is able to keep herself under control to avoid blowing their cover, but noted later that if they hadn't been working together for a month by that point, she would have screamed her head off.
    • In what's arguably his most tame example, after Kirito and Asuna get their hands on the Sword of Voluptia, they decide to hurry and meet with Lind and Kibaou to offer up the sword to whoever does a better job during the the Boss Fight. Asuna however, wants to change quickly out of her dress before they go, so Kirito offers to cover her by facing her and raising his coat to obscure her from the view of others. It's only after Asuna straight up tells him and gut-punches him that he'd get a view of her changing that he realizes his mistake.
  • The "Put that Hand Away" Social Mode event in Rising Steel has Kirito wanting to see an item Leafa picked up from some PKers they just killed, only to trip and grab her breast.
  • In Unital Ring, he tries equipping his sword only to nearly fall flat on his ass due to his stat reset and his sword not being subject to the Grace Period due to being un-equipped at the time. To try and keep this from happening, he ends up grabbing Alice and Asuna's belts, threatening to pull them down if it wasn't for the two girls desperately holding them up.
• The Ace: He's one of, if not the greatest VR player in the world. Being a Godlike Gamer who can master any game he tries which led him to become the renowned VR hero in countless virtual worlds.
• Achievement In Ignorance: When he and the others are forcibly kicked out of the Sky Chamber by Hraesvelg, he ends up grabbing and accidentally tears off a branch of the World Tree, which then gets classified as a Legendary Class Two-Handed Staff, which he bequeaths to Asuna.
  • Occurs several times in GGO. He unequips all his equipment, including armor, to swim underwater for extended periods, a tactic that almost no other player would consider because it would leave them defenseless. He also selects using a photon sword because of his familiarity with melee combat in a game built around gunplay. His strong agility build lets him get in hand-to-hand combat range and using the sword typically results in a one hit kill. It's implied in the anime that because of his success in winning the BoB tournament and with his sword-toting friends joining the game as well, that he has almost singlehandedly shifted the metagame and made a melee-based character in GGO a viable build.
• Action Dad: To his AI daughter Yui.
  • In the Aincrad arc, when she's on the verge of deletion due to using a GM console to disobey Cardinal, Kirito uses said GM console to hack the system and save her from being deleted.
  • In Accel World VS Sword Art Online he takes a more physical role, fighting to save Yui after she gets kidnapped by Persona Vabel.
• Action Hero: The World's Best Warrior in SAO and one of the top players in subsequent games. He can be relied on to clear up any tough boss or red player that's posing a threat.
• Action Survivor: Started off as this, only concerned with surviving SAO. However over time he evolves into a Action Hero.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: Compared to his canon self, his Angst Coma is much shorter in Alicization Lycoris and his failed suicide attempt never happened due to Eugeo and Cardinal being Spared by the Adaptation.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: He's already good looking in the web version despite being seen as a Shōnen hero but the light novel, anime, manga, and game adaptations gave him more Bishōnen features. Exaggerated with his GGO avatar and some of his costumes in Code Register.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • While Kirito is undoubtedly strong in the light novels, the anime tends to make Kirito win by even bigger margins while giving less contribution to his companions. Lightnovel Kirito will often spend fights in self-doubt and putting in extensive thought, while anime Kirito goes forth and takes on the threat without hesitation.
  • For Kirito's final duel with Yuuki: in the light novel, their duel had drawn out for 10 minutes and Yuuki finished him off with her OSS, while in the anime Yuuki ended up winning by timeout due to having slightly higher HP with it being left vague if Kirito could have beaten her if he was given a few more seconds to land the blow.
  • Gameverse Kirito appears to be stronger than he is in canon.
    • Unlike canon, during his duel with Heathcliff, Kirito fares much better to the point where he isn't pressured into activating a Sword Skill, thereby preventing Heathcliff from shattering his sword. The only reason he doesn't succeed in killing Heathcliff is because the glitches start buzzing in and teleport Heathcliff away just as Kirito stabs him through the chest.
    • He doesn't lose to Yuuki in their duel when he got beaten in canon.^note This is because in the game continuity, he was trapped in VR for longer (3 years as opposed to 2), giving him an extra year of Full Dive to become stronger.
    • In Alfheim Online, Kirito is able to use the Sword Skill "Starburst Stream" having successfully recreated it as an OSS, while in canon he stated this was the one Sword Skill he was struggling to recreate.
    • In Gun Gale Online, Kirito is already deemed a legendary player and an in-game celebrity even before the Bullet of Bullets tournament.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Not himself, but some of his swords. His secondary sword in the Aincrad Arc (Dark Repulsor) is white in the original Light Novel, while his main sword in Underworld (Night Sky Sword) is described as pitch black. Both are rendered with shades of blue in their respective anime seasons.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • When he first met Liz, while he did break her sword and and came off as somewhat condescending, he did show moments of kindness towards her, such as buying the both of them a hot dog. The anime largely cuts out these moments of kindness however and even make him appear ruder, making it look like he's firmly gripping the Jerkass Ball.
  • In Progressive and especially prevalent in the manga adaptation, Kirito started out a lot more selfish and hardheaded. He wasn't a loner out of guilt but out of habit, borders on neurotic with some of his MMO tendencies, and even has rough times with Asuna starting out. He would still help people where necessary, albeit coming up with poor excuses and justifications for doing so, but he's almost nothing like his anime incarnation to say the least.
• Adaptation Name Change: In Fatal Bullet his canon GGO avatar is actually an alternate account with the name "Kiriko", which was once a fan nickname. He uses this account during the BoB Tournament in Death Gun sidestory which is an adaptation of the Phantom Bullet arc.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • In the light novels he had a more colorful personality with an existential philosophy and being a VR-geek, as opposed to his stoic attitude in the anime.
  • In the game adaptation, Kirito is far less stoic and a great deal more dorky and lovable, frequently presented as being socially clueless while also being thrown into awkward situations he has no idea how to get out of.
• Adaptational Intelligence: In the Alicization novel and manga, great part of the firsts chapters, Kirito thought the citizens were NPCs and the monsters like the Goblins were just programs and it was not until he fought Ugachi that confirmed all of them were sentients beings. Instead in anime, Kirito quickly deduced talking with Eugeo, the inhabitants of Underworld are made with artificial fluctlights.
• Adoptive Peer Parent: He is only 16 years old and he and Asuna essentially adopted the AI Yui as their daughter. Whether he considers Strea this in the game continuity is still up in the air, especially due to his reaction after Strea brings it up and even calls him "Daddy" (possibly as a joke) in Hollow Realization.
• Adventure Duo: Kirito tends to be The Hero to all of the respective female Arc Heroes (Asuna, Leafa, Sinon) and Eugeo who serve as The Lancer, either by being less brave or less serious than Kirito.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Kirito loves doing this, typically to all the girls in his life, ranging from his daughter Yui, his sister Suguha, and even to his wife/girlfriend Asuna. Sarah Anne Williams once commented that Kirito has a head patting fetish.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Klein calls him "Kiri-no-ji"^note which English translations have listed as "K-Dog" while Argo calls him "Kii-bou". Even Asuna calling him "Kirito-kun" in real life could be considered this.
  • In real life his friends call him "Kaz".
• Alliterative Name:
  • Both his given and family names begin with a "K", as is his online name. Furthermore his title, in Japanese is Kuro no Kenshi (which means Black Swordsman).
  • Averted with his birth name which was Kazuto Narusaka.
• Aloof Big Brother: He distanced himself from his adoptive sister/cousin Suguha after he found out they aren't real siblings. After SAO he works to repair the distance.
• Always Save the Girl: In Progressive when he and Asuna stumble upon the first quest of the Elf War Campaign, he lets Asuna choose who they side with, to which she responds by choosing the Dark Elves, stating she'd be more comfortable with what he did in the Beta. When he questions how she knew he chose the Dark Elves, she insinuates that he chose them because the Dark Elf NPC was female.
• Amazon Chaser: He is often stunned speechless by the sight of Asuna in action. He's described her as "an angel" and her combos as "pure beauty".
• Ambadassador: He pretends to be one in Fairy Dance, claiming to be an ambassador from the Undyne-Spriggan alliance to stall General Eugene to attack the Sylph-Cait-Sith alliance. Though Eugene makes him prove it by duelling him, which against all odds Kirito manages to win.
• Amnesiac Hero: Kirito in an unusual example of this trope. While he does retain his memories of the real world, it's his prior times spent in the Underworld that he has no recollection. While trapped in the Underworld, Kirito decides it's simpler to just tell everyone that he has no memories period.
• Angst Coma: Spends almost the entirety of War of the Underworld in this state after the battle with Administrator. A power surge on Ocean Turtle sends a focused disruption through his Soul Translator while he was already on the verse of a Heroic BSoD; this completely fries the self-image portion of his Fluctlight, leaving him unable to even comprehend himself until Rath is able to connect his Fluctlight with those of the people who know him.
• Anime Hair: His first ALO avatar had stereotypical spiky hair. However Yui disliked it as it made it difficult for her to sit on, so he changed it back to his usual style.
• Another Side, Another Story: For the majority of Fatal Bullet it focuses on the custom Player Character. However you can unlock an achievement which allows access to "Kirito Mode" and play from Kirito's POV.
• Anti-Hero: The Knight in Sour Armor variant at the beginning — at his worst he's willing to do what it takes to survive. He largely grows out of it as his experiences expand beyond SAO.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • In the Aincrad arc, he gets his left hand sliced off by Kuradeel while shielding Asuna from him, but quickly uses the remaining one to stab him in the chest and kill him.
  • In Alicization, he loses his right arm during the battle with Quinella. Luckily for him, Quinella had already lost her right arm and had to sacrifice her left one to achieve that blow, giving Kirito still with the advantage. He remains with only his left arm for the majority of the remaining half of Alicization.
  • He briefly loses his left arm during his final duel against Gabriel, along with his grip on the Blue Rose Sword. Thankfully Eugeo's spirit gets a hold of it and allows him to land the final blow. The arm regrows after the battle ends.
• Androids Are People, Too: Has this mindset when he refuses to use NPC as a bait. Later at the end of Underworld, he, along with Kikuoka, planned to prevent Underworld's shutting down and instead trying to unite the Underworld and real world with the VR, as the Underworld were formed through The Seed.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • To Laughing Coffin. A murder guild in SAO and Kirito's most persistent enemies. Ever since Kirito's efforts had them beaten and then jailed, the high-ranking members return in later arcs to menace Kirito over and over in different games. These include:
    • Vassago/PoH, the guild leader, who has the strongest claim to this title out of all of Kirito's enemies. Vassago has a deep fascination towards Kirito and holds tremendous Villain Respect for the boy's unyielding will and constantly showers him with praise. The man is responsible for a great deal of suffering that Kirito went through during SAO, and with his actions even forcing Kirito to take several lives. Upon entering the Underworld, Vassago is overjoyed to get another chance to face Kirito and seeing the boy in a coma becomes determined to wake him up out of his coma, willing torture the boy or kill as many people as he needs to. Fighting and killing Kirito becomes his number one goal for years on end, and he promises he will never stop coming back for Kirito. He is only permanently stopped by Kirito subjecting him to a Fate Worse than Death turned Karmic Death.
    • XaXa, who has held a deep grudge against Kirito ever since he was defeated during the Assault Team's raid on the Laughing Coffin hideout. He faces off against Kirito in GGO as "Death Gun", determined to test if Kirito is the truly the same person from SAO and deal out revenge. His presence terrifies and haunts Kirito in a way no other enemy has, due to hitting Kirito's deeply rooted PTSD and Survivor's Guilt. For Kirito, defeating Death Gun is more than simply stopping another bad guy, but a representation of Kirito being able to forgive himself and move on.
  • Nobuyuki Sugou, the other contender for Kirito's most despised enemy other than PoH. He finds out that Sugou trapped Asuna in a game and intends to forcible marry her, while rubbing it into Kirito's face that there's nothing he can do. Sugou subjects Asuna to extreme humiliation, dressing her provocatively and keeping her locked in a cage. When Kirito finally comes to rescue Asuna, Sugou uses admin privileges to beat Kirito down, then tortures him by turning down the pain absorber and stabbing him with his own sword while forcing Kirito to watch as he attempts to rape Asuna. It's no surprise that once Kirito breaks free thanks to Kayaba, he puts Sugou through a world of pain, proceeding to completely turn off the pain absorber and brutally kill his in-game avatar, to the point where Sugou is left permanently injured IRL. The feeling is very mutual on Sugou's side, who comes to hate Kirito so much that he wants him dead above all else and tries to kill Kirito in the real world. When Kirito turns the tides of their real life fight, he is very nearly tempted to kill Sugou then and there before deciding to turn him over to the police when Sugou passes out from fear.
  • To Quinella. Out of all the people who have resisted her in the Underworld there doesn't appear to be anyone who Quinella despises as much as Kirito. Even all her other opponents like Alice, Eugeo, and even Cardinal she holds a trace of affection for and desiring to control. But not Kirito, who she never tries to win over and derogatorily refers to as "Boy" instead of the pet names she calls the others by. This is due to Kirito being from the "Other Side" and the first other than Cardinal who is able to paint Quinella's reality for her. While at first Kirito only sees Quinella as a threat needing to be stopped for the good of the Underworld, it becomes very personal when Quinella takes the lives of several people who are dear to Kirito, in particular Eugeo, which drives Kirito to hate her with a burning fury.
  • Interestingly, this is averted with Gabriel. The two never develop this sort of relationship due to how late Kirito was in participating in the war. The two of them do not even know each other when they finally meet face-to-face, and have never gained any personal hatred towards one another. To Kirito, Gabriel is merely the threat that needs to be stopped, while Gabriel views Kirito as just another insect for him to squash. This makes him one of the few Big Bads who does not develop this dynamic with Kirito.
• Armored Villains, Unarmored Heroes: For the majority of the series, Kirito does not wear armor, in contrast to many of his opponents who are clad in it. It's justified in many of the games like SAO, since even normal clothes have stats as well.
  • The most obvious example is Heathcliff, who is The Paladin dressed in armor, while Kirito only dons a Badass Longcoat.
  • This gets brought up in Alicization, where Kirito and Eugeo are in the Cathedral armory where Eugeo contemplates putting on some armor like all the Integrity Knights. However Kirito doesn't like the idea as they have never worn armor and believes it would weigh them down.
• Armor Is Useless:
  • Averted in Unital Ring, where his first set of proper gear is a set of "Fine Iron" Armor, and equipping them, along with the sword, allows him to quickly turn the tide against Bolan's party.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Dude deserves a lot of credit. From clearings SAO to ending the war in UW by kicking Gabriel's ass, Kirito is not only a Physical God, but also the boss of UW for 200 years.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Specializes in this.
  • Asuna notes that in SAO/ALO, Kirito's fighting style focuses on going after his enemy's weak points and weapons, and is called "Arms Blast", an Outside System Skill.
  • In ALO, this leads to the creation of another Outside System Skill, "Spell Blast", where he accurately targets the tiny core in the middle of spells and destroys them. This Skill is immensely difficult to use, as the timing has to perfect to hit the spells and one wrong move will cause it to fail. Kirito is the only known player capable of using this skill thanks to his Super-Reflexes.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: His GGO avatar looks very effeminate with pretty much everyone mistaking him for a girl, and a very cute one at that, possessing long black hair, crimson lips, and shining black eyes fringed by long eyelashes. He started attracting gazes from GGO's male population wherever he went.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • In SAO, he's still using and upgrading Dark Repulser months after Lisbeth crafted it for him. As she noted, it's rapidly being outclassed, and any moderately upgraded rare weapon from the 70th floor could match it even if fully upgraded, with much less material expense. The reason is because of its name, Kirito believes that he is destined to use it on the 100th floor final boss. He's right.
  • In ALO, Kirito chooses to be a Spriggan, a race apecialising in stealth and treasure hunting, which is practically useless for a frontline berserker like Kirito who charges into battle blades drawn.
  • Played with in regards to his Photon Sword in GGO. While it's undeniably very powerful with Kirito turning it into a Lethal Joke Weapon that the gun-toting GGO players are completely unprepared for, it is however far more light weight than what Kirito is used to using. For this reason Kirito is at a disadvantage against Death Gun who is another sword wielder, but unlike Kirito uses an Estoc that is closer to the weight that Kirito is used to using. While statistically an Estoc does less damage than a Photon Sword^note which only requires one strike to cut through an opponent and kill them, Death Gun is able to land far more hits on Kirito and probably would have won if he wasn't distracted by Sinon.
  • His Sword Skills turn out to be this during his Final Battle against Heathcliff. While very cool looking and damaging, they are completely useless against the man who programmed the skills to begin with. In fact it's the one time Kirito uses the 27-hit Eclipse skill and it completely fails against Heathcliff who blocks every blow before shattering Kirito's sword on his shield.
• Back from the Dead: Or coming back from his catatonic state. Just when PoH is about to go for the kill against the heroes, Kirito wakes up and gives him a well-deserved beatdown.
• Back-to-Back Badasses:
  • Does this with Leafa while taking on the Grand Quest and facing off against the World Tree Guardians.
  • In the Progressive manga he does this with Asuna when the two are in a Labyrinth together.
• Backup Bluff: How Kirito makes Laughing Coffin leave when they try to finish off Yolko, Caynzm, and Schmitt. By announcing that a whole squadron of KoB were on their way, greatly outnumbering the three LC members present. Whether or not Kirito was telling the truth is left vague, but it works and the LC members reluctantly retreat.
• Badass Adorable: Awww, he's so cute — wait, he's what?! The strongest player in SAO?!
• Badass Biker: Downplayed in the real world, as he owns a motorcycle and often rides it. The skill becomes useful during BoB when he and Sinon are being chased by Death Gun.
• Badass Boast:
  • Kirito's first one occurs during his Zero-Approval Gambit by declaring himself a Beater and better than the other beta testers.
  • After Kirito draws out Rosalia and the orange guild Titans Hand, they all attack him at once while Kirito stands there and lets them slash at him. After 10 seconds his HP hasn't depleted at all, to which they halt and Kirito says:
    Kirito: About 400 in around 10 seconds, that's the total damage you seven can do to me. I'm level 78. I have 14,500 HP. My Battle Healing skill auto-regenerates 600 points every 10 seconds. We could stand here all day, and you'd never beat me.
    Titan's Hand thug: Is that even possible?
    Kirito: It is. High enough numbers will make you invincible. MMOs that use a level system are unfair that way.
  • During his fight with Sugou in the real world, after disarming his opponent and sizing up the kabar combat knife...
    Kirito: Such a weak weapon. Too light, no reach. And it's all I'm gonna need to kill you once and for all.
  • In Mother's Rosario, after Kirito pulls a You Shall Not Pass! moment on a rival raid party trying to stop Asuna and the Sleeping Knights from entering the boss room, the guild leader asks Kirito if he really thought he could take on all of them. Kirito's response:
    Kirito: I don't know. I've never tried.
  • Then when the rival guild's mages fire spells at him and Kirito slices them right out of the air.
    Kirito: Even the fastest magic is slower than an anti-material rifle's bullet.
• Badass Bookworm: When he's not gaming he shows himself to be a Gadgeteer Genius with a natural talent with technology and programming. However he's also the World's Best Warrior of SAO and one of the strongest players for any game he tries out.
• Badass Longcoat: He often wears black long coats; even in real life he prefers at least dark clothing. There's a reason he's called The Black Swordsman.
• Bag of Spilling: As a result of a VRMMO mix-up in Unital Ring, Kirito finds out that his stats are set back to Level 1.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: He knows unarmed combat to supplement his swordsmanship.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: He has access to the Martial Arts Skill "Empty Wheel", which not only allows him to do this with one hand, but allows him to steal a weapon for his own use. In Progressive, he uses this against a Fallen Elf during the attack on Castle Galey, briefly Dual Wielding their scimitar with his Sword of Eventide.
• Bash Brothers:
  • In Aincrad, he'd occasionally have this with Klein, whenever the two chance upon each other.
  • In Alicization, he forms this dynamic with Eugeo where the two of them tag team to defeat foes together, including very powerful Integrity Knights.
• Battle Couple: With Asuna, especially during the Aincrad arc. They show an uncanny understanding of each other in battle, and coordinate their movements perfectly.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: In Rising Steel it's revealed that after Kirito became paralyzed in the second half of Alicization, he has been fighting in his mind to remember all the people and memories he has lost.
• The Beastmaster: In Unital Ring, he's forced to tame a Lapispine Dark Panther monster when he, Yui, Leafa and Liz are forced to take shelter in a cave to escape a hail storm, doing so by giving it the groups rations and petting it a few times. While it's a major boon, since it helps provide warmth and he's helpful in a fight, Liz and Leafa are quick to take issue with him calling the panther Kuro.
• The Berserker:
  • His use of Dual Blades skill makes him seem like one and he gets really serious in a fight. It's lampshaded by himself in Season 1 Episode 19. The biggest example was during ALO, when he transforms into a demon, using his claws to fight and kill, not to mention eating some of his opponents. Kirito explains that while in this state he acts on raw instinct and barely remembers anything.
  • His berserk rage is such that Death Gun intends to kill Sinon just to see if the Kirito competing in BoB is the Kirito from SAO.
  Death Gun: If a friend of yours is killed, and you go berserk, then you're the real deal.
  • In Ordinal Scale it's shown that his berserk rage is so intense that in the heat of battle he shuts out everything but his enemy. He nearly knocks over another player while fighting a boss and doesn't even notice Yuna had appeared to buff players up, with the idol unhappy with being ignored.
• Berserk Button: Ever since Kirito rescued his wife Asuna from being assaulted by Sugou, he has gained a frighteningly cruel, if not downright sadistic streak, towards those who dare to victimize women. See Wife-Basher Basher below for more details.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Kirito may be a decent guy to get along with, but make no mistake, he's "The Black Swordsman", and he will kill anyone who dares to threaten his friends (or violate in the girls' case) regardless of any reason if he had the chance (though this is only exclusive for Dirty Businesses), whether the enemy in question is a Serial Killer, a Corrupt Corporate Executive, or a rapist.
  • Just watch Season 1 Episode 4. He will not let murdering psychopaths go unpunished. Even if he has to turn his status into a ''Player Killer''.
  • In the battle against the murderous guild Laughing Coffin, Kirito kills two of its members who would not surrender. This comes back to haunt him in GGO: he discovers that Death Gun is a survivor of said purge.
  • Near the end of Season 1, you should see how many pieces of the person who tried to rape his beloved remain after Kirito's done with him.
  • If there's any doubt remaining that you shouldn't mess with him, then what he does to PoH in Alicization: War for Underworld will clear that up.
• Beyond the Impossible: The Power of Love and Heroic Willpower helps him to achieve the outright impossible. When he gets stabbed by Heathcliff and starts disappearing, he disobeys the system's orders telling him to die, giving him enough time to stab and kill Kayaba in a Taking You with Me moment.
• Big Brother Instinct: Mostly towards his cousin and little sister-figure Suguha. He also tends to extend this to Silica, who reminds him of the former, so much so he helped her revive Pina.
• Big Brother Mentor:
  • He's definitely this to his cousin/foster-sister Suguha. She looks up to him, while he wants to always be there for her to rely on.
  • Often acted like this to his friends like Silica, Lisbeth, and Asuna, when they were still getting used to playing VRMMOs. Even those who are clearly older than him like Klein can be on the receiving end of this.
  • In the video game continuity especially, he's also this to Sinon, who often refers to him as her teacher proudly. Yuuki also thinks of him as a big brother with how he looks out for her, much like she thinks of Asuna as a Cool Big Sis.
  • In Accel World vs Sword Art Online he outright says Haruyuki was like his little brother while he was his big bro.
• Big Damn Heroes: His favourite method of dealing with psychopaths. Alicization takes it further when he deflects PoH's attacks after waking up and bails out Alice in the aftermath of her fight against Gabriel.
  • In Girls' Ops, he, alongside Sinon who contacted him, show up to hold off the golem Gwen summoned, with the both of them Holding The Line while the girls grab the injured Gwen and escape.
  • Literally pulls one after another in Volume 27; he shows up in time to block a wave of Anti-Incarnate Missles to save Alice and prevent her from destroying the Osmanthus Blade trying to block them. Then, after leaving a recently re-awakened Fanatio as Alice's back-up, immediately flies to the Integrity Pilot base to save a weakened Eolyne from Istar's attempted kidnapping.
• Birds of a Feather: The roots of his close friendship with Sinon who, like him, has also killed someone in the past.
• Bizarre Taste in Food:
  • Kirito evidently has a fondness for extremely spicy food which others can't handle.
  • During a dungeon raid he attempts to cajole Asuna into making a meal of the Scavenged Toad Meat he acquired as a result of battle drops. Asuna has none of it, to which he claims "The weirder the meat, the better the taste!"
• BFS:
  • In ALO the second sword he owns is almost as big as his character, though it's more of a longsword.
  • He gets another one that's bigger than he is as a bonus for dealing the killing blow to the final boss in Ordinal Scale.
• Black Knight: Kirito's new avatar in Unital Ring evokes this.
• Black Swords Are Better: In SAO, his primary weapon "Elucidator"; In ALO, a BFS that replaced his starter weapon; In GGO, a "Kagemitsu G4" lightsaber with a black hilt.
• Blade Spam: His sword skills all involve rapid successions of slashes, especially his ultimate attack Starburst Stream which has 16-hits.
• Blatant Lies: The Refuge in Audacity he pulls against General Eugene involves several straight-up ridiculous lies including a Spriggan-Undine alliance and him being an ambassador. The only reason it was Crazy Enough to Work is because he was strong enough to beat Eugene and thereby put weight behind his lies, as well as because the Salamander he'd spared earlier ended up backing him up.
• Blood Knight: Never quite admitted or gets out of hand with it, but it exists. It's acknowledged as such by Asuna as well:
  Yulier: [as Kirito is slicing up dozens of frog enemies] I feel like I should apologize; he's doing all the fighting.
  Asuna: [with a smile, holding Yui] Oh no, he's happy out there. Really, he loves getting his battle on.
• Blue Is Heroic: Before he settled with his Dark Is Not Evil motif, his early SAO avatar had blue clothes.
  • Some of his swords are rendered with shades of blue in the anime, like the Dark Repulser in Aincrad and the Night Sky Sword in Underworld. And eventually he also uses Eugeo's Blue Rose Sword after his death.
• Body Horror: A chilling example close to the end of Alicization: When Kirito's Angst Coma reaches its worst moment, he starts to remember all the death that he has been witnessing AND commiting ever since the original SAO incident. Due to his Fluchlight being so damaged, Kirito can't take the trauma, guilt, and even shame anymore, and tries to commit suicide... by opening his chest wide open with his bare hands so he can reach and squeeze his own heart to death. And the audience gets to see (and hear. The sound effects are particularly horrifying) everything until Eugeo's memory finally stops him from consuming the act.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: He references this in Calibur. When Kirito points out that the group should be thankful for the stairs they're going out, Sinon snarks that he's making it sound as though he made them. He then says "Thanks for pointing it out," then pulls Sinon's tail.
• Break the Cutie: Let's see, finding out that his parents actually died when he was 2 at the age of 10, being trapped in a VRMMORPG where if people die, they die for real, encountering some particularly nasty folks who still wanted to kill people, and being nearly killed by one of them, and seeing his closest friends die yet again have really hit him so hard that he almost attemped suicide, and twice!
• Bring It: During Fairy Dance, he tried to solo the Grand Quest at the World Tree and when countless guardians spawned to block his way, he just smirked and charged forward screaming.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Downplayed, as while Kirito is a Nice Guy, his issues with Heroic Self-Deprecation and Ineffectual Loner tendencies leave him a Broken Ace, which doesn't prevent his girlfriend Asuna from putting him back together.
• Broken Ace: Out of all 10,000 players in SAO, Kirito is the most skilled of them all, able to do feats that nobody else can, and is nearly unbeatable in battle. At the same time he hides a lot of personal demons. Prior to SAO, he has little to No Social Skills due to his insecurity regarding his place in his aunt's family. In his earlier SAO days, he suffers a massive Survivor's Guilt due to what happened to Moonlit Black Cats guild, causing him to develop a severe tendency for self-imposed guilt trips. He largely grows out of it come ALO but he slips back into it during GGO due to Death Gun being a former member of Laughing Coffin and in Alicization after Eugeo is killed off.
• Broken Bird: The Moonlit Black Cats ordeal and Eugeo's death will certainly haunt him for many years.
• Brought Down to Badass: He's this in real life. In the real world he's just a scrawny guy who's been in a coma for the last year, and you've just stabbed his arm in a sneak attack. He has no gear, no Sword Arts, no insanely high level. Think you can take him in a fight? So did Sugou.
• Brought Down to Normal: Aside from his fight with Sugou, Kirito had consistently shown having difficulty in real life fights.
  • In Phantom Bullet, despite getting a good hit on Shinkawa with a surprise attack, he still end up being overwhelmed and very nearly injected with a syringe if it weren't for a Pocket Protector.
  • In Ordinal Scale, it's brought up that he's out of shape and quickly gets exhausted from the physical acitivity that the augmented reality game requires. The first boss fight has him tripping over his own feet. It took a Training Montage from his sister Suguha to stand a chance against Eiji, who had been pummeling him in every prior encounter.
  • In Alicization he has a lot of trouble against Atsushi Kanamoto/Johnny Black, falling for muscle memory again where he reaches for his non-existent sword. He's also unable to stop Black's syringe, choosing to stab Black's leg with his umbrella while he ends up getting injected in the heart.
• Bullet Time: There are a few instances in the Phantom Bullet arc where time slows down while Kirito either dodges or deflects bullets, with the bullets seen approaching at slow motion.
• Bully Hunter: Kirito's failure to protect Sachi left in him a deep-seated resolve to never let the weak be victimized in front of him ever again: and heaven help you if you try.
• The Bus Came Back: Kirito's GGO avatar makes a return in Episode 1 of Alicization, where he and the rest of the gang have converted over to GGO to help Sinon.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Part of the big conflict between him and Death Gun during the Phantom Bullet arc. While the day itself, the Raid on Laughing Coffin, was a very traumatizing day for Kirito since he was forced to kill two of them, his attempts at trying to forget it leads to him stopping XaXa from telling him his name, trying to shrug him off as another remnant of Laughing Coffin he never wants to see again. For XaXa, It's Personal, and he delights in having a chance at revenge on Kirito in GGO while rubbing in how Invoking this came back to bite him.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Tends to be this in the Sword Art Offline shorts, where he's even more frequently a victim of being an Accidental Pervert than canon, and subjected to heavy injury and pain. Asuna and Leafa constantly pound his face in, while Sinon spends a whole episode putting bullet holes into him.
  • In Unital Ring, he's forced to spend most of the volume in only a pair of boxers due to impulsively un-equipping his clothes in a bid to use his now heavy sword, to no avail. While his near nudity doesn't seem to be bother him all that much, he quickly gets annoyed by the girls' caveman jokes and tendency to slap his bare and unprotected back. Plus, when when Bolan's party betrays them, he's the one who gets first blood drawn from them, having been taken by a surprise by a knife to the gut courtesy of Mocri.
  • Gets hit with this again in the epilogue to Girls' Ops, Volume 4. Wanting another shot of the golem he and Sinon saved the girls from, he goes online to get players to form a party to take it out. Things go downhill for him when Gwen, who decided to continue playing with her old SAO Avatar, accepts the request and gets all cuddly with him to mess with him. Then when Sinon tells the other that he's been womanizing, his attempts at dashing the claims get more difficult as Gwen decides to agree with Sinon to Invoke the other girls' envy. And as the icing on the cake, he gets slapped in the ass by Sinon to hurry him up when he starts questioning Gwen on info on the boss and everyone else ends up going ahead of him, even Klein.
• Byronic Hero: Kirito has the less destructive traits of this. As cheery as he may seem, he is rigidly stubborn and spends a good amount of time brooding over the terrible things that have happened to him. In fact, him going to VRMMOs was a way to escape from the bleak outlook brought on by reveal that his parents died in a car accident when he was very young and that he was raised by his cousin's family, only for him to encounter a new set of problems, each worse than before he entered SAO.
• Calling Your Attacks:
  • He will announce some of the Sword Skills that he uses, with the most notable one being "Starburst Stream".
  • In Alicization Kirito calls out the majority of his Sword Skills in order for the system to register and activate them.
• Came Back Strong: When he finally awakens form his Angst Coma, he's able to use the collective Incarnation of everyone who chose him as their savior to perform absurd feats of power, such as wielding multiple elements at once and use the Blue Rose Sword, albeit with the Implied help of Eugeo's spirit, to freeze PoH's army of Chinese and Korean players before taking on PoH himself and then later going to take out Gabriel.
• The Cameo:
  • In Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online, Kirito gets a brief cameo in Episode 10 via a silhouette of his GGO avatar.
  • Kirito gets a Shout-Out cameo in the anime of Eromanga Sensei, with Yoshitsugu Matsuoka reprising his role.
• Cannot Spit It Out: He fails to tell the Black Cats of the Full Moon about his true level (even lying about it when they recruit him). This leads to horrendous results.
• Captain Ersatz: His GGO avatar looks similar to Yuri Lowell.
• Casting Gag:
  • This isn't the first time Yoshitsugu Matsuoka voiced a Kirito.
  • Bryce Papenbrook voiced another virtual reality gamer named Shugo Kunisaki of .hack//Legend of the Twilight who happens to have the same problem with the video game system as Kirito.
  • Kirito's Spriggan avatar looks like Rin Okumura of Blue Exorcist, another character voiced by Bryce Papenbrook.
  • Yoshitsugu Matsuoka ended up voicing another elite gamer who gets trapped in a game world, though he's a lot happier with the outcome than here.
• Character Development: In ALO, he's more confident and lighthearted despite having lost Asuna due to the fact that he can actually play ALO like a game, instead of having to watch people die all the time. Plus, he now has his adoptive AI daughter to keep him company.
• Character Narrator:
  • Throughout most of the light novels, he is the one narrating the story. It's easy to tell his parts from those of others because his are always in First Person while others are in third person.
  • Even in the anime some episodes feature a voice over provided by him to give a deeper explanation of the events.
• Chekhov's Gun: On their way back from the player meeting that turned into Mutasina's forced recruitment session, Kirito, Argo and Alice encounter a Slime monster that, once defeated, dropped a Magicrystal of Rot, which Kirito is forced to eat to get the spell "Rot Shot", which only fires a small ball of rot. Later on, when Yui is confronting Mutasina while he's suffering the effects of the Noose, he fires it into his own mouth so that the horrible taste would override his inability to breath long enough for him to get up and launch another attack, breaking Mutasina's staff and dispelling the Noose.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • His Martial Arts Skill which is at 991 but seen very rarely in the main series, save a few special occasions,such as when Kirito bores a hole in Kuradeel's chest with his bare hands, as said psychopath attempts to pull a I Surrender, Suckers against Asuna.
  • Kirito first acquires his Dual Wielding in SAO and while it was handy there it wasn't essential. It isn't until ALO during the battle against General Eugene where it's this skill that is the difference between winning and losing. Eugene is in possession of the Demonic Sword Gram with the special feature of phasing through an opponent's first block, so Kirito gets around it by borrowing Leafa's katana^note which he grabs during a smokescreen and negates the Demonic Sword Gram's ability and allows him to cut Eugene up.
  • All the time he's spent playing VRMMO games, has ingrained in him some self-defense skills. This allows him to take on several attackers outside of the game, in the real world. Though he does have to rely on his own natural strength, and not calculated statistical numbers to help him. This becomes integral when Kirito is ambushed by Sugou, who is out for revenge after getting killed in-game by Kirito. He attacks Kirito with a knife, thinking the boy was weak and powerless. It doesn't go any better for Sugou, as Kirito manages to disarm Sugou, overpowering him and snatching the knife from his grasp, leading to Sugou's face getting slammed into a car door before he's held at knife point and passes out from fear.
  • In the Phantom Bullet arc, his high reaction speeds, and sword skills let's him turn the Kagemitsu G4 Photon Sword into a Lethal Joke Weapon as he's able to block, and vaporize bullets, by using the Bullet Trace lines as a guide.
  • Also in the Phantom Bullet arc, his time riding a motorcycle in the real world (and possibly some racing style games) has given him good understanding of how to handle GGO's Trike "buggies", which he uses first to get Sinon and himself to the Governor's Palace just in time before registration closed for the Bullet of Bullet preliminary. He later uses it to help Sinon and him escape from a pursuing Death Gun who was riding a mechanical horse.
  • More like "Chekhov's Lack of Skill", but the nurse assigned to watch over him while he's in GGO notes that he doesn't have a whole lot of meat on him. When he goes to Shino's house IRL and tries to fight of Kyouji, he's able to land some good hits, but the Yandere is able to overpower him.
• Chick Magnet: Girls seem to endlessly gravitate towards him and the female-to-male gender ratio of their circle of friends gets ever larger, and that's not even counting the one-off girls who gain crushes on him. Though it's a bit better-handled than other harem series, with one of the ways is that he has eyes only for Asuna. Notably, several of the women who hold feelings for him (Sachi, Lisbeth, Sortilena and of course his wife Asuna) are at least a year older.
  • Lampshaded (albeit it's Implied to have been a dream) in "Holding Hands With You", where he has to deal with all the competition he and Asuna meet in the quest to get the dress parts being motivated in some way by wanting to be his bride, even General Eugene.
  Kirito: Why do I feel like I've become the "reward" for this event...?
• Childhood Friends: With Alice and Eugeo, whom he grew up with and became extremely close to probably.
• The Chosen One:
  • An unusual and indirect example, but his Dual Blade skill was programmed by Kayaba to go to s/he who has the fastest natural reaction time, with the intent of making him/her be the one to face him as the final boss... and it just so happened to be Kirito. Which makes this a rare example of the The Chosen One being chosen by the villain.
  • In Alicization, he and Eugeo are chosen by Cardinal to be her forces in taking down Quinella, whereby she trains them to use Full Arnament Control to level the playing field with the Integrity Knights.
  • A similar instance occurs in the Underworld after he wakes up from his Angst Coma, the reason he Came Back Strong being that everyone in the Underworld granted him their collective Incarnation so he can be their saviour.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Kirito's Survivor's Guilt leads him to be unable to ignore the suffering of others. If there's anyone in trouble, especially a girl, he will go the extra mile to make sure they're safe and happy.
• Chunky Updraft: In the Underworld, whenever Kirito or a skilled enough swordsman charges a powerful enough Sword Skill it creates strong gusts of wind that emanate from it.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Downplayed, but Kirito has a good deal of eccentricities to him. He’ll eat just about anything even if they’re traditionally disgusting or bizarre, especially if Asuna cooks it, tends to concoct crazy plans such as trying to climb up Aincrad’s outer walls to bypass floors and trying to run up a wall to escape a pit trap, to which Liz outright called in insane, and he tends to use VR or MMO terminology in application to real life, such as claiming that Ordinal Scale, an AR game his friends dragged him into playing, has "too much lag" in response to tripping over during a fight.
  • Viewed as a straight example in the Underworld, with his usual signs of it, such as exiting his and Eugeo's dorm room through the window because it’s quicker, and his outside-the-box thinking in the Underworld makes him seen more than a little strange in the eyes of others.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: After gaining Kayaba's admin privileges, he subjects Sugou/Oberon to this. Instead of quickly finishing him off, Kirito first strips Oberon of his admin status, sets his in-game level to 1, and sets the Pain Absorber to Level 0, ensuring that every wound he inflicted on Oberon would carry over to Sugou's real body. Then, he summons Excalibur and gives it to Sugou, knowing that it won't make a difference. Finally, he gives Sugou a small cut on the cheek before chopping off his right arm, slicing him in two at the waist, and then throwing him up into the air before impaling him through the eye, killing Sugou in-game and permanently injuring him in real life.
• Color Motif:
  • He's always associated with the color black. His black hair and black attire have led to him to be referred to as "The Black Swordsman". He also favors black no matter what world he is in, with him choosing the Spriggan race in ALO due to its black color scheme.
  • Blue and Gold are often secondary colors for him. With blue, this is the color of his second sword in Aincrad as well as the color of Eugeo's Blue Rose Sword in the Underworld which Eugeo ends up Dual Wielding. With gold, Kirito gains Supernatural Gold Eyes whenever his will causes him to defy the system, this is the color of Excalibur in ALO that becomes his second sword, while his Incarnation in the Underworld often manifest as a golden Battle Aura.
• Combat Parkour: Kirito does a fair bit of this, often performing jumps and flips during duels, especially when fighting Heathcliff. This is especially the case in GGO, where he's practically a Dance Battler spinning and twirling to parry bullets.
• Combat Pragmatist: In ALO, by using his SAO skills and buffs that were carried over. While in SAO he had an advantage purely by having a head-start over most people; he even points out what he's doing is cheating in ALO. "Before I was a beater, but now I'm just a cheater".
• Combined Energy Attack: To defeat Gabriel in the climax of Alicization, it took him receiving the powers of all of his friends from both Underworld and the real world. The spirits of Vixur, Lipia, Bercoulli, Quinella and Cardinal also give him their power and encouragement before he initiates the final attack.
• Comically Invincible Hero: While he's usually played straight as an Invincible Hero, there are some instances where his overpoweredness is played for laughs.
  • He makes his presence known to Leafa and a group of Salamander PKers by crashing landing into the ground. Seeing a group of guys ganging up on a girl, Kirito decides to step in and proceeds to mop the floor with the Salamanders in an utterly humiliating fashion. Catching the Salamander's lance and holding it in place as the Salamander struggles, before flicking it back so that he crashes into his friend. Leafa can only stare in awe at him doing so much damage with starter equipment.
  • When cornered by a party of Salamanders on a bridge, Kirito fights as the DPS melee user, while Leafa acts as healing support. Yui then gives Kirito an illusion spell, which is generally supposed to give the user the appearance of low level monsters. But Kirito's stats are so through the roof that when he casts it, he becomes a Gleam-Eyes monster and proceeds to tear the Salamander party apart like tissue paper, even eating some of them in the process.
• Comically Missing the Point: Whenever one of the girls asks his opinion on fashion, all he ever takes into consideration is the stats of said clothing.
• Companion Cube: After Quinella's defeat, Eugeo's broken "Blue Rose Sword" becomes this to Kirito and he will refuse to part from it, always holding it in the one functioning arm he has remaining as Alice wheels him around in a wheelchair.
• Cool Big Bro:
  • Kirito often shows himself to be very paternal and caring towards his friends, with most of the girls receiving a brotherly care and sometimes where he is protective over them. Notably, women who are older than him, including Liz and of course his wife Asuna, invariably let their guard down in his presence and become sweet and vulnerable little sisters to him instead.
  • He's also a Friend to All Children, with kids taking an instance liking to him and always getting along with him, due to his fun-loving nature and free-spirited nature while sometimes being One of the Kids.
  • In the Underworld, Selka and Ronye also come to see Kirito as this. In Selka's case, with Alice gone and Eugeo distancing from her, when Kirito arrived he became the only big brother figure she had. While with Ronye, being his valet, Kirito is naturally protective towards her and despite his carefree nature is particularly fond of how Kirito would bring her and Tiese treats (something that made Kirito a popular choice of mentor among the younger disciples), along with the fact Kirito and Eugeo both go full out Big Brother Instinct on them when they are subjected to Attempted Rape from Raios and Humbert.
  • In Unital Ring, Kirito is surprised when Suguha that she's now Vice-Captain of her school's Kendo team, saying that she should have mentioned so they could have celebrated. He also recalls that he couldn't attend her previous Kendo tournaments due to being in the hospital, and that he'd have to make sure to be there for the next one.
• Cosmic Plaything: Hmm, let's see... Being trapped in SAO for two years, failing to save the Moonlit Black Cats, killed three Laughing Coffin members as part of his Dirty Business, being Forced to Watch Sugou molesting Asuna until Kayaba's virtual ghost bails him out, finding out that Death Gun is a Laughing Coffin member, being dumped into UW by Rath after Johnny Black poisoned him, witnessing Quinella cutting Eugeo in half, being brain dead for almost three consecutive books until Eugeo's "spirit" snapped him out of his Despair Event Horizon, and finally, being stuck in UW for 200 years with Asuna after killing Gabriel. Being Kirito isn't easy, huh?
• Covert Pervert: While usually considerate and unflinchingly respectful of Asuna in their relationship, as well as towards the other girls, even Kirito can descend to this in certain situations. The Sugary Days sidestory covering his and Asuna's honeymoon shows how amorous he can be, and he milks the situation for all it's worth.
  • When they arrive in the Dark Elf Camp on Floor 3 in Volume 2, Kirito lets Asuna use their bath first and waits outside, wanting to use the time to think. He's unable to focus however due to hearing what's happening in there, such as Asuna removing her equipment and moving in the bath, clearing imagining what's going on in there. There's even a illustration on the back of the Volume showing him imaging her in the bath as if to drive the point home.
  • After the fight with the Biceps Archelon, he and Asuna are surprised to see Argo walk over to their boat, standing on the water. She explains that it's thanks to a special pair of shoes that allow players to walk on water provided that they have high AGI and are wearing light gear. When Kirito remarks that her gear doesn't appear that much much different from normal, she teasingly hints that she might not be wearing anything beneath her cloak, prompting him to glance over only to be stopped by a glare from Asuna. He also can't help but notice that her legs are bare when they invite her into the Tilnel for a ride back to town.
  • In "The Day Before", his narration notes that when he and Asuna are caught in whirlwind, Asuna's skirt starts to flap hard, with the implication that he would have peeked if he could have.
  • In chapter "16.6" of Sugary Days, Kirito can barely restrain his desire when seeing Asuna in her "Remove All Equipment" state while preparing for honeymoon sex. He uses his curiosity to hear her heartbeat as an excuse to get up close and personal with her breasts in bed, in spite of her reluctant protests. It's clear from the narration that he's enjoying every second of it. To be fair, Asuna told him to do what he wanted with her anyway...
  • In chapter "16.7", he's very eager but nervously bantering with Asuna in their warm bath^note which mind you, he requested personally about the sensations of bath salts with the Ethic Code deactivated. Like earlier, he can't hide his lust when in such an intimate scenario and uses a game of footsie to cop several feels. By the time he's done, he loses all control and pounces on her, which she doesn't seem to mind for once.
  • When talking to Sakuya about the Pillager of the Deep quest, Sakuya recounts how when she and her retinue did the quest, they ended up giving the pearl, actually an egg, to the Old Man, actually Kraken, and instead of returning to the beach via a whale like what happened with Kirito's group, the Old Man summoned a squid to grab them and take them back to shore, which Sakuya doesn't exactly remember fondly. He then lets slip that he wish he could have seen that.
  • In Phantom Bullet when meeting Nurse Aki again and she reveals that she'll be monitoring him while he's diving into GGO, his eyes end up looking at her chest while she's grabbing Kikuoaka's note for him from her breast pocket.
  • There's also the time he got Asuna to wear a Naked Apron in Hollow Fragment. It was part of an in-game mission, but still.
• The Cowl: Has shades of this during SAO. After gaining a reputation as the solo player known as the Black Swordsman, and possibly the World's Best Warrior for SAO, many criminal players begin to fear him and he's all too happy to use his status to strike fear into them to make them comply. While searching for the orange guild known as Titans Hand, he makes a point to first demonstrating how much he thoroughly outclasses them by No Selling their combined attacks, before giving them the choice to be teleported to jail or face his blade.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Kirito primarily uses heavy swords in both SAO and ALO out of personal preference. This bites him badly when he plays GGO, as the closest sword available is a Lightsaber, which is very light. This nearly causes him to lose to Death Gun, as Death Gun, aka XaXa, uses an Estoc, a weapon he's familiar with, to combat him.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: When Klein appears to try hitting on Asuna when they have a formal first meeting, Kirito's immediate response to gut punch him.
• Crisis Catch-and-Carry: When Sinon gets ambushed and paralysed by Death Gun who is about to shoot her dead. Kirito then pulls a Big Damn Heroes, throwing a smoke screen grenade to get rid of Death Gun, before he swoops in and carries Sinon away and escaping on a quadbike.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: In-Universe. Due to his GGO avatar looking like a girl, Kirito puts on a higher-pitched voice when pretending to be a girl.
• Cruel Mercy:
  • After managing to overpower Sugou in real life, Kirito is fully prepared to just slit his throat and be done with it, but ultimately settles for just knocking Sugou out and letting the cops arrest and incarcerate him, his dreams and ambitions crushed, his body permanently damaged, and exposed to the world as a cyber-criminal.
  • After their fight in Underworld, PoH fully expects Kirito to give him a warrior's death, boasting that he'll just keep coming after Kirito and Asuna again and again until he finally slits their throats and rips their hearts out in real life. Instead, Kirito subjects him to a Fate Worse than Death turned Karmic Death by turning him into a tree and trapping him in Underworld, declaring that he'll never log out.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Unless it's against a boss monster or the overpowered Big Bad, Kirito will typically lay these down in any fight he partakes in.
• Curtains Match the Window: In real life and his game avatars, both his hair and eyes are black.
• Cute and Psycho: What GGO players think of him after he sweeps the BoB preliminaries, because they see him as a beautiful yet crazy girl running around with a lightsaber in a gunfight... and winning.
• Cute Bruiser: His appearance is so feminine it causes him to swear off metal armor, and more than one foe comments "he doesn't look very strong"... yet he becomes the strongest player in SAO and ALO, forces a tie with Sinon, GGO's ace, and apparently does quite a bit in UW, not to mention the skills he learns while playing MMOs transfer to real life. Just ask Sugou.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Kirito becomes a loner after he loses all the members of the Moonlit Black Cats and fails to revive Sachi. He blames himself for their deaths and avoids people because he's afraid of losing those close to him again.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • In-Universe, his experience with a sword in SAO and ALO has given him extra experience with swords in later games he plays. However, once in real life after a Kendo sparring match with Suguha he tries sheathing his shinai bamboo sword on his back, and does it again at least twice in GGO, where there are no "swords" that he can get at in time for the BoB tournament but retractable lightsabers, he constantly forgets that there is no sheath for it and he's supposed to hang it from his waist with a clip.
    Kirito: Not again...
  • It also bites him in the rear hard in several instances. At the end of the Aincrad arc, while fighting Kayaba/Heathcliff for a second time, this time to the death he tries avoiding triggering any Sword Arts, as he knows his opponent will know immediately from the motions and glow, and block according.. Unfortunately, Muscle Memory kicks in at a point of desperation to land at least one hit in, triggering a Sword Skill, and making his attack pattern obvious and ends up breaking one of his swords on Kayaba's shield, giving Kayaba the opening he needs to swing back.
  • At the beginning of the Fairy Dance Arc, it happens again during a Kendo sparring match with Suguha. She's a National Quarterfinalist in Japan for Kendo, and he's just completed about 2 months of physical therapy from his time stuck in a coma like state due to being stuck in SAO. His skill with swords in SAO transfers over, matching Suguha's techniques almost equally, up until muscle memory kicks in, and he tries activating a Sword Skill in real life. Unfortunately this only realistically let Suguha get an easy head strike in on the flat-footed, tiring out, and unguarded Kazuto.
  • It happens again in the Phantom Bullet arc, though further time playing ALO has allowed Kirito enough practice that he imitates some simpler Sword Skills very well without any system assist, such as "Horizontal Square" and "Vorpal Strike" in GGO with his Photon Sword. Versus most GGO players, who have spent 99% of their time in game combat in gun fights, don't even have a clue how to dodge melee attacks. Unfortunately for Kirito, the enemy he's chasing, Death Gun, does as he's a SAO Survivor as well, and has been practicing with the same Estoc skills he used in SAO. To make matters worse, he has fought Kirito before, so he know's Kirito's fighting style, and has an equipment advantage as Kirito's Photon sword doesn't have the heavy weight he's used to with swords, whereas Death Gun's weapon (made from starship armor plate materials) has a similar weight to his old Estoc, allowing him to easily parry and overcome Kirito and his Photon Sword.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Prior to the events of SAO, Kirito at age 10 managed to find on Japan's National Registry his records which showed that the family he lived with were not his real parents and sister. Rather, they were his his aunt, uncle, and cousin, and they adopted when he was just over a year old when his real parents died in a car crash. This revelation caused him to distance himself from them and became focused on gaming as a way to cope until after the events of the SAO incident.
  • Unfortunately, being a SAO survivor who spent much of his time on the front lines, has given him a whole new list of troubles that weigh upon his shoulders; survivor's guilt, taking lives to protect others, battle fatigue. It's not ideal for a 14 to 16 year old kid to deal with getting trapped in a video game that was originally meant to be fun. Getting reminded of uglier events certainly affects his psyche to the point that in several cases, he either shuts down in shock, or breaks down in tears.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Wears black as his main colors, both in real life and in the VRMMOs that he participates in, but is recognized as one of the greatest heroes of SAO. Initially, this was part of his "jerkass beater" guise but even then that was about taking heat off other beta testers.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: His birth parents died when he was younger.
• Declaration of Protection: He has sworn to protect Asuna.
• Demoted to Extra: Integral Factor adapts the Aincrad arc, but Kirito isn't The Protagonist. Instead the story focuses on a custom Player character and their partner, Koharu. Kirito is still there, but he has his own adventures offscreen and is no longer The Hero, instead he's a powerful side character who assists and encourages the Player.
• Demoted to Satellite Love Interest: During the Mother's Rosario arc, Asuna becomes The Protagonist, while he has very little to do with the main plot, and is mostly there as the boyfriend that her mother disapproves of. It's interesting, considering this had happened to Asuna from the Fairy Dance Arc through the Phantom Bullet arc.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Almost crosses it when he manages to obtain a resurrection item to revive Sachi with (on Christmas Eve, no less) and goes near-suicidal after finding out that it doesn't work the way he thought it would.
  • Ends up in this after Eugeo gets killed and Kirito ends up incapacitated.
• Determinator:
  • Shows this trait from time to time. Best example is the climax of the SAO arc where, despite being technically killed by Kayaba, he holds on long enough to return the favor.
  • In the Fairy Dance arc, Kirito takes on the unbeatable Grand Quest by himself to reach the top of the World Tree and save Asuna. Guardian after guardian gets thrown at him, but Kirito tears through them all, not caring about all the damage he gets taken. Then when the guardians start firing volleys of arrows and swords at him, not even getting shish-kebabed stops Kirito and he still keeps trying to reach the top. It took him actually dying from all his HP being depleted to put an end to his attempt. And then when Leafa bails his Remain Light out and revives him, he very nearly tries the quest solo again before she talks him out of it.
• Diabolus ex Machina: In Alicization, Johnny Black, one of the last remaining Laughing Coffin members, appears out of nowhere and nearly kills Kirito.
• Did They or Didn't They?: Zigzagged Trope. The light novel says that Kirito at least slept with Asuna after her embarrassing interpretation of his request to sleep with her, the manga clearly shows them sleeping nude together, and the anime adaptation has a Fade to Black instead. Even then, the latter shows Asuna isn't wearing anything under the covers even with Kirito fully clothed, so what exactly happened overall is up for debate.
  • Chapter "16.6" and "16.7" of Sugary Days finally spell it out black and white that they did do the deed in Asuna's room in Selmburg, and the conversation below also makes it clear that it was Their First Time. To make things even clearer, said conversation happens after their second time making love, barely seven hours after marrying in-game.
  Kirito: (listening to Asuna's heartbeat) Are you feeling a little nervous?
  Asuna: O-of course I'm nervous. This is my first time.
  Kirito: Eh..? First... but, yesterday... no, the day before that, at your room in Selmburg, we...
  [an embarrassed Asuna shifts his head]
  Asuna: T-Th-That's not what I was talking about! I was obviously saying that it's the first time I let anyone listen to my heartbeat!
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: He solos The Gleam-Eyes Boss using his Dual Wielding after a low level squad foolishly decided to fight it and several of them were killed. Soloing bosses was thought to be impossible up to that point. Granted it reduced him to critical HP and he passed out afterwards, but the feat still stands.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • So many that only the outstanding examples will be listed here. Dual Wielding without system assist; Cutting bullets out of the air; Chaining together one-handed Sword Skills (he has to start one sword skill within a 0.1-second window in order to stop himself from freezing, basically a combo of combos); Spell Blast (using a system-controlled Sword Skill precisely enough to strike down fast-moving spells, which have a minuscule hitbox).
  • Photon Swords were neglected by most of GGO's population due to a melee weapon being deemed impractical to use in a gun game. But as Kirito proved, it's an extremely powerful weapon in the right hands.
• Dirty Business: He killed members of the red guild "Laughing Coffin" while on a mission to capture and imprison them. Not that they didn't deserve it, but he'd rather not have and brought them to justice instead. Given the nature of those psychotic sons-of-bitches, it's not like he has any choice in that matter. Averted near the end of the Alicization arc when Kirito shows no remorse in sending PoH to his Fate Worse than Death turned Karmic Death.
• Disappointed by the Motive: In "A Murder Case In The Area." Kirito considers killing someone over Loot Drama petty enough, but is downright appalled when the victim killed his wife because she was no longer the woman he knew.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Not so much from a morality stand-point, but simply because he's not used to their feel and prefers swords over them. Even in the gun dominated GGO, Kirito chooses a Laser Blade over a gun.
• The Dog Bites Back: After being subject to Cold-Blooded Torture by Vassago/PoH and then being told from him no less that he will be hellbent on him and Asuna until he kills the two in real life, Kirito traps him in a tree so he'll never log out of the Underworld. This is on top of the fact that Vassago/PoH bears some level of responsibility for Kirito being trapped in the Underworld courtesy of one of his former top members Johnny Black.
• Doting Parent: Towards Yui; in fact, his main motivation in studying technology is so that he and Asuna may one day have a happy life with their daughter outside the virtual world. Just like with Asuna, father and daughter are practically inseparable to one another, online and offline.
• The Dreaded: Kirito gains quite a reputation as the Black Swordsman. While he's fondly admired by most normal players, he's also feared by PKers and criminal players.
  • While confronting Rosalia and Titan's Hand, one of the mooks recognizes him from his black attire and single one-handed sword, which immediately leads him to start shitting himself.
  • In Hollow Fragment, one event has Kirito and friends filling in at Agil's bar on a busy night. When Silica encounters trouble with two scary customers, Kirito goes to check out what the commotion is about. The customers immediately recognize him, apologize for being jerks to Silica, and proceed to bail the scene in fear.
• Driven to Suicide: He takes Eugeo's loss very personally to the point of attempting to commit suicide if it weren't for a You Are Not Alone speech from Eugeo's "spirit".
• Dual Wielding: Kirito is quite possibly the Trope Codifier for the anime community. He is the only SAO player who has the Dual Blades Sword Skills, making him an absolute force to be reckoned with.
  • In later game worlds, he rarely does this anymore... but whenever he breaks out two swords, much awesomeness will occur. The best part? He's physically controlling two different swords without any System Assist.
  • It's seen quite well in Caliber. There are no Dual Blade sword skills... but he has a sword in each hand, so he chains separate one-handed sword skills, controlling each hand separately.
  • In GGO, he has two one-handed weapons there as well, an FN Five-seveN and Kagemitsu G4 "Photon Sword". However because he's never used guns before in a VRMMO^note with accurately modeled real world guns, with real aiming factors thrown in, such as one's heart beat rate as well, he's a complete novice at handling the pistol and other guns he borrows, having low accuracy and only uses it twice outside of a GGO shops gun range, preferring to use the Photon Sword alone. When he remembers he can go Sword and Gun, he's particular effective as shooting Five-seveN gives him openings by interrupting his opponents actions to charge in and get a vital sword attack against his foes.
  • In something of a Shout-Out, he does this briefly in Progressive after he uses the Martial Arts Skill "Empty Wheel" to steal a Fallen Elf's scimitar. Unlike the Unique Skill he'd acquires later though, this instance is very much Awesome, but Impractical; it puts him in an irregular equipping state, meaning he can't use Sword Skills at all and has to rely largely on his own sword abilities, with the main benefit being that it gives him more defensive options due to being able to use one of the swords as a shield for a sort of Counter-Attack strategy.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: When he was growing up, he and Suguha were mistaken for sisters due to his androgynous looks. His GGO avatar is a rare M9000-Type which cranks his already feminine looks up to eleven. When he sees his own reflection in-game, he thinks he got gender-flipped. He looked so much like a girl that his IRL friends recognize him not because of his face nor his name but his sword style.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Granted, Kirito’s far from stupid, but his Fatal Flaws can make him prone to reckless and poorly thought out decisions. That being said, it’s hard not to understand his logic behind these at times.
  • In Unital Ring, Kirito initially chooses to hide the fact that he's afflicted with "Noose of the Accursed" from the rest of the group, aside from Argo who saw him get hit by it, out of the belief that knowing about it would prompt the group to prioritise curing him over Mutasina's planned assault on their town. While this did hinder their planning, since he reveals this the day before the attack, he's ultimately proven right when the group immediately wants to discuss a cure and he has to dissuade them.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Despite all of the awful things he has to go through, he does get his happy ending, being in a healthy relationship with Asuna while surrounded by his True Companions.
• Escapism: Done subtly, but like Yuuki, Kirito embraces VR and is deeply immersed in it, to the point where he's preferring VR over reality. Yuuki realizes this and warns Asuna to watch out for Kirito, though Asuna doesn't understand what she is talking about.
• Eccentric Mentor: Ends up being this in the Alicization arc to Eugeo, who he teaches the “Aincrad Style”. His ideas that would be considered strange in the Underworld, such as staying in an abandoned inn with no official owner, and his actual strange habits, such as entering and exiting his and Eugeo’s dorm room through the window, cause no end of annoyance or quips on Eugeo’s part.
• Empty Shell: In the War of the Underworld half of Aliciziation, Kirito is rendered into a catatonic state due to a power surge damaging his FluctLight. He's no longer able to speak, express emotion, and is only capable of rudimentary motions like moving his arm and groaning.
• Even the Guys Want Him: While he's mostly a Chick Magnet, there are hints that Kirito is capable of attracting guys as well.
  • In his parting with Klein after SAO starts, Klein mentions that Kirito's real appearance is "his type". Then there's the Ho Yay they occasionally get in side-materials and the gameverse.
  • In GGO, he quickly garnered the looks of a few male GGO players, and quickly gained a fanbase among them as he played the BoB Prelims. Granted, this was because he was playing a feminine looking avatar and was playing it up for his amusement, but considering that the guy who attempted to buy his Avatar, who he told his actual gender, was apparently selling information on the BoB Participants...
• Every Man Has His Price: Why negotiate or threaten when you can just bribe someone with ludicrous amounts of money?
• Everyone Can See It: Nearly everyone can see that Kirito and Asuna are an item long before they realize their feelings for themselves.
• Evil Costume Switch: Kirito invokes this when he declares himself a Beater in front of a horde of players by putting on his recently obtained black coat after accepting his newly obtained name.
• Evil Knockoff:
  • In Hollow Fragment. Kirito's Hollow Data counterpart is the Final Boss of the optional Hollow story arc, and it's just as strong as the real Kirito, effectively making it a Mirror Boss.
  • In Fatal Bullet, Kirito is among several players who have a doppelganger ArFAsys impersonating him, although it's not a perfect copy with its color scheme being an inverse of him. The Player, Kureha, and ArFAsys are forced to fight it several times and it proves to be as strong as the real Kirito.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
  • In Progressive, after being reduced to just above half health in his duel with Morte, he remembers that it's possible to kill an opponent with a powerful enough attack even in a duel to half health.
  If Morte had left me with just a bit of health on purpose... He was not hoping to win this duel and force me to leave my quest for another day. He was planning, here and now... To kill me.
  • In The Day Before, Argo is quick to snap at him to take their situation of being stuck in a flying house serious when he jokes around, only for him to just that they can just a teleport crystal to escape... only for Asuna to point out that Argo probably would have tried that already, which gets him to take the situation a bit more seriously.
• Experienced Protagonist: He was one of the beta testers of SAO. His knowledge of the game's mechanics give him an edge over other players at the game's launch, and allows him to adapt to other VR games fairly quickly.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: His ALO avatar originally has very spiky hair. Between the end of Fairy Dance and the beginning of Phantom Bullet, he has his avatar's hair cut so it looks more like his hairstyle in the real world.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: What he does to Sugou/Oberon at the end of the Fairy Dance arc. After getting admin privileges, he uses them to strip Sugou of his own, as well as turn off the Pain Absorber to ensure that every wound he inflicted on Oberon would carry over to Sugou's real body. After this, he slices off Oberon's arm, cutting him in half at the waist, and finally stabbing him clean through the right eye, killing Sugou in-game and leaving Sugou with permanent injuries in real life. Considering all the horrible things Sugou did throughout the arc, not the least of which includes trying to rape Asuna while making Kirito watch, it's impossible not to root for Kirito.

F-J

• Face Plant: Happens to him several times when trying to get the hang of ALO's flight engine in the beginning of the Fairy Dance arc. One pretty spectacular one has him slamming into the ground head-first from dozens of meters in the air and seemingly being stuck for almost a minute after impact.
• Fading Away: When Kirito gets impailed by Heathcliff and his HP drops to zero, Kirito begins to fade away. However he's able to use his Heroic Willpower to delay his disappearing, giving him just enough time to return the favor to Heathcliff by stabbing him, in a Taking You with Me moment.
• Failure-to-Save Murder: Blames himself for the deaths of his first guild, the Moonlit Black Cats. In his mind, if he had been stronger he could have saved them, or if he was smarter than he could have prevented the trap in the first place, or, if he had never met them in the first place or lied about his level, they wouldn't have found the trap in the first place.
• Famed In-Story: In SAO, he's renowned as "The Black Swordsman", a member of the Assault Team and the strongest player in the game. He earns similar reputations in every game he joins where he quickly ascends the rankings within days of playing. Even his foster parents already knew his accomplishments from Aincrad to UW, as someone else wrote a book about him and they read it.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • His confidence in his abilities, while generally well-founded, can make sometimes get him into situations where he's way in over his head, and prone to making reckless decisions.
  • Both his Chronic Hero Syndrome and Guilt Complex gives him another in the form of shouldering burdens himself, even when it'd much easier and more practical to be open about a problem he's having with others. He's called out on this by Suguha and Yui in Unital Ring after he opts to hide the fact that he got hit by Mutasina's "Noose of the Accursed" under the assumption that everyone would prioritise curing him as opposed to preparing their defences, and is forced to reveal his affliction the very day before the attack, giving the group little time to plan around it.
  • During Progressive his dedication to treating SAO like any other MMO despite the Death Game circumstances prove to be this. When Asuna gets her Chivalric Rapier, he tries telling her not to use it since it'd be "unfair" and later on, him wanting to do a quest by the book, including a part where he and Asuna would be paralyzed and transported to another location by NPCs, nearly gets him and Asuna killed when Morte, a fellow Beta-Tester and attempted Serial Killer, attacks and kills the NPC transporting them, hoping to take advantage of their paralysis to kill them. Needless to say, he feels guilty about the latter.
• Finishing Move:
  • Starburst Stream, a 16-hit Sword Skill.
  • Eclipse, a 27-hit Sword Skill^note only used once in the Final Battle against Heathcliff where it served as The Worf Barrage against the man who programmed all skills.
• Flechette Storm: Has the Blade Throwing Skill, and regularly carries throwing spikes.
• Flowers of Romance: Of a sort. For Asuna's birthday in Volume 24, Kirito gets her a sugar maple seedling. He was inspired to do this by Argo telling him to not separate the real and virtual worlds, prompting him to get her the seedling for them to raise together due to how a rocking chair they had at their original log cabin was made of the same kind of wood. Asuna expresses a desire to plant it in their secret garden at the Survivor's School so they can raise it together with greater ease.
• Forced to Watch:
  • During the Fairy Dance arc, after Sugou/Oberon stabs him through his back and spine, he goes out of his way to torture Kirito by chaining up Asuna, ripping her clothes off, and groping and licking her, all right in front of him. He gets his just desserts when Kayaba overrides Sugou's control of the game and gives Kirito admin privileges, which Kirito takes full advantage of, turning off Sugou's pain inhibitor and killing his in-game avatar so brutally that Sugou is left permanently injured in real life.
  • Death Gun's intended Evil Plan for Kirito in GGO was to incapacitate Kirito in battle and make him watch as he kills Sinon, both in-game and in real life.
  • In the Alicization arc, PoH boasts that he plans to cut off all of Kirito's limbs, then torture Asuna and make him watch.
• Foreshadowing: Kirito's Dual Wielding skill was hinted at a few times before finally being revealed in the battle against the Gleam-Eyes.
  • Kirito arrives in Lisbeth's shop looking to buy a second sword as strong as his Elucidator, this is despite the sword already being the strongest one obtainable from a boss drop.
  • Asuna is curious as to why Kirito doesn't use a shield, despite him only carrying one sword. Kirito looks uncomfortable with discussing the matter and the conversation doesn't go any further.
  • Even during the fight, Kirito keeps contemplating having to use that, before seeing how badly everyone else was faring and decides to go for it.
• Fountain of Youth: In the Alicization Arc, he was put into the Underworld as a child where he resided there for eleven years of accelerated time.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: In the Underworld, Kirito starts off as just a low class villager in Rulid, to an elite disciple in the Swordcraft Academy, then to one of Cardinal's forces in bringing down Quinella, before finally becoming the Star King who is the legendary ruler and deity of the Underworld.
• G.I.R.L.: In GGO, he initially takes advantage of his feminine player avatar to get help from Sinon, and later exploits it again to garner support from male players.
• The Gadfly: After Asuna taught him it was alright to feel the joy of living again, Kirito develops a mischievously sardonic sense of humor when at ease, which manifests in (relatively) harmless teasing towards girls.
  • Hearing about a ghost story tied to the woods in which he and Asuna had purchased a house on Floor 22, Kirito proceeded to lay it on thick while relaying the ghost story to Asuna. Her reactions just kept getting better and better... and then the "ghost girl in white" appeared: Yui.
  • When contemplating what to do with the rare S-Class Ragout Rabbit meat, Agil suggests eating it rather than selling it. Asuna then shows up and reveals she has maxed out her cooking skill, so Kirito hires her to cook it for him. Agil pleads Kirito to let him have a taste, to which Kirito tells Agil he'll write him a two page review on how it tasted.
  • The first time he saves Leafa from a Salamander attack, Leafa asks how he expected her to react, to which Kirito remarks that it's a 'noble knight saves princess' scenarios and that Leafa should consider running into his arms and sobbing while they embrace. Leafa cannot tell if he's for real before Kirito clarifies it was a joke.
  • After trashing a Salamander hit squad using the illusionary form of Gleam Eyes, Kirito saw Leafa's shock at his tactics (literally chomping down on several of the Salamanders) and decided to jokingly bite her hand. Her reaction was spectacular.
  • This extends to the real world. While outside the house near a tap, he tells his Sugu to turn around and puts water down her back, her scream can be heard for miles.
  • After the whole mix-up of Sinon mistaking Kirito for a girl and Spiegel shows up, Kirito intentionally plays it up like he's flirting with Sinon and making it sound like they spent a lot of time together having fun, despite a pissed off Sinon looking like she wants his head on a platter. Kirito himself later reminisces he may have gone too far on this one.
  • In GGO, Kirito deliberately played up the cuteness of his avatar just to take amusement at the lovestruck faces of admirers, who were not aware that he is not a cute girl. In the anime adaptation, it was a Say It with Hearts moment because he lays it on so thickly.
  Cheer for me!
  • Back in ALO: tired of listening to his party gripe about a particularly long set of stairs, Kirito pulls the cat's tail. Sinon's tail, to be precise. He then has to dodge her retaliatory attempt at literally clawing his eyes out... The look on Sinon's face needs to go down as one of the best reactions to trolling in VRMMO history.
  Sinon: [enraged] Why you! Do that again and I'll shove a fire arrow in your nose!!
• Gadgeteer Genius: The boy has considerable aptitude in learning and applying technical knowledge, coupled with his already considerable programming expertise.
  • In a little over a year since Aincrad, he was able to learn sufficient engineering techniques to build a shoulder-mounted internet-connected camera-microphone-speaker-interface through which Yui, his and Asuna's virtual daughter, can see and talk to her parents and friends in the real world. In the Mother's Rosario arc, this same interface, mounted on Asuna's shoulders, also allowed the bedridden and terminally ill Yuuki Konno the chance to experience and live a full and happy school life.
  • Kirito also wrote a Smartphone Program through which Yui can also talk to him and Asuna any time in the real world.
  • At the start of the Moon Cradle arc, he built and test piloted his own creation, a mechanical dragon resembling a cross between a rocket and a jet, only to be blown up shortly afterwards.
• The Gambling Addict: Arriving in Floor 7 in Progressive dredges up some bad memories of the Beta Test, namely that he, like several other testers, lost out hard at Voluptia, the Floor's casino town, to the point that he was left with only his sword and was Implied to have had to go around in his underwear until he built himself back up. A combination of wanting to redeem himself from before and Asuna wanting to visit the floors beach, which players can only visit if they win 300 chips at the casino to get a VIP pass, pretty much forces him to relieve the experience.
• Game-Breaking Injury: During the Alicization arc, the attack on the Ocean Turtle in real life damages Kirito's nervous system even more and leaves him paralyzed in UW until the fluctlights of Asuna, Suguha, Sinon, and Eugeo snap him out of his epic depression in the middle of his Journey to the Center of the Mind moment.
• Geek Physiques: He has the build one would expect from an indoorsy gamer who rarely engages in physical activity. Since he used to do kendo, it's implied that his muscles atrophying while trapped in SAO was the cause of this.
• Gender Flip: The console videogames (excluding Fatal Bullet) allow you to create your own version of Kirito, which extends to his gender. ^note  This is important because both the NerveGear and AmuSphere create avatars based off the user's actual gender, thus avoiding certain... issues. This doesn't change a single thing about the story.
• Genius Bruiser: While Kirito's power typically comes from the high stats of his physical abilities, he's also a brilliant strategist who excels at exploiting the system.
• Genre Savvy: When it comes to MMORPGs, he has a great deal of experience and thus knows how they work. This becomes crucial for survival in SAO and all the more so because he was a beta tester.
• The Ghost: In Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online, Kirito is alluded to a few times, including a silhouette of his GGO avatar, however he has never appeared in the series in person.
• The Gift: Kirito is a Godlike Gamer who is a prodigy in all forms of VR gaming. He's revealed to have the highest natural reaction time out of all the players in SAO. Kayaba had programmed the system so that this single player would be granted the Dual Wielding Unique Skill and be the one to face him as the Final Boss.
• Giver of Lame Names: In Underworld, he initially dubs his sword "The Black One", a less than creative moniker that ends up sticking.
• Glass Cannon: When he whips out Dual Wielding and unleashes Starburst Stream, he gains a completely massive attack output that outstrips everyone in the game. However, he basically becomes The Berserker and gives up all forms of defense.
• The Gloves Come Off: Whenever the situations becomes life or death, Kirito will fight seriously, which is marked by him bringing out his second sword.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: In the anime, when he gets particularly pissed against the current antagonist, his eyes turn yellow. This invariably speaks bad news for whomever is on the receiving end of his swords.
• Godlike Gamer: He's depicted as a virtual reality MMORPG prodigy, who spent a large portion of his life gaming as a form of escapism. Upon being trapped in Sword Art Online he quickly ascended the ranks to become the World's Best Warrior and the destined hero to take on the Big Bad. This also applies to any game he tries, where even if he's a complete newbie he'll be a top player within days and known by everyone there.
• Good Is Not Soft: Kirito is your friendly fellow player to be around who can help you as much as he can because he's your everyday hero but god forbid! if you are evil and do horrific things especially harming his friends, he will relentlessly annihilate you and anyone without hesitation and you better hope that luckily he will forgive you if he wants to.
• Good Parents: He and Asuna are this to Yui, who set aside a lot of time to play with and care for their daughter, while going to great lengths to protect her and keep her safe.
• Good Thing You Can Heal:
  • As a group of orange guild Titan's Hand members find out, Kirito HP heals faster than they can damage it, allowing him to No-Sell a simultaneous attack from nine players.
  • When Kuradeel pulls a Wounded Gazelle Gambit on Asuna and tries to attack her, Kirito blocks at the cost of having his arm cut off. Fortunately for him, dismembered limbs regrow within minutes in-game.
• Grand Romantic Gesture: The plot of "The Day Before" is him trying to do this; since marriage in SAO is basically a matter pressing a few buttons in your menu, he wanted to make the moment more memorable for Asuna by doing it in front of their new log cabin. Asuna is very touched when he's forced to admit this after they find the cabin missing, and says that him even trying this is enough for her. He's still able to pull it off though after they find and put the cabin back.
• Gratuitous English: Likes to slip in English words at times, such as "good job".
• Green Thumb: In Alicization, if Eugeo's primary power is ice then Kirito's is wood. This is reflected on the fact their respective weapons are made of an element, Eugeo's Blue Rose being ice and Kirito's Night Sky being wood. Furthermore, in the climax of the arc, Kirito turns PoH into a tree.
• Gross-Up Close-Up: Gets a few of these when he gets battle-crazy.
• Guile Hero: It doesn't pop up very often as Kirito is usually an Action Hero that relies on physically beating down his enemies, but he has on occasion shown a more manipulative side.
  • He pulls a Refuge in Audacity in an attempt to stop General Eugene's army of Salamanders from ambushing the Sylph and Cait-Sith meeting, which against all odds succeeds.
  • In Hollow Realization he tricks Genesis into giving an Engineered Public Confession while Seven is listening, giving the SA:O admins the proof they needed to terminate his account and send a warrant for his arrest.
  • During the attack on Castle Galey in Progressive, he's forced to fight Gindo, the leader of Qusack, when he poisons the Dark Elves' Springs. Since he can't attack him without gaining a red cursor, Kirito instead opts to knock Gindo into the spring, banking on the weight of his armour making him unable to get back up, allowing Kirito to cure the spring without interruption.
  • When fighting the Thornspike Cave Bear in Unital Ring, he, Asuna, Alice and Leafa are forced to retreat to the destroyed cabin, subjecting them to a siege. Upon noticing the home storage box, which they filled with 150 logs, he gets the idea to start a trade chain between the four of them, with him at the end ready to climb up onto the roof, and gets the logs to him, which he then spawns in front of him on top of the bear, crushing it to death.
  • Later on against Bolan's group, he has to empty his inventory to accept and equip the gear Yui sent him while the group is charging him and the others. To quickly get rid of the rocks he stacked in his inventory, he creates a Stone Furnace, the ghost of it disorientating and confusing them and then causes Bolan to crash into it once it's created for real.
  • During the fight against the PKers invading the log cabin, Kirito has himself, Klein and Agil dump all the frog meat they collected onto fire the PKers started, the smell of which draws over the Thornspike Cave Bear, who attacks the PKers from behind and throws them into disarray.
• Guilt Complex: Kirito has a particularly bad case of this. Chances are that when someone dies, even if his own involvement is very minimal, he's more than likely to blame himself for it.
  • When the Death Game started, he offered to bring Klein with him so they can get a head start on farming, only for Klein to decline since he wants to find his friends who he logged in with. Not feeling that he can responsible for all of them, he and Klein amicably go their separate ways, with Kirito grinding and joining the Frontlines, while Klein made a guild with his friends and soon caught up. Ever since, he's been reluctant to talk to or even contact Klein out of guilt for "abandoning him", even though it was a mutually agreed parting and Klein never felt that he did.
  • When Coper, a fellow Beta-Tester, tried to kill him in order to accomplish a quest before him only to die due to an oversight, Kirito actually mourns him, leaving the quest item he was after where he died as a sign of respect. This death is noted to still haunt him.
  • The most well-known example would be the Moonlit Blackcats. while he admittedly had more involvement with their deaths than the other examples, the guild's death can also be blamed, maybe more so, on the guild's growing arrogance, believing they could risk a higher-level dungeon and not listening to Kirito when he said not to open a chest, despite him being the reason they were able to come so far as a group.
  • Phantom Bullet reveals that he suffers from PTSD from killing three Laughing Coffin members and feels immense guilt for killing them. While trauma from killing someone is understandable, the three he killed were still sadistic Serial Killers who dedicated themselves to hurting others, one of which was a Stalker with a Crush who wanted to kill him so he could have Asuna all to himself and later tried to murder her.
  • Before using the Vorpal Strike to defeat Chudelkin, his internal narration reveals that he dislikes the Black Swordsman title since, while everyone associates it with the hero who ended the infamous Sword Art Online, he himself associates it with someone who couldn't save all the players trapped there, meaning he himself feels guilty for every death to have. occurred in SAO.
  • Eugeo's death was something he blamed himself for so much that he was subconsciously attacking his own Fluctlight which, with the added help of the GDS cutting the Ocean Turtle's power, sent him into what was essentially an Angst Coma. This is in spite of the fact that Eugeo chose to attack Quinella after defeating the Sword Golem instead of reverting to his normal form or choosing to attack with support from Kirito and Alice and, as he lays dying, telling Kirito not to save him.
  • His Journey to the Center of the Mind actually reveals a possible reason for this; on the way home from school, he saw a friend he made in the SAO Beta-Test hanging out with a group of delinquents, who were likely coercing him into hanging out with him to use as an errand boy. Kirito felt that he could have helped him if he had simply approached and asked if he wanted to walk home together, but instead just kept walking despite the friend's pleading eyes.
  • When he finds himself sad at the thought of leaving the Underworld during his fight with Gabriel, he wonders if not wanting to leave means he doesn't truly care about his friends and family in the real world. Eugeo's spirit is quick to reassure him that it isn't that he doesn't care about his IRL friends, it's that he also cares about the people he met in the Underworld.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: During the final battle against Gabriel in Alicization, he gets his lower torso sliced off, but he continues to fight nonetheless. He later regrows the missing part before engaging in the final attack.
• Handicapped Badass: Having his arms cut off will barely slow him down and he will continue advancing in for the kill.
• Happily Adopted: By his aunt Midori and uncle Minetaka. Although he became distant when he found out they aren't really his parents, he gets over it after the SAO incident.
• Happily Married: His marriage to Asuna in SAO is the only time during the death game that he was truly happy. They're too young to marry in real life, and even there, they're happily dating.
  • He also proves to be a rather doting husband/boyfriend; In the The Day After Side-story, where Asuna starts having moments of detachment from her Avatar, Kirito resolves to try solving the issue since he wants her to enjoy ALO as much as possible, as it lacks the stress of being a Death Game that SAO had, and is willing to try and eliminate even minor issues to make sure she does.
• Hates Being Called Cute: The rare times it does happen, he seems annoyed at being called such.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: None of his outfits include a helmet of any sort. In Progressive, he notes that he would take severe damage from being hit on the head, but even with a helmet, a head hit would cause him to be dazed and stunned. Because he knows even that would be fatal to a solo player, he thus forgoes armor in favor of greater mobility and visibility.
• The Hero: The Protagonist of Sword Art Online and the most active hero in the story.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: For the first year of SAO, Kirito was easily the most despised player in the entire game, due to his Zero-Approval Gambit where he stigmatized himself as a Beater. The top guilds all shunned him and viewed him as a selfish player only concerned with himself. This subsides over time when word spreads of him performing selfless deeds and starts gaining a reputation as the legendary solo player known as the "Black Swordsman" who has come to the aid of others many times.
• Heroes Act, Villains Hinder:
  • For the Aincrad and Fairy Dance arcs, Kirito is the one with the end goal, while most villains he comes across are obstacles for him to clear.
  • Averted with Phantom Bullet, where Death Gun actively hunts him and Sinon down, and they have to dedicate efforts to escaping his clutches.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: All of his avatar characters use some sort of Cool Sword. Specifically, One-handed swords, and typically one in each hand. In SAO, he uses the Elucidator and Dark Repulser. Even in GGO, he picks up a lightsaber. It's fitting given his chivalrous impulses.
  • Even in Gun Gale Online, he forgoes using a gun (aside from a pistol sidearm) in favor of a Laser Blade.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • He suffers one when Asuna performs a Heroic Sacrifice. It debilitates him so badly that he can't bring himself to do more than slowly and feebly swing his swords at Heathcliff for a few seconds.
  • Suffers another one when he encounters Death Gun and realizes that not only is he a survivor of SAO, but also a member of Laughing Coffin. All of Kirito's repressed memories of the purge against that guild return and leave him in such a wrecked state that Sinon is worried by his nonresponsiveness.
  • He also briefly suffers one in his Near-Death Experience in Episode 24 when Sugou/Oberon sexually assaults Asuna after paralyzing him, thinking he couldn't be able to save her, and basically gives up (in his words "facing reality"). The spirit of Kayaba, the first half's Affably Evil baddie, manages to snap him out of it and give him a Heroic Second Wind, as well giving him his system administrator privileges to take Oberon down.
  • Happens to him again twice during the events of Alicization. First when Eugeo was cut in half by Quinella, and second when he finally recovers most of his past memories during his Journey to the Center of the Mind moment.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: During SAO, first due to his status as a "Beater", although he gets better when he joins the Moonlit Black Cats. Then it's turned up to eleven after the whole guild is wiped out, to the point he becomes quite self-loathing.
• He's Back!: The first thing Kirito did after coming back from catatonia? Freeze the remaining 30,000 foreign players in ice, and then turn PoH into a tree.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • He's best buddies with Klein, which sometimes slips into Ho Yay territory.
  • With Eugeo. It doesn't end well for them in the end, however.
• Hey, You!:
  • Kirito is noted for avoiding Japanese Honorifics when addressing others, with quite a few others such as Asuna and Lisbeth calling him out on his rudeness. He only resorts to formality when he really needs to show respect or when he's in trouble with Asuna.
  • It's pointed out that he talks very casually with Kikuoka, something that would be highly disrespectful considering that Kikuoka is significantly older than Kirito. It's implied that this is because Kirito doesn't exactly like Kikuoka, although he acknowledges that he's more competent than he seems.
• Hidden Badass: To those unfamiliar with him, he looks like a scrawny teenager with no muscle mass, so it can come as quite a surprise just how Strong and Skilled he is with a sword.
• Hidden Heart of Gold:
  • After clearing SAO L1, he decides to pull a Zero-Approval Gambit and out himself as the first Beater in attempts to keep beta tester discrimination under control.
  • More specifically, his cold behavior around Klein is meant to cover up the guilt he feels for "abandoning" him on the first floor.
• Hollywood Hacking: To save Yui, he does Rapid-Fire Typing on an admin console and manages to save her data as an in-game item.
• Honor Before Reason: in Alfheim Online, Kirito has made it a personal goal to use the game's Original Sword Skill system to try recreate the Dual Wielding skill he had in SAO, and has developed a technique that allows him to bypass a Sword Skills post-motion delay by chaining One-Handed Sword Skills between hands. Despite how powerful both of these techniques are however, he'll typically make do with just the one sword, with Liz speculating that he'll only whip out a second in the event that "it isn't a game anymore", despite the massive advantage this would provide on some harder quests.
• Hope Spot: The resurrection item, the Stone of Returning Soul. Kirito relentlessly pursued it in hopes of redemption, but it only works within ten seconds of a player's death, making it utterly useless for reviving Sachi, who died months ago.
• Horrible Judge of Character: During the 2nd Floor Arc of the Progressive Manga, he adamantly believes that Orlando, The Leader of the Legend Braves, is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who who only wants to fight on the Frontlines for the glory, is manipulating Nezha to this end, and is willing to cut him loose should it be to his advantage. Not only does it turn out that Orlando is actually the Nice Guy he presents himself as, but he further proves Kirito wrong when he and his guild owe up to the scam and his response to Lind telling him to "pass judgement" for their alleged Accidental Murder, is to stab himself so his guild may live.
• Hypocrite: A well-intentioned but ultimately self-harming example. He has good intentions and most of his point aren't exactly wrong, but he'd really be better off if he took his own advice.
  • Kirito has a tendency to try and deter others from involving themselves in dangerous situations only to rush headfirst into them himself. A good example would be him telling the others to avoid fighting the SAO Bosses appearing in Ordinal Scale after Asuna and Klein lose their memories upon being killed by them, only to go and challenge them himself. When Shino bumps into him before one of the fights, she actually Lampshades this, and all he can do is weakly try to deter her from not taking part before agreeing to her help when she points out that she'd be less at risk due to not being an SAO Survivor. Hilariously enough, he Lampshades this in Rainbow Bridge under much less seriously circumstances, that being an in-game quest.
  • At the end of Phantom Bullet, he organizes a meeting between Shino and the post-office clerk from the day of the incident, who was pregnant at the time and was able to give birth to her daughter due to Shino saving her life, to convince her to consider all the people her actions saved. Despite this, he has a massive Guilt Complex that causes him to ignore much of the good he's done in favor of focusing on things he perceives as his fault, to the point that he dislikes his old Black Swordsman title, who many associate with the man who saved thousands by clearing SAO, because he associates it with someone who couldn't save everyone who was trapped there.
  • In Alicization Lycoris, he calls Eugeo out on how his attempt on Quinella's life nearly resulted in his death. Despite this, Kirito's own Guilt Complex has caused him to show a disregard for his own life plenty of times, with him even trying to commit suicide during his Angst Coma in the Canon timeline.
• Hypocritical Humour: When confronting PoH and his cohorts in the "Murder Case in Town" Arc, he pokes fun at his "ugly fashion sense"^note  a black poncho and mostly dark clothes, when he himself isn't exactly fashion-conscious, his outfit having the same black color scheme and many other characters poking fun at his near-obsession with black clothing.
  PoH ... Bold words, coming from you.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: It's revealed that after SAO ended, he chose not to actively seek out the statuses of the SAO players he knew but whose fates he was uncertain of, in fear of learning that they died since the last time he saw them. Upon meeting Argo again in Unital Ring, she lightly chides him for this, but quickly stops him from apologizing since it's not like she reached out to him either.
• I Know Mortal Kombat:
  • At the beginning of Fairy Dance, Kirito proves that he has real-world reaction and dodging speed on par with his cousin, the kendo expert. At the end of the arc he easily handles an asshole attacking him with a knife, though it should be noted that said asshole was suffering from phantom injuries dealt by Kirito minutes prior.
  • Invoked in Alicization where Kirito is able to use his swordsman experience in SAO to great effect, which he dubs "Aincrad style".
• I Know Your True Name: In the climax of GGO, Kirito is faced with a situation where he can't remember the name of the Laughing Coffin member who is impersonating Death Gun, despite having found a few clues during the BoB tournament. Throughout the final duel, he frantically scrapes through his memories and remembers the briefing before the raid on Laughing Coffin's HQ, which brought out the names of several key members. It is then, through the conjecture of Death Gun's physical appearance, specifically the skull mask and red lenses, that Kirito realizes he is fighting Red-Eyed XaXa, prompting the latter to be distracted and eventually get defeated. The implication runs even deeper since Kirito now has the means to arrest the Death Gun perpetrators.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: During his time with the Black Cats, protecting and comforting Sachi from her fear of dying helped to assuage some of his guilt over being a beater and solo player, but it came back to bite him hard in the end when his inability to admit his background and knowledge indirectly caused her to die from a trap.
• Insecure Love Interest: In "The Day Before", he confides to the Lion NPC that he's concerned about the validity of his feelings for Asuna, due to his previous MMO experience where he often put up a front, something he does in SAO, which, combined with his admittance to having never fallen in love before and how he isolated himself from his family IRL, makes him wonder if his feelings for her are real.
• I Regret Nothing:
  • Kirito reveals he has no regrets for what he did to Sugou when he put the bastard through a world of hurt. He tells Klein in Memory Defrag that while he felt no remorse for what he did, he does wish the circumstances were different as it ended up ruining the reputation of Asuna's father.
  • When Sinon asks Kirito if he regretted what he did to PoH, he replies that he didn't; because he couldn't face her and Leafa if he did.
• I Will Find You: When SAO begins collapsing around them Kirito promises Asuna that the two of them will find each other again in the real world. His quest to do just that encompasses the Fairy Dance Arc.
• An Ice Person: Briefly, when he uses Eugeo's Blue Rose Sword to freeze PoH's army.
• Iconic Outfit: He's had a lot of outfits over the years, but his most iconic one by far is his "Black Swordsman" SAO avatar, featuring a black Badass Longcoat. His Black Swordsman attire pops up at least once a season, even post Aincrad, and usually for climactic moments when taking on the Arc Villain or Final Boss.
• Identical Stranger:
  • Renly's Best Friend from before his synthesis is depicted in the anime as bearing a resemblance to him. Rising Steel goes further with this in "The Knight's Recollection" Event, depicting their dynamic as very similar to his and Eugeo's.
  • Also in the anime, PoH's father has a legitimate son who bears an uncanny resemblance to Kirito. This might play into PoH's antagonism towards him.
• I'm a Humanitarian: When he uses an illusion spell to apparently turn into a monster, he eats some of the enemy players, and then chomps on Leafa's fingers when he turns back to normal. He was joking.
  "Just trying to lighten the mood."
• Image Song: He has a total of four.
  • In the first anime series: "Sword & Soul" and "Sing All Overtures" (Asuna, Yui, Silica, Lizbeth, Leafa, and Kirito).
  • In Sword Art Online II: "BLAZING BULLET" (Sinon and Kirito).
  • From the Alicization anime: "Beginning the destiny" (Kirito, Eugeo, and Alice).
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • In Season 1 Episode 22, where he tries to reach the apex of the tower by himself, only to be overwhelmed by the infinitely respawning guardians throwing swords through him.
  • Again in Season 1 Episode 24, when Sugou impaled him with his own sword, just after altering the pain absorber to make it even worse for him.
• Implausible Fencing Powers: After two years trapped in SAO, Kirito is possibly the best virtual swordsman in existence. He goes into Gun Gale Online... and buys a lightsaber which he uses to deflect bullets. He later uses this experience to control otherwise uncontrollable Sword Skills well enough to cut spells out of the air. You can practically taste the expressions of the first set of enemies he demonstrates that too.
  Kirito: Compared to a bullet from an anti-materiel rifle, magic spells are just too slow.
• Improbable Weapon User: Played with in Gun Gale Online. While swords are a perfectly good weapon in other games, his Photon Sword is part of what is considered the resident Joke Item class in Gun Gale since the game is a realistic shooter. Kirito picks up the Photon Sword and basically acts like a Jedi through pure skill.
  • In Alicization, after breaking his and Eugeo's chains, Kirito uses the leftover chain attached to the shackle on his wrist as a makeshift weapon against Eldrie. Justified in that the chain has a very high level.
• Incompletely Trained: Even though Kirito quit after a mere two months of Kendo training as a nine year old, it gave him the edge of understanding basic concepts like stance, footworks, rhythm, defence and counterattacks over 90% of other VR video-gamers, who can only make do with "hit" or "run." However, much like Luke Skywalker, what allowed him to become a Master Swordsman without further formal training is the regular daily application of what little he learned in life and death situations while trapped in Aincrad; enough so that it allowed him to be an equal to Suguha, who did continue and finish the harsh training of their traditionalist grandfather, in the Real World.
• Indirect Kiss: Has happened a few times in the game continuity.
  • In Hollow Fragment, when Kirito finds Silica working as a maid and gets served by her, he tries some of the food and offers some to Silica too. Silica obliges and loves it, before suddenly becoming flustered and claims it's because a maid isn't allowed to eat on the job. She is then heard muttering "indirect" to herself as she walks off.
  • In Hollow Realization, Kirito helps Yuuki complete a quest for a drink called a Honey Bee. After completing it and Yuuki is rewarded with the sugary sweet drink, she offers Kirito a taste too. However, Yuuki notices they used the same straw and wonders if that meant they indirectly kissed.
• Ineffectual Loner: Due to his Dark and Troubled Past, he mostly acts as a lone wolf but still his friends, people in need and girls will flock to him whether he wants it or not. Of course, he does care back.
  • He's also proven from time to time, despite his claims that he can and attempts to do things alone, that he does need help in certain instances, such as his assault on the World Tree only going well after he enlists Leafa and Recon's help and gets reinforcements from the Sylphs and Cait Sith, when previously all he accomplished was getting himself killed, or when he was powerless against Sugou's admin privileges to the point where Kayaba needed to give him his to tip the scales. He also required Sinon's help in taking down Death Gun and most of his fights against the Integrity Knights involved him tag-teaming with Eugeo.
• The Informant: Becomes one to Seijirou to investigate the Death Gun rumors.
• 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.
• Instant Expert: Averted to some degree. In ever single case, there's an explanation to how he's so good or bad at new feats being demonstrated.
  • In SAO, he has a jump start on how SAO works because he was a Beta Tester, and got particularly far during it, as well as a good understanding of MMOs in general from other, non VRMMOs, so he understands meta, and how to use in game systems in alternative ways.
  • In ALO during the Fairy Dance arc, the game, being based on SAO's systems and even using the Cardinal engine, detects his old SAO data and thinks it's his ALO stats. Having high or mastered level skills in combat puts him on even grounds with much better-equipped veteran players. However, he is completely unfamiliar with the use of the flight system, and at first, has to use the control stick item. Even after Leafa teaches him how to fly more naturally, without the aid of the flight stick, Kirito has absolutely no skill at actually landing, instead, relying on crashing into the ground, or a building to stop.
  • In GGO, he has absolute beginner's skill with firing guns. The first time he fires his pistol at an in-game gun range, he has poor shooting technique and completely misses the target. The first time in battle he uses it, he fired 5 shots from it, and only two hit, and his opponent still had 90% health^note What it DID do, was further distract his opponent from reloading, giving Kirito enough time to stab him with an imitated Vorpal Strike sword skill to finish him off.
• Internet Jerk: Defied. He explains to Leafa, that he's heard a lot of people who argue that they can steal and kill other players in VRMMOs and that it is alright since they're not doing it to real life people. However Kirito believes that doing evil things in said games ends up changing your actual personality in real life. Considering the number of psychotic, sociopathic, players Kirito and company have encountered over the years he's got a point.
• Interrupted Suicide: Eugeo's death broke him really hard to the point of attempting to kill himself until Eugeo's memory fragment snapped him out of it.
• Invincible Hero: Despite being seen as the poster boy for this trope, this is ultimately Played With. Depending on the arc or which VR world he is in, Kirito displays this trope to varying degrees, sometimes subverting it and other times deconstructing it.
  • In SAO, he appears to have all the makings of this, being one of the highest levelled players on frontlines to the point where he's considered a serious contender for World's Best Warrior, especially when he becomes one of the only players with a Unique Skill, Dual Wielding. Despite this however, his actual abilities are shown to be largely dependent on the caliber of his opponents; his most effortless Curb-Stomp Battle against Titan's Hand was because their levels, being a mid-floor guild, were much lower than his, a solo player who's regularly fighting on the highest floors, that his vastly higher Battle Healing Skill effectively undid any damage that they dealt to him. When faced with players or monsters around his level, while he's definitely no slouch, he can and will have a more difficult time fighting them; while he was able to use his Unique Skill to effectively solo The Gleam Eyes, that was after he, Asuna and Fuurinkazan fought it for a brief time to save the helpless ALS members, and even at the end of it he only had a slither of HP remaining and collapsed shortly after. And he's later unable to match Heathcliff, actually Kayaba, at first due to him cheating by using the system to increase his speed, and later due to his vastly superior knowledge of the Sword Skills rendering even his most powerful attacks moot.
  • Deconstructed several times in the Fairy Dance arc, where Kirito is overconfident in taking on a game where he's allowed to die, believing he's so overpowered that he's above the system and could ignore the limitations that were set. He attempts to take on the "Grand Quest" entirely on his own, and ultimately finds he's way out of his league and dies for it. He then reflects that his arrogance and ignoring the rules led to his downfall and this was his punishment. It happens again while fighting Sugou, who is a GM who abuses his power, with Kirito completely outclassed and he seems to submit to the system that he once defied, where only a timely intervention from Kayaba's Virtual Ghost is he able to bail out of this one. That said, Kirito's few losses in Fairy Dance ultimately serve to reinforce his invincibility, as he only loses due to his opponent cheating. The Grand Quest was deliberately set up as an Impossible Task by Suguo, who, during the final fight with Kirito, is immediately overpowered once Kayaba levels the playing field. Really, Kirito's biggest mistake was assuming that his opponent would play fair.
  • Played With in GGO. When he converts over, he's able to adjust to the changes and contend with more experienced players easily enough, becoming famous for becoming a BoB despite being a new player. However, this is largely because he ends up falling back to his previous experience in SAO and ALO when he discovers the existence of Photon Swords to use his trademark swordsmanship with, allowing him to take advantage of the average GGO player's unfamiliarity with his style along with combining his Super-Reflexes with the Prediction Line system to cuts bullets shot at him as a defensive measure.. Yet when faced with Death Gun, a fellow SAO Survivor who was able to deck himself out in gear he was more comfortable with, he suffered a much harder time and ultimately required Sinon's assistance to win.
  • Averted in Alicization where Kirito discovers in this new world he's no longer backed by his stats and has to start over from scratch. He has his first reality check in the goblin fight and experiences real pain that was far too intense for virtual reality and needed to get saved by Eugeo. When facing the Integrity Knights, he and Eugeo need to keep tagteaming to come out victorious, and then he gets throughly curbstomped by Alice.
  • It's even Played With in the War of Underworld, where he returns a Physical God. While his waking up does ultimately turn the tide, it's not because he's really that overpowered; it's because that, whether willingly of subconsciously, all the residents of the Underworld chose him to be their savior who would end the war, effectively granting him their collective Incarnation. This is what allows him to perform absurd feats like freeze PoH's entire army of 3000 foreign players, implied to be with the help Eugeo's spirit, turn PoH into a tree, wield multiple Sacred Art elements at the same time, and create spikes in his heart to harm Gabriel when he tries to eat it. Plus, even with him effectively being a Physical God, both PoH and Subtilizer hardly suffer a Curb-Stomp Battle at his hands, both also having powerful Incarnations that are able to match his for a good while before he finally bests them, the latter even requiring him to get some help from Eugeo's spirit.
  • Ends up Averting this again in Unital Ring, where the strange merge effectively resets his stats and loses him access to much of his ALO equipment, forcing him to start from scratch like in the Underworld.
• Ironic Echo: In several climatic moments in the Aincrad arc, Kirito starts chanting "hayaku"^note faster while he's caught in an intense fight. Nearly every time he's done so it hasn't ended well for him.
• Irony:
  • The reason Kirito always wears black is he believes he can blend in with the shadows and will draw less attention. However, it actually causes him to stand-out more in a crowd.
  • AGGO mentions that Kirito using the Prediction Lines for Parrying Bullets led to a surge in Photon Sword users... which directly led to players who have real-world firearm experience to start shooting without the Prediction Lines.^note It's unclear whether this would have an effect on Kirito, who made a point about "predicting the Prediction Lines" on his first day, as all indications point to him rarely playing GGO.
• It Has Been an Honor: Gives his thanks to "Eugeo" before finishing Gabriel off with a 17-hit Starburst Stream.
• Japanese Honorifics: Kirito usually averts this, referring to his peers without any honorifics. Asuna actually calls him out on how rude he was being, before she grants him permission to continue using First-Name Basis.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Initially at the beginning when he's aloof and rude to anyone due to traumatic events in the game but fortunately due to his friendship with Asuna and the others, he comes around to be a straight-up Nice Guy.
• Jerkass Ball: He's unusually hostile towards Lisbeth during the first time they meet, acting extremely arrogant while constantly belittling or snarking at her.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: While he was still paralyzed, he receives visions of his past, suffers from a huge Heroic BSoD over Eugeo's death, and nearly commits suicide by attempting to crush his heart with his bare hands. It took a lot of convincing from Asuna, Leafa, Sinon, and Eugeo's "spirits" that Kirito has finally recovered from his Game-Breaking Injury to finish the heroes' job.

K-O

• Kick The Son Of A Bitch:
  • After acquiring Kayaba's Administrator ID, Kirito proceeds to use it on Sugou, brutally chopping up his avatar, followed by beating him up in the real world, and finally leaves him to the police as retribution for his actions up to this point.
  • He also has no problems imprisoning PoH in a tree for putting the lives of his friends in grave danger (especially Asuna's), beating him up while he was still suffering from his Game-Breaking Injury, and for his exploits back in Aincrad and their after-effects, followed by giving Gabriel poetic justice.
• Kid Hero: Only 14 at the beginning, 16 by the end of the SAO arc and by then he's put a number of bad guys behind bars (or six feet under in the case of Laughing Coffin).
• Kung-Fu Clairvoyance: Invoke by Kirito in GGO. He's shown to be able to deflect bullets through the Prediction Line. But as Sinon pointed out there isn't enough time between seeing the Prediction Lines and reacting to it. So how does he do it? Turns out Kirito learned to predict the Prediction Lines.
• Laser Blade: His primary weapon in GGO is a beam sword. He doesn't like it because it's too light.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: During the second half of Alicization, Kirito's grief of losing Eugeo combined with getting hit by a power surge causes him to go into a catatonic state and loses his memories. In Rising Steel, the catatonic Kirito goes on to have a Battle in the Center of the Mind where he fights to preserve the memories of those he loves and values.
• Leeroy Jenkins: While Kirito is pretty calm and composed most of the time there are moments when his trigger gets pushed and he proceeds to fight with this style. The most obvious example is during the Fairy Dance arc, when he finds out that Asuna really is at the top of the world tree, and he charges at the barrier despite having learned he can't breach it, before attempting to take on the Grand Quest on his own in a Heroic Second Wind, which gets him shishkabobed by dozens of swords. Leafa has to come in and rescue him, revive him, then talk him out of trying it again.
• Leitmotif: It's hard to pin one single theme for him since his presence throughout the series in many different settings features a wide array of different musical pieces. But his most commonly associated theme is "Swordland" or one of its remixes depending on what game he's in such as "Gunland" for Gun Gale Online or "Find Your Sword In This Land" for Alicization.
• Lethal Chef: When he tries his hand at cooking in Lost Song, he makes something that's too spicy for normal people to safely eat. Of course, Kirito's sense of taste is far from normal so he had no problem eating it.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Lisbeth notes during the Mother's Rosario arc that Kirito won't break out the Dual Wielding unless it's no longer just a game. Sure enough, since the end of Fairy Dance, he's only broken out the second sword in ALO on two occasions - during Calibur, after Yui noted the risk of Ragnarok destroying the world data, and to hold off the boss-clearing guild for the Sleeping Knights and Asuna in Mother's Rosario, because fighting the boss has personal significance for the Knights, who he knows are secretly a group of terminally ill players.^note A Q&A does claim that he's trying to recreate Starburst Stream as an Original Sword Skill, which suggests he's doing some training in dual-wielding, but he's not shown exercising this against any actual opponents.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition:
  • Kirito gains this dynamic with the first two Big Bads, Heathcliff/Kayaba and Oberon/Sugou, with Kirito being Dark Is Not Evil while the villains being Light Is Not Good. Kirito is The Hero who always dresses in black, earning him the name the "Black Swordsman" and has swords named after dark themes like "Dark Repulsor" and "Night Sky Sword". Heathcliff is a paladin with his attacks including the "Holy Sword" and "Spiritual Light". Meanwhile Sugou made himself into the King of the Fairies and the God of Alfheim Online, giving himself a divine appearance with blonde hair and ornamented with gold.
  • Also invokes with Quinella, who preaches herself as the God-Emperor of the Underworld and in the rare instances she wears clothes they tended to be light lavender or white in color.
• Lightning Bruiser: He possesses unbelievable speed and Super-Reflexes that at times allows him to Flash Step, but he also has a insanely high DPS. On top of that he can just as easily serve as a Tank if required, being able to shrug off minor attacks due to healing faster than the damage gets inflicted.
• Likes Older Women: It runs both ways in Kirito's case. Several of the women in his life who love him (namely Sachi, Lisbeth, Sortilena and of course his wife Asuna), are all at-least one year older than him.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Asuna. Their relationship is very serious, to the point that they cannot live on if one of them dies. He also sees Eugeo as this too.
• Living Legend: Became the greatest VR hero known to man with even a book being written about his heroism. Even his stepparents knew about Kirito's actions in the VR world by reading the aforementioned book.
• Lonely at the Top: While it might seem cool to be the strongest player in SAO, it's also not easy being the solo Beater due to how lonely Kirito gets.
• Loners Are Freaks: Actively cultivated this, first due to the stigma against beta testers, and later after his guild was annihilated. He gets better, as part of his Character Development.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: His Avatar in GGO has waist length hair which amplifies his already feminine appearance.
• Mage Killer: In ALO, he is able to target the small hitboxes in magic attacks and destroy them, a skill he acquired from deflecting bullets in GGO.
• Magnetic Hero: Kirito naturally has this effect on people he comes across, which heavily overlaps with why he's a Chick Magnet. Other players (usually girls) are enamored by chivalry and strength, so get drawn towards him.
• The Man Makes the Weapon:
  • For the majority of the Fairy Dance arc, Kirito had very low level gear, but is able to perform incredible feats like one-shotting enemy players, including holding his own in a duel against Eugene, the World's Best Warrior, and essentially beating him.
  • He pulls this off masterfully during his final duel with Sugou/Oberon in the Fairy Dance arc. Using Kayaba's admin privileges, Kirito summons Excalibur, the Infinity +1 Sword of ALO, and gives it to Sugou before choosing to use his own sword. For all of his bravado, Sugou has no combat experience whatsoever; even with the strongest weapon in the game, he fails to land a single hit on Kirito, who literally tears him apart in mere seconds.
• Manly Tears:
  • Several times, but two moments stand out: while listening to the audio recording Sachi left him, and while apologizing to a comatose Asuna for being unable to fulfill his promise to her to help her return to the real world.
  • Happens again near the end of Alicization when Kirito went to the now inactive World End Altar after disposing of PoH and Gabriel, thinking that he won't be able to see everyone in the RW again since he's stuck in UW for 200 years. Thankfully, Asuna shows up to keep him company.
• Marry Them All: His solution to his Unwanted Harem in the non-canon, post-Alicization Gaiden X2 special.
• Master of Illusion: Comes with being a Spriggan in ALO. Used to terrifying effect against a twelve-person attack squad.
• Master Swordsman: In SAO he mastered the One Handed Straight Sword skills and Dual Blades unique skills.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: At the end of SAO, Kirito keeps himself from dying long enough to kill Kayaba. Also, Kirito or possibly Kayaba's ghost, in which case this wouldn't count, unstuck a sword that was position-fixed at the end of ALO. These were apparently impossible based on the laws of SAO. Power of Love? Yes. Reality Warper? Maybe. Or incarnate system, which would count as a mundane explanation.
• Meaningful Name:
  • His name, Kazuto, can mean different things depending on the kanji used, but the official version, 和人, means "calm human". He is certainly someone that can keep calm in the most tense moments.
  • Unintentionally occurs in the Underworld, where he goes by his username. Under the Underworld's naming convention^note  certain letter syllables represent a trait the parents wants their child to have, his name expresses a desire for him to possess zeal(K), fitting with his more playful personality and Determinator status, especially when compared to Eugeo, beauty or attractiveness(R), which fits with his Chick Magnet status, and vitality(T), indicative of his power, aforementioned determination and later Came Back Strong moment.
• The Mentor: He becomes one to Eugeo, training him in the "Aincrad Style" of swordsmanship and also imparting life lessons such as the importance of one's motivation to swing a sword in battle.
• Messianic Archetype: Considering Kirito often goes up against Satanic Archetypes, it's unsurprising he would be given this role himself.
  • In Fairy Dance, Sugou is the Satanic Archetype in the setting, having stolen an entire Virtual World and declared himself as God. Kirito is only able to beat Sugou with Divine Intervention from Kayaba the real God of this setting, by giving Kirito the tools he needs to take the bastard down.
  • In Alicization, Kirito defeats Quinella, the Immortal Ruler and tyrant of the Human Empire (and another Satanic Archetype), but at the cost of becoming an Empty Shell in the process. Later on when Gabriel who is a God-Emperor and yet another Satanic Archetype arrives (aided by Vassago, another Satanic Archetype dating back to Aincrad), it takes Kirito returning from being brain-dead much like Christ's resurrection, to harness all of the belief of the people of the world to defeat this new threat. More fittingly, Kirito's recovery and victory over Vassago and his forces and later Gabriel fits in with the Second Coming of Christ and his victory against Satan and his forces in the Final Battle in the Book of Revelation.
• Mirror Boss: The boss of the Hollow Area is Kirito's own Hollow Data AI copy, who is just as strong as the real Kirito.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: When Kirito uses Metamorphosis to turn into a Gleam-Eyes monster, he gets less rational as well and resorting to biting enemies. Kirito states he only half remembers things while in this state.
• The Mourning After: Eugeo's loss hits him so badly, he even mourns for his best friend and Living Emotional Crutch after ending the war in UW to the point where Suguha has to come in his room and comfort him.
• Mr. Fanservice: He's so cute and sexy at the same time, especially when he wears nothing but boxers for the majority of Volume 21.
• Muscles Are Meaningless:
  • Despite being the strongest player in SAO, he has the same physique as he does in real life, being an indoorsy gamer who rarely ever practices physical activity. Lots of characters have commented how it's odd that he's so thin yet is able to be so powerful.
  • This is zigzagged in real life. He's a scrawny kid, due to spending two years in a coma. In the GGO arc, he's overpowered in a straight fight by Kyouji. That being said, when Sugou attacks him in real life at the end of the Fairy Dance arc, Kirito is not only able to overpower him, but slams Sugou's head into a car door with enough force to leave a visible dent.
• My Greatest Failure: The aforementioned fall of the "Moonlit Black Cats" and failure to revive Sachi defined him as a person for all of SAO.
  • And Eugeo's death is added to his list in Alicization.
• My Greatest Second Chance: After the whole SAO (and, by extension ALO) experience, he vows to become a more honest and better brother figure for Suguha. Successfully rescuing Asuna when he failed Sachi also does wonders for his mental health.
• My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours: He's the "Yours" in the equation during the Alfheim and GGO arcs. He knows Mortal Kombat... but two years of twenty-four-hour full dive takes its toll on your muscles. A few months of rehab let him go toe-to-toe with Suguha, but she's got the better body for it (and he's still trying to use Sword Skills). When he confronts Sugou in the real world at the arc's end, he would have died from being stabbed by Sugou if the man wasn't suffering from his phantom injuries dealt by Kirito minutes earlier in the game that allowed Kirito to dodge and easily overpower him. The nurse watching over him during his GGO stint notes that, although he's got a bit of meat on him, it's still obvious he's an SAO survivor, and it shows when he tries to fight off Kyouji and gets overpowered.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: "I am Kirito. The swordsman Kirito!"
• Mythology Gag: Fatal Bullet gives Kirito a different appearance to his canon GGO avatar, where he looks like his real self. However his canon Attractive Bent-Gender avatar does make an appearance as an alternate account named "Kiriko" which he uses to compete in the BoB Tournament which adapts the Phantom Bullet arc.
• Named Weapons: Has owned a few.
  • SAO: Anneal Blade (1H Straight Sword, quest reward), Queen's Knightsword (1H Straight Sword, quest reward), Elucidator (1H Straight Sword, drop) and Dark Repulser (1H Straight Sword, crafted by Lisbeth)
  • ALO: Excaliber (2H Greatsword, quest reward with a handy assist from Sinon)
  • GGO: Kagemitsu G4 (Photon Sword, purchased)
  • Underworld: Sword of Night Sky (1H Straight Sword, forged) and Sword of Blue Rose
• Nephewism: His biological parents died in an accident when he was very young and he was adopted by his aunt and uncle.
• Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight: In GGO. His swordsmanship experience from ALO and SAO allows him to turn the Kagemitsu G4, the game's Joke Weapon, into a Lethal Joke Weapon.
• Nice Guy: Kirito generally tries to help everyone he meets, and will routinely charge into danger to help random strangers in trouble.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: He has this opinion of himself because he didn't try hard enough to prevent the Moonlight Black Cats from falling for Schmuck Bait. Thus, they died. ^note  Keita blames him too but also says that a beater had no business associating with them in the first place.
• No-Sell: During his match against the (player-attacking) orange guild Titan's Hand, half a dozen players hack away at Kirito as hard as they can. He has so much HP it'd take them about 5 minutes to kill him... except he regenerates faster than they can hurt him... and he gets tired of being used for target practice and tells them off.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: When he meets Administrator/Quinella for the first time, she is completely naked. In a break from the norm, he never gets flustered or embarrassed by her body and even manages to defeat her while she's in this state.
• Not Quite Dead: In the Alicization arc, he's rendered brain dead and paralyzed as a result of the GDS' attack on Ocean Turtle, leaving his friends to deal with PoH and the foreign players on their own. He Came Back Strong later and took matters into his own hands, personally killing both PoH and Gabriel as a result.
• Not Me This Time: In the "Cheerful Music" Event in Unleash Blading, Liz and Silica are quick to assume that Kirito seduced some more girls when introduced to the Idolmaster Idols, and he's quick to defend himself by saying that "This time, it wasn't me".
• Oblivious to Love:
  • Subverted refreshingly. Unlike the stereotypical harem protagonist, Kirito is well aware of the girls' affections toward him. It's just that he has already given his heart to Asuna and deliberately plays Selective Obliviousness so as not to hurt their feelings.
  • Played straight for drama when he not only fails to realize Suguha's feelings for him until she spells it out for him, but he fails to realize Leafa's feelings for Kirito until he realizes that she's Suguha.
• Official Couple: With Asuna since the very first light novel. In SAO they were married according to the game's mechanics. In later arcs, they are dating.
• Old Save Bonus: This benefits Kirito greatly during the Fairy Dance arc. Since SAO and ALO are built on the same source code, when Kirito starts ALO, all of his compatible stats from SAO are transferred over, granting him a massively overpowered avatar. However, he considers it cheating and once he saves Asuna and defeats Sugou/Oberon, he resets his stats so he can make a proper Spriggan build and have fun with it.
• Older Than He Looks: Although physically he's still a teenage boy, due to being trapped in the UW where time runs faster, he ends up having lived there for 200 years.
• The One Guy: Overlaps between this and Harem Genre. While he is a Chick Magnet with a Supporting Harem of girls with feelings for him, he's quickly established as an Official Couple with Asuna. So the other girls usually aren't love rivals fighting for his affection, and they all mostly consider themselves a circle of friends with an inbalanced girl-to-guy gender ratio.
  • Post Aincrad, his close circle of friends and in-game party (excluding Klein who is an on-off member) entirely consists of girls: Asuna, Yui, Lisbeth, Silica, Leafa, Sinon, and Alice.
  • The video game continuity adds Strea, Philia, Yuuki, Rain, Seven, and Premiere to the mix.
• One-Man Army:
  • Played around with. Kirito's stats are so high in the VRMMO games he plays that he can take on raiding parties or a powerful event boss like Nicholas the Renegade or the Gleam Eyes and emerge victorious as a solo player. At the same time, this fact makes him arrogant and he will overestimate his own capabilities.
  • In the Aincrad arc, Kirito goes up against the orange PKer guild known as Titan's Hand. Seven thugs all charge and attack Kirito simultaneously. But no matter how much they cut and slash at Kirito, his auto-healing skill recovers all the damage inflicted. Kirito waits for the thugs to tire themselves out before revealing he's level 78 and they would never be able to beat him no matter what. To put this in perspective, Kirito is one of the few fictional characters who can claim he beat the bad guys by standing there and doing nothing.
  • From the Fairy Dance arc, when he and Leafa are cornered by a party of Salamanders, Kirito charges all of them on his own while Leafa acts as support healer. While initially pushed back due the Salamanders healing faster than Kirito can damage them, he gains the upperhand when Yui gives him a Metamorphosis spell that turns him into a Gleam-Eyes monster, to which he proceeds to slaughter the entire squadron.
  • Also from Fairy Dance, he gets a Heroic Second Wind and attempts to take on the "World Tree Grand Quest" all on his own, which was supposedly designed for an entire race to attempt at once. He actually does quite well and takes out all of the melee guardians on his own. He only gets overwhelmed by a Rain of Arrows and blades that impale him from all angels, eventually depleting his HP just as he's about to reach the top.
  • In Mother's Rosario, Kirito (and later Klein) manage to Hold the Line for the Sleeping Knights, against 30 elite players from a rival guild. He gets serious for the first time, by taking out, not only two swords but Excalibur. They succeeding in delaying them long enough that by the time the guild has finally gotten through him, the Sleeping Knights have already won.
  • In Ordinal Scale, the final part of the film has Kirito gaining an Infinity +1 Sword and he proceeds to God Mode over all of the remaining bosses attacking the concert members, proceeding to One-Hit Kill each one with mere swings of his new sword!
  • In Alicization, he tears through a mob of goblins that had captured Selka. Though he has a bit more trouble against the boss goblin.
  • Later in the arc, Kirito manages to fend off Fanatio and all of the four flying swords simultaneously.
  • Guess what Kirito did to the remaining 30,000 foreign players near the end of the Alicization arc.
• Online Alias: Kirito, taken from the "Kiri" in his surname and the "to" in his given name.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His real name is barely mentioned at all. Asuna even has to actively remind herself to use his real name when mentioning him to other people not related to their peer groups. This is less prevalent in the English dub, though, since Suguha calls him by his name instead of "brother", probably highlighting their alienation from each other. On the other hand, adult non-player characters like Kikuoka, Aki or Kojiro refer to him by his family name.
• Only Mostly Dead: Partway through Volume 9, Atsuhi attacks Kirito to avenge the downfall of Death Gun, and stabs him with a fatal dose of succinylcholine. Although he manages to take him down before succumbing to the poison, the volume ends with him flatlining. By the beginning of the next volume, it is revealed that his body recovered from the dose but his brain was damaged, so Seijuro has to use his political clout to get him to Ocean Turtle and hook him up to UnderWorld so it can be repaired.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In The Day After, Asuna, Yui and the others notice his oddly unfocused behaviour during the fight against Wadjet the Flaming Serpent after he save Asuna from a tail attack when she suffers a moment of avatar disconnect, and even more oddly declines to have a second go at it with the others to deal with some personal business.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Yeah, Kirito is a rather skilled VRMMORPG player-slash-addict and an SAO beta tester, but other than his mild family issues, there's not much unusual about his backstory. Or his present... until Kayaba traps everyone in SAO.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Kirito's big mouth has gotten him into a tonne of trouble before, especially in the game adaptation where he often ends up in awkward situations. He'll let slip a stupid question or a stupid answer and end up looking like an Accidental Pervert.
• Out of Focus:
  • During the Mother's Rosario arc his screen time is greatly reduced. As this storyline focuses on Asuna and her Pseudo-Romantic Friendship with Yuuki, so he takes a mild supporting role, helping buy the Sleeping Knights enough time to break through to the boss chamber and giving Asuna a piece of information that helps her find Yuuki in real life. He plays an integral role in the storyline, but it's ultimately Asuna and Yuuki's story.
  • He also goes out of focus for the majority of War of the Underworld, due to his fluctlight being damaged, whereby Alice takes over as the main lead along with Asuna.
• Outside-Context Problem: Kirito tends to be this post-Aincrad for whatever VR world he is in, either due to his stats or his skills.
  • In Fairy Dance, he was able to use an Old Save Bonus with the stats of his overpowered SAO avatar, allowing him to steamroll almost everyone he encountered in ALO, with the exception of Eugene, the World Tree Guardians, and Sugou.
  • In Phantom Bullet, he's an Outside-Genre Problem, being a swordsman with a Laser Blade in a gun game, with all the gunners having no experience dealing with a melee fighter who fights up close.
  • Played with in Alicization. His inexperience with the world actually means he has to learn about everything from scratch. Although his prior swordsmanship experience, which he dubs "Aincrad Style", prove integral in him ascending the ranks and getting stronger. When facing against the Integrity Knights however, it is actually teaming with Eugeo and tag-teaming the Knights, the use of unorthodox strategy, and Cardinal teaching them a Full Arnament Control for their Divine Weapons that allows them to constanly catch the Knights off guard.
• Outside-Genre Foe: Kirito is this to the players of GGO, as a Laser Blade wielding swordsman is something completely new to them with most not having the first clue on how to deal with melee attacks.

P-T

• Pale Females, Dark Males: A clothing example with Asuna. He is often cladded in dark-colored clothing while Asuna usually wears white colors.
• Papa Wolf: Definitely one towards Yui.
  • He hacked Aincrad's Cardinal system to save Yui.
  • In Unital Ring, He expresses a good deal of concern for Yui's well-being now that she's considered a player, being concerned upon witnessing her spar with Alice despite trusting the latter to not hurt her, and actively having to resist the urge to do something protective towards her should it prove detrimental. This comes to a head when they meet up with Sinon and fight a Goliath Rana, where he formulates a plan to knock it on it's back while the others follow-up, only for Yui to insist on being the one to knock it down since he has the highest attack in the group and therefore can help kill it quicker; he's incredibly reluctant to have her do something so risky and life-threatening, but he relents when Yui firmly states that she "doesn't want to spend her whole life being protected".
  • After Yui gets kidnapped by the Masaru of the Apocalyptic Date group, Kirito relentlessly pursues him on Kuro's back, with the help of Asuna and Aga, and enter combat with his group, with Kirito nearly killing their leader. Even after the other group surrenders, Kirito is still extremely hostile at them for attempting to kidnap his daughter, and only shows the barest amount of sympathy upon learning their motives.
  • Played for Laughs in the adorable Sword Art Offline Blu-Ray and DVD short segments: Kirito makes multiple threats to Klein about teaching Yui bad things inappropriate to little girls her age, and states he would beat the Begeezus out of him if he ever flirted with Yui.
• The Paragon: Kirito's experiences have made him an altruistic and courageous character who helps and inspires many other players, like Sinon.
• Parental Substitute: He is Yui's "Daddy", or rather invoked My Real Daddy, since she was programmed by Kayaba, but it was Kirito (and Asuna) who inspired her to grow beyond her programming.
• Parrying Bullets:
  • Less parrying and more cutting them up with his Photon Sword in GGO. He does so by predicting the bullet's trajectory, both from seeing the Prediction Line and anticipating where the Prediction Line would be to begin with.
  • He carries this skill back to ALO where he shows off his ability to slice spells out of the air using his sword. While the spells are slower than bullets, the skill itself is harder as Kirito needs to perfectly time sword skills to hit the spell's core, and unlike GGO he doesn't even have a Prediction Line to guide him.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • His Cold-Blooded Torture of Sugou/Oberon is undoubtedly cruel and drawn-out, considering the fact that Kirito set the Pain Absorber to zero to ensure Sugou would feel it all before killing Sugou's in-game avatar so brutally that Sugou is left permanently injured in real life. However, given that Sugou had kidnapped 300 SAO survivors to perform inhumane Mind Control experiments on them and had sexually assaulted Asuna right in front of Kirito mere seconds before and then attempted to kill Kazuto IRL out of revenge, there's no denying he deserved every second of it. Kirito himself openly admits that after all the atrocities Sugou has committed, he doesn't regret what he did to him for a second.
  • There's also his subjecting PoH to a Fate Worse than Death that soon becomes a Karmic Death, trapping him in a tree and leaving him to rot in Underworld, a VR that runs on Year Inside, Hour Outside, for the rest of his life. Cruel, but considering the fact that PoH founded Laughing Coffin, thus making him both directly and indirectly responsible for all the horrible things its members did (including leading Kirito to be trapped in the Underworld), gleefully beat up Kirito while he was paralyzed and incapable of fighting back right in front of Asuna and the others, and swore he wouldn't stop coming after Kirito and Asuna until he slashed their throats and ripped their hearts out, he gets absolutely no sympathy from the readers. As with Sugou, Kirito admits to Sinon that after every horrible thing PoH did, he has no regrets over what he did to him.
• Person of Mass Destruction:
  • In Ordinal Scale, after reacquiring his SAO avatar during the Final Boss fight against "An Incarnation of Radius", Kirito gains a 'God mode' where he emerges on the concert stage and One Hit Kills every SAO boss present with mere swings of his BFS.
  • In UW, once Kirito Came Back Strong, he proceeds to freeze 30,000 foreign players in ice.
• Platonic Life-Partners: He has this dynamic with Argo (being a fellow beta tester), Lisbeth (who supports his relationship with Asuna), and Sinon (who has the least romantic interest in him).
• Polyamory: In "There Is But One Ultimate Way".
• Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: While Kirito's usually a Nice Guy, he can be fairly brusque with people who try his patience. As such, in Progressive, he comes off as fairly rude in comparison to Morte, whose cheerful and superficially polite demeanor only makes Kirito more irritated.
• Pocket Protector: A mild variant in GGO; he forgot to detach one of the electrodes used to monitor his health, but it ultimately saved him from Kyouji's attempt at injecting him with succinylcholine while he went to Shino's house to save her from the Death Gun perpetrators.
• The Power of Love: His love for Asuna is what enabled him to get as far as he did during his solo attempt at the World Tree's Grand Quest. Every time a new obstacle appeared or he started to run out of steam, a image of her would flash in his mind and he continued forward. Sure, he ultimately failed but it took an army of archers firing swords to stop him.
• Power Trio: With Eugeo and Alice during his time in the Underworld fighting Quinella, albeit briefly.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: "Computer, set Pain Absorber to 0." After gaining control of ALO's GM powers and disabling Sugou's, Kirito decides it's time for some payback for Sugou torturing him and molesting Asuna. Sugou also mentioned that a setting of 3 or lower will result in real-world injuries from in-game damage.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Kirito has a penchant of giving these to his opponents whenever he's pissed off or disgusted.
  • After using Kayaba's ID to strip Oberon from his GM status, and then cutting off his arm, Kirito gives him a rather cruel one before killing him in-game.
    Kirito: Hurts, doesn't it? But it's nothing like the pain you made Asuna feel. NOT EVEN CLOSE!
  • Against Genesis in Hollow Realization:
    Genesis: Don't screw with me... Why does it... have to be you...?
    Kirito: You are not worthy of the name "Black Swordsman".
  • And later, he does this to PoH at the end of their fight in the Alicization arc:
    PoH: As expected, that’s what I’m talking about. But... this isn’t the end. Even if you log out from this world, I show up in front of you all, over and over again. It doesn’t matter how many times I do it before I slit the throats and tear out the hearts of both you and the "Flash"...
    Kirito: No, this is it. You'll never log out from Underworld.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Gets one in Volume 9, when while desperately trying to save Eugeo's life, he ponders whether the suffering that the people inside Underworld experience is an intentional consequence that's part of Rath's experiments, and they'd rather not let Kirito save Eugeo.
  Kirito: If that's the case, then they can eat shit for all I care! Soul without a physical body or not, Eugeo is my friend! I won't let him die, not like this!
  • In the English dub Kirito does use profanity like "shit" or "bitch" on occasion, especially in Ordinal Scale.
• Pretender Diss: In Hollow Realization, this is his attitude towards Genesis, who's taken up his mantle of the Black Swordsman. After defeating him, Kirito tells Genesis point-blank that he's not worthy of the name.
• Properly Paranoid: In Lycoris he developed one for Eugeo, after Eugeo plan to sacrifices himself to kill Quinella is foiled by Kirito, he began to keep an eye on Eugeo safety just in case Eugeo gonna go Leeroy Jenkins all over again, to the point Kirito suffer from mild PTSD and has nightmares about Eugeo being killed by Quinella, Eugeo genuinely felt guilty about it.
  • In fact, this was the main reason why the entire story of the upcoming DLC chapter Myosotisto began with.
• Psychotic Smirk: Not shown very often, but he can flash some serious crazy under the right circumstance. A prime example would be during his one-man attack against the World Tree guardians.
• Purple Is Powerful: His Laser Blade during the GGO arc is purple in color.
• Rape and Revenge: The climax of the Fairy Dance arc is more along the lines of Attempted Rape and Revenge, but the basic principle is the same. When Sugou/Oberon has Kirito pinned down, he decides to go the extra mile to torment him by making Kirito watch as he sexually assaults Asuna, tearing her clothes off, groping her, and licking her. When given admin privileges by Kayaba's Virtual Ghost, Kirito makes sure that Sugou's defeat at his hands is as painful and humiliating as possible, stripping him of his admin privileges, summoning Excalibur before giving it to Sugou all while knowing it won't make a difference, making sure to let Sugou know that Kayaba has screwed him over yet again, even in death, and finally turning off the Pain Absorber to make sure every wound inflicted on Sugou's avatar would carry over to his real body before killing Oberon so brutally that Sugou is left permanently injured in real life. When Sugou later tries to attack him in real life, Kazuto overpowers him and just barely manages to restrain himself from slitting Sugou's throat with his own knife.
• Really 700 Years Old: Physically he's still 17 years old, but after the Alicization arc, his mind spent 200 years in the Underworld.
• Real Name as an Alias: His in-game name of Kirito. Makes more sense if you remember that in Japan, naming convention is reversed from that of native English speakers, with family name first, then given name second. In this case, his name is a combination of Kirigaya Kazuto
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • He gives one to Grimlock
  Kirito: Disgrace... disgrace? Your wife wouldn't listen to you... and that's why you killed her? She was strengthening herself and your friends to help escape from here... and might have one day stood among the ranks of those advancing us through the game. And just for that...?
  • He gives a short, but effective one to Sugou/Oberon during his Heroic Second Wind:
  Kirito: You stole everything in this world. Everything! Including its people! You're nothing but a king of thieves, sitting alone on your stolen throne!
  • And later, when Sugou is ranting about being Always Second Best to Kayaba:
  Kirito: Sugou, in a way, I get where you're coming from. I lost to him too, and then I had to go work for him. [smirks] But whatever happened, I never wanted to be him. Unlike you.
  • He gives one to Alice when she prefers to fall to her death rather than be saved by a "sinner" like him.
  Alice: Let go of my hand this instant, sinner! I would rather die than be saved by you. I will not bear the disgrace of it!
  Kirito: Hey! Stop! Don't, you idiot! What's suicide going to do? Nothing, that's what! So suck it up, act like a knight and quit being an idiot!
  Alice: How dare you, a common criminal, insult me? I demand an apology!
  Kirito: Oh, SHUT UP! I called you an idiot because you're acting like an idiot, idiot! Listen, if I let go, and you die, then what? Eugeo's still in the cathedral, and he's on his way up to the pontifex, and it's your job to stop him, you idiot! Instead of checking out, an Integrity Knight should be thinking how to get back in, but not you! You're so dumb, you forgot your priorities, and that's why you're an idiot!
• Red Baron:
  • In SAO, he is known as "The Black Swordsman" due to his clothes, hair, eyes, and primary weapon being black. He is later known as "The Twin Blade Swordsman" after he reveals that he can dual wield.
  • In ALO, he declares himself the "Gilded Hero" when opposing Sugou/Oberon.
  • In Fatal Bullet he has gained the reputation as The "Photon Sword wielder".
  • During his 200-year rule in UW, he is referred to as the "Star King" by its people.
• Refuge in Audacity: Kirito pulls one against General Eugene in an attempt to stop the Salamanders from attacking the Sylphs and Cait-Sith. He makes a dramatic appearance in front of the two armies and demands to speak to the commander. When Eugene appears before him, Kirito makes up a string of Blatant Lies, claiming to be an ambassador for a (non-existent) Spriggan-Undine alliance who had come to negotiate trade with the Sylph and Cait-Sith. However Eugene doesn't buy it given Kirito has no escort and terrible gear, so forces him to prove it by challenging him to a duel. Turns out Eugene is the World's Best Warrior and in possession of a Legendary Weapon, so Kirito has just gambled everything on one impossible fight. While overwhelmed at first, Kirito is able to use trickery to bypass Eugene's weapon. Against all odds, Kirito manages to secure victory, convince Eugene about his ridiculous claim of a Spriggan-Undine alliance, and make the entire Salamander army turn tail and leave.
• Reverse Grip: It's very difficult to spot, but on rare occasions, Kirito will wield his sword(s) like this if he needs to. The most visible example is from Episode 9 of the anime, during the battle with Gleam Eyes; he tanked a strike and briefly switched his grip to counterattack.
• The Rival:
  • With Asuna in the early days of SAO, due to both being the strongest players in the game but with clashing ideologies, with Kirito prepared to tackle the game for several years while Asuna wanted to complete it as soon as possible. Of course they both grow out of it, with Asuna warming up to Kirito and eventually they marry and start dating in real life.
  • Kibaou was one of Kirito's fiercest rivals, who was hellbent on not letting the Beater get ahead. Kirito took on the entire Beater Zero-Approval Gambit to bear the burden on the stigmatization himself due to how much of a jerk Kibaou was, and Kibaou would never live it down.
  • Sinon considered herself one due to Kirito accidentally seeing Sinon in her underwear due to her mistaking him for a girl. She became determined to beat Kirito herself, but eventually softens up around him after seeing the two of them were similar.
• Rule of Symbolism: Just like Klein, Asuna and the latter's best friend Mito, the first monster that Kirito slays onscreen, The Dire Wolf, is reflective of his personality; A dignified and powerful loner who is unemotional, yet fierce and loyal to a fault and unstoppable when prtoecting that which they love.
• The Sacred Darkness: His "Darkness of the Boundless Night Sky". This is later proven useful during his fight against Gabriel.
• Sad Clown: Many people are annoyed how Kirito never seems to take anything seriously and always cracks jokes at stern times. Taking into account Kirito's Survivor Guilt and how brooding he once was, one can ascertain that this is one of Kirito's coping mechanisms.
• Sanity Slippage: Upon finding out that Asuna is indeed trapped at the top of the World Tree, Kirito's mind snaps and he goes on a suicidal Heroic Second Wind. He completely loses his rationality and his usual calm demeanor, Suddenly Shouting, repeating Asuna's name like a Madness Mantra and even gives off a suicidal smile.
• Screaming Warrior: Whenever Kirito is in the middle of an intense battle expect him to let out a number of screams at his opponent.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: As to be expected of a Yoshitsugu Matsuoka character, Kirito is prone to hilariously-adorable girl-like-screams and shrieking when shocked, surprised, or desperately pleading his wife and this week's girl guests to not beat/cut/shoot him-up for his latest stupid/insensitive comment on the adorable Blu-Ray and DVD extras Sword Art Offline.
• Secret Identity: Kinda. When he returns to the real world, he tries to keep his Kirito identity on the down low.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • In Rainbow Bridge, he's rather insistent on keeping his visit to Sakuya a secret from the others, likely for good reason, and the story ends with him in a Morton's Fork; either eat 100 pancakes, or eat just 50 and have to tell the others about it.
  • In the Rising Steel Event, "Aincrad Side Story: Secret Battle", Argo manages to get "juicy intel" about how Kirito and Asuna were caught napping together, and Kirito is desperate to keep Asuna from finding out. Unfortunately, Asuna is dead set on finding out and even seems willing to pay Argo to find out, excited at the prospect of learning what she thinks is Kirito's weakness.
• Self-Insert Fic: Kirito is confirmed to be this for Kawahara, in essence Kirito is the top gamer who Kawahara wanted to be but never could. Kirito was created to share the same enjoyments as Kawahara, but without having to think about consequence.
• Serious Business: Even after escaping SAO Kirito adamantly refuses to let his party members die in any other game if he can help it even going to extreme lengths to ensure their survival. Considering his original guild were all slaughtered while he was Forced to Watch it makes sense why Kirito has this mindset.
• Sexual Karma: He has a positive sex life with Asuna. 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.
• Shameless Fanservice Guy:
  • Downplayed in Progressive. On Floor 4, upon realizing that the Floor is now flooded and requires flotation rings that literally grow on trees to initially get around, he has no problem stripping to his boxers in front of Asuna, only getting embarrassed when she notices the bull symbol on the back of them and starts laughing. While His Accidental Pervert moments in Floors 3 and 6 in the Dark suggests that he is embarrassed at the prospect of being seen naked, it's also very likely that his embarrassment is the result of seeing Kizmel and Asuna undressed.
    • In the Progressive manga, he and Asuna are fighting a minotaur monster in a dungeon, but Asuna is distracted by the previous day's events where she nearly lost her Wind Fleuret and the fact that the minotaur was basically shirtless, only wearing a pair of belts crisscrossed over it's torso. After they beat it and Asuna angrily rants about this, Kirito reveals that he got the item it was wearing as a drop and equips it, even removing his coat to give a view of his torso. Asuna promptly smacks him.
  • Crops up again in Unital Ring, where he attempts to equip his sword and properly swing it, which he couldn't do previously due to his stats being reset, by un-equipping his clothes and lessen his equip burden, only for his attempt to swing to fail, leading to him realizing that the reason his clothes didn't burden him was because of a grace period for his equipment and that un-equipping them ended it early, leaving him stuck in his boxers for most of the Volume. Despite this, he's not really all that bothered by his near indecency, even playing along with a caveman joke Alice and Asuna make at his expense.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: SAO will do that to you. It's hard to tell what messes him up more: the fact that he let the Black Cats of the Full Moon die or the fact that he killed three Laughing Coffin members. Four years on, he still visits the room where his guild and his First Love Sachi met their end on the anniversary of the tragedy to mourn them and pay his respects.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend:
  • Said this almost word for word when Klein speculated he was partying with Asuna because he fell for her. The smiles of Asuna and the Furinkazan members show they don't buy it.
  • He also said it about Sachi, though the character interviews reveal that to be a lie.
• Sherlock Scan: Certain instances show Kirito displays a very impressive deductive ability, being able to read people and piece together the truth based on small clues. Though sometimes they verge on being a Bat Deduction, with how little he has to go on in figuring it out.
  • He was able to figure out Silica's real name, where her name came from, and her birth date from a small hint she dropped. See Meaningful Name under Silica's section for more details.
  • In the "Murder in the Safezone" incident, Kirito was able to work out based on observing the item durability animation combined with teleport crystals just how Yolko and Kains were able to pull off Faking The Death in a Safezone. He also figured out through Asuna's talk about Shared Storage between married couples, what really happened to Grizelda and the ring that was allegedly stolen.
  • He slowly pieces together the truth about Death Gun and how he kills, noticing that Death Gun shot at him with his rifle rather than his handgun that allegedly could kill people in real life. From this he deduces that Death Gun appears to be only targeting certain people, including Sinon, and that the way he kills them was using an accomplice who knew the real life addresses of these targets.
  • He quickly worked out why Yuuki was so unbelievably strong, deducing that she was always in FullDive, and from there worked out where she was located in the real world by searching up the only hospital that contained a Medicuboid, which he suspected her of using.
  • In Alicization, Kirito immediately figures out Fizel and Linel aren't the Sister-in-training that they claimed to be. He noted that all nuns and sisters of the Church were ordered to stay in their rooms, an order that apprentices could not possibly disobey. He also noticed the ruby oak scabbard that were able to contain poison weapons without rotting. With all these reasons in place, Kirito deduced the girls were planning to poison them and began reciting a poison dissolving art, and upon it finally working, he gets up and slashes the girls with their own poisonous daggers to paralyze them.
  • In Lost Song he was able to figure out that Rain was lying about being a new player, and she had been the one who had been stalking him, based on her shoes being of high level quality. He also worked out how strong Rain was and that all this time she was actually hiding her true power.
• Shipper on Deck: For Eugeo and Alice.
• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy:
  • In ALO, he's the close range melee user to Leafa's long range spell caster.
  • In GGO, he's the close range photon sword user to Sinon's long range sniper.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  • Gives an epic one to Sugou/Oberon in response to his declaration that he's the creator, ruler, and God of ALO, telling him point-blank he's nothing but a thief mooching off Kayaba's work:
  Kirito: No, I don't think so. You stole everything in this world. Everything! Including its people! You're nothing but a king of thieves, sitting alone on your stolen throne!
  • He gives Sugou a second one during the former's Last Villain Stand in real life, before finding the strength to overpower him and take his knife:
  Sugou: You're a piece of scum! You don't have any real power!
  Kirito: And neither do you, Sugou!
  • He gives a short and concise one to Raios when the latter rants about his privileges as a noble, and how he has the authority to punish Eugeo.
  Kirito: I don't care about your taboos and noble rights.
  • Another one to Quinella before their final clash.
  Kirito: You're not a ruler, you're a thief. You don't love this world nor the people who live in it, so you have no right to be in charge!
  • The best one goes to Vassago/PoH. After defeating him, Vassago begins gloating that he will be hellbent on him and Asuna before he finally finds the two in real life and brutally murders them. Considering how much hell Kirito went through because of the consequences of Vassago's actions, Kirito's decided he's had enough of him and turns him into a tree so he'll never log out.
  Kirito: No, this is the end. You won't be logging out of the Underworld.
• "Shut Up" Kiss: Kirito does this to Asuna in episode 10. The light novel notes that this is technically a violation of the Ethics Code, but fortunately for him, Asuna didn't mind.
• Sibling Team: With his sister Suguha/Leafa during the Fairy Dance arc onwards. Although they didn't know it at the time and only found out each other's real identities nearing the end of the arc.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: He and Asuna are often treated as such by their friends post-SAO, due to how lovey dovey they always are.
• Signature Move: In SAO it's the various Sword Skills from his Dual Blades.
  • His most frequently used Sword Skill is the "Vorpal Strike", a one-handed high-damaging thrust Sword skill. It is effective on taking out monsters, though not so useful against players as the simple motion makes it very easy to dodge. Due to how often he uses it, Kirito once contemplates as having this as the mark of his Black Swordsman persona.
  • His ultimate attack is the "Starburst Stream", a 16-hit sword skill. On a meta level the phrase is so heavily associated with Kirito, it's pretty much analogous to Goku and the Kamehameha.
• Silent Scapegoat: After Aincrad's first dungeon boss was defeated, suspicion began to spread about beta testers keeping information hidden from new players for their own selfish ends, due in part to the boss using different attack patterns from what was in the guidebook with information from the beta testers. As a result, it looked like the playerbase would begin to persecute all beta testers, including innocent ones. Kirito, himself a beta tester, decided to play himself up as a cocky bastard who used his foreknowledge to gain an unfair advantage, being labeled by others as a "Beater" (Beta tester + Cheater) and sparing other beta testers grief by making himself the target for other players' scorn.
• Sixth Ranger: Was the extra member of the Black Cats of the Full Moon; the rest were friends from a real-world computer club. He's also the only survivor.
• Skyward Scream: Kirito fulfills this trope at the end of Season 1 Episode 1, after he resolves to survive SAO.
• Sleepyhead: Kirito loves taking naps, often in public places and in broad daylight.
  • In Lost Song, when Alicia Rue offers to hire Kirito as a renegade in exchange for three meals and naps, Silica and Sinon immediately tease Kirito over how he keeps napping on the spot anytime, anywhere.
  • In Alicization he's so fatigued from his job at Rath that while playing GGO he falls asleep and ends up leaning on Lisbeth. Shortly after he even falls asleep while standing up!
• Smug Super: There are some instances where Kirito is so thoroughly confident in his abilities that he'll approach enemies with a smile plastered on his face.
  • When he interrupts Leafa getting ganged up on by a bunch of Salamander PKers and decides to take on the Salamanders himself, he effortlessly catches the Salamander's lance, holds it in place, then flicks him back with a fling of his arm, all the while treating the whole thing with amusement.
  • When Kirito pulls a Big Damn Heroes to help the Asuna and the Sleeping Knights in a You Shall Not Pass! moment, the look on his face is either sheer confidence at his vastly superior skill, or the thrill of the challenge. Either way, he asserts his dominance by slicing spells out of the air before taking out Excalibur from his inventory.
• The Sneaky Guy: While he's not shown to rely on it as heavily as he used to, Kirito is still rather adept at stealth with the help of in-game skills.
  • One of the earliest skills he got back in SAO was the Hiding Skill, which makes his cursor vanish from the sight of anyone without a high Search skill and, depending on the enviroment and his choice in clothes, can make him effectively invisible. He's shown to use this multiple times throughout Progressive.
  • In Rainbow Bridge, he makes use of the Illusion Spell "Moonlight Lurk", which hides the caster if they're standing in moonlight, and a lunar eclipse caused by New Aincrad to sneak into Sakuya's manor undetected.
• Sole Survivor: Of Black Cats of the Full Moon, he was the only one to survive the chest trap. Ironically, he was the extra man.
• Spanner in the Works: In true Kirito fashion, the Floor 7 Arc of Progressive sees him be this to his own side. As part of a quest to expose rigging at the monster fights at Voluptia Casino, Kirito helps Nirrnir, the head of one of the city's two families, get materials for a bleach that would remove the dye from a high-level monster that the rivalling family dyed to pass off as a weaker one. After procuring the materials and making the dye, Kirito goes for a walk and passes by the rival family's monster stables, and decides to investigate them in curiosity. This leads to him rescuing the monster they were going to pour the bleach on after the tamers get too rough on him, and using the bleach on it due to the dye being poisonous. Nirrnir Subverts this though by mentioning that while this does ruin the initial plan, it also presents an opportunity for her to investigate the other family's stables less the match get cancelled and reflect poorly on them.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff:
  • In SAO, he once used a sword skill to block a breath attack of a dragon.
  • In GGO, he twirls and spins about to while Parrying Bullets. He later applies the same technique back in ALO against spells.
  • Later revealed to be a specific skill to protect against attacks, as showcased in the Underworld. Specifically he spins his sword at high speeds to deflect an Armament Control Art from Deusolbert Synthesis Seven.
• Spider-Sense:
  • The Outside System Skill, "Hypersense". Despite being a hypothetical hidden skill, Kirito notes that several times in SAO, he'd felt the presence of someone watching him and credits the skill for saving his life.
  • By the time of GGO, it's evolved into Super-Senses as Kirito doesn't just sense incoming danger, but can pinpoint exactly where the danger is just by concentrating.
• Starring Smurfette: Kirito is The Hero of the story, with the rest of the main cast predominantly comprised of girls that make up his Battle Harem. The only other significant male is Klein and he's only around half the time.
  • In Accel World VS Sword Art Online, Kirito himself wishes that he had at least one male friend of his age, with the only male friends he has being Klein and Agil who are a great deal older than himself.
• Start My Own: Some time after severing ties with his family for good, he managed to make full use of his life such as being a full time RPG player.
• Stock Light-Novel Hero: Kirito is the most well-known example of the trope and quite possibly the Trope Codifier. He's an Ordinary High-School Student with a Badass Longcoat, a Clueless Chick-Magnet with a Battle Harem, and is known to be a stoic Ineffectual Loner. He's a Godlike Gamer in an RPG Mechanics 'Verse which allows him to become the World's Best Warrior of SAO, routinely gets given new abilities and skills such as his Dual Wielding, and he's an Invincible Hero with most enemies being fodder to him. He also quickly climbing the ranks in other virtual-reality games as well and is able to keep defying the limits the System has set. Subverted in Alicization where even though the series edges closer to an Isekai genre, Kirito himself actually shifts away from the cliched archetype, being much more underpowered than before and having to slowly learn about the new world he is in. His Supporting Harem is also absent for the most, having been shafted in favor of a Bash Brothers dynamic with Eugeo and later a Power Trio when Alice joins in.
• Strong and Skilled: Kirito has extremely high stats to use in combat, as well as the knowledge and skill to make the best of them, due to having prior experience as a beta-player. Going up against normal players he can No-Sell attacks from an entire ambush party as he heals faster than they can inflict damage. While proof of his skill comes from being able to go toe-to-toe with opponents with vastly superior stats and/or equipment, but Kirito's combat smarts and strategy still allow him to come out on top. It gets downplayed in later seasons when he tries new games using his old avatar, where he retains his stats, but lacks the experience and requires another player to guide him through, making him Unskilled, but Strong. Although even this is up in the air, as he does retain his skill with the sword from previous games which he can use in the new environment of an unfamiliar game. There's also the fact Kirito has an impressive ability to master a new game very early and will quickly ascend the ranks despite only playing for a few days.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: When he enters GGO, his avatar looks too much like a girl, and he checks to make sure he is actually a guy (to his relief, he is). Cue guys hitting on him and Sinon mistaking him for a girl. Also, cue him playing up the girly tone when he confronts Sinon.
  • In Fatal Bullet, Klein is both in disbelief over Kirito using a girl avatar and perplexed if Kirito's face always looked so cute.
• Suddenly Shouting: During the climax of the Fairy Dance arc, he dips into this after performing his Heroic Second Wind and turning the tables on Sugou, particularly after he gives Sugou a small cut on the cheek, and Sugou flips out and whines about the pain:
  Kirito: Hurts, doesn't it? But it's nothing like the pain you made Asuna feel. NOT EVEN CLOSE!!
  [cue him lopping Sugou's right arm clean off]
• Suggestive Collision: Happens when Asuna falls on him when teleporting onto the floor.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: He's a nice guy but he can be a bit cold and distant, being paralyzed by the fear of reliving the Black Cats experience all over again.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: When his determination is at its peak, his eyes turn from dark grey to bright yellow. This is seen when he lands the final blow on Heathcliff and Death Gun, during his final push in ALO's Grand Quest, and saving Yuuna from The Fatal Scythe.
  • The second opening for War of Underworld even emphasizes this, as seen here. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Evolving Credits switch his eyes from grey to gold on the same episode he finally gets his memory and power restored by his friends.
  • In Progressive Vol 7, Asuna Implies that his eyes did this when he broke free of the Golden Cube's "Bind" status effect so he could attack Buxum and save Theano.
• Summon to Hand: In the Underworld, this ability known once only to Integrity Knights, gets mastered by Kirito by the time he reawakens from his coma.
• Super-Reflexes: A big reason for his ace status in any VRMMORPGs he plays.
  • He had the fastest reaction speed of all players in SAO, which was why the system granted him his trademark dual-wielding ability.
  • In ALO, his reaction speed played an even bigger role as it determined one's in-game movement speed and attack damage. He was so fast his speed completely overwhelmed one of the fastest players of the race with an affinity for speed and was able to pummel players with high-level armor with initial equipment.
  • In GGO, his reaction speed is shown to be demonic enough for him to slice showers of bullets midair with his lightsaber as long as he can sense their trajectories. When he returns to ALO, he uses the same technique to easily cut magic attacks out of the air, which have notoriously small hitboxes, noting that magic attacks were far slower than bullets.
• Supporting Protagonist: War of the Underworld is all about Alice for the most part, and Kirito's just there first as a mentally crippled invalid, and then as a "problem solver" for the heroes.
• Survival Mantra: The quote at the top of his trope list, said at end of the first episode of the anime. And followed up by the aforementioned Skyward Scream.
• Survivor Guilt:
  • Feels haunted by the guilt of being the only surviving member of the Black Cats of the Full Moon.
  • In SAO II, there's also him surviving SAO in general and the fact he took lives to ensure his own survival that comes to haunt him.
  • It's later revealed that he dislikes the Black Swordsman title because he associates it with someone who couldn't prevent all the death that occurred in SAO.
• Sword and Gun: Does this in GGO, due to his preference and the lightsaber being too expensive for him to get anything better than a pistol.
• Sword over Head: Sugou is finally held with a knife to his throat by Kirito in real life. With no one else around so late an hour, Kirito could easily kill him and put him out of everyone's misery... But he doesn't. He simply beats Sugou to a barely-breathing pulp and leaves him for the police.
• Talented, but Trained: Kirito is established to be a gaming prodigy with natural talent when it comes to FullDive, but it really helps that he's had extensive experience to hone his skills with the sword, which he brings back with him to the real world thanks to muscle memory. If that wasn't enough, he's also received formal training from his Kendo champion sister Suguha followed by training as an Integrity Knight from his time in the Underworld.
• Taught by Experience: While Kirito's mere two months of training in Kendo when he was nine allowed him to understand the basic fundaments of combat, it was the regular correct daily application of what little he learned in literal battles to the death for two whole years that allowed him to become a basically self-taught Master Swordsman.
• Team Dad: Of the protective paternal variety. While he's usually The Hero, he's constantly looking out for for his friends and will go to great lengths to keep them safe both physically and mentally.
• Technical Pacifist: During Aincrad, he really would rather not kill anyone if he could help it, instead preferring to disarm Player Killers and forcing them to surrender. He even has PTSD over the few times he was forced to kill in self defense. That said, if given both the reason and the power, he will make you suffer. Prominent examples include setting the Pain Absorber to zero before brutally killing Sugou in-game to the point his real body was left with permanent injuries, and trapping PoH inside a tree in a game that runs on Year Inside, Hour Outside.
  • Even if he had to fight and kill Ugachi, in the anime version of Alicization, Kirito fought against the goblings mooks with the intention of knock them out, using the reverse and the pommel of his blade rather than slay them all invoking a Mook Horror Show.
• Teen Genius: Proficient at hacking from a young age and also a Gadgeteer Genius in the real world.
• Tempting Fate: When fighting Eldrie, he's briefly confident that as long as he correctly judges the length of his opponent's whip, he'll be fine. He notices Eldrie extend the whip just in time to block the attack.
• Thanks for the Mammary:
  • The initial example occurs in the Aincrad arc of the anime, where Asuna falls out of a portal and ends up landing on top of him. He obliviously pushes upwards and ends up grabbing her boob. She slaps him into a pillar in retaliation.
  • Following this incident, the non-canon game Hollow Fragment has a notorious tendency to make Kirito do this to other girls. He falls on top of Leafa where he ends up grabbing her boob before he comments how its gotten bigger. He later is trapped with Sinon in a tight enclosed space and grabs her boob as well. It's almost like Kirito's hand is a boob magnet.
• These Hands Have Killed: He's haunted by the fact that he killed three Laughing Coffin members.
• This Is Unforgivable!: While he's not particularly hostile or hateful towards Akihiko Kayaba, he doesn't think that he can ever forgive him for all the deaths he caused in SAO, especially Sachi's.
• Token Super: During the Aincrad arc, Kirito is the only known player to possess the Dual Wielding skill, which the game grants to the player with the fastest reaction time. As this is a Unique Protagonist Asset that cannot be attained through conventional methods, in this setting it also counts as a power. With it, Kirito was easily The Ace of any guild or party he joined and was capable of taking on extremely difficult bosses. Later games allowed him to load an Old Save Bonus from his Aincrad avatar, which by his own admission was cheating due to it carrying over his insanely high stats that were unseen in said games.
• Too Dumb to Live: While Kirito is very skilled and powerful, sometimes to the point of appearing to be an Invincible Hero, there are times where he's WAY in over his head and overestimates his capabilities in some instances.
  • When he entered ALO, he did so assuming it'd be a cakewalk since it lacked the life-or-death stakes SAO had. His culminates in him trying to challenge the World Tree, a seemingly impossible quest that not even full armies of players have been able to beat, all alone with absolutely no help. This goes just about as well as you expect.
  • He even shows signs of this before he started sticking his neck out for others. At some point before SAO when he was walking home from school, he happened upon a friend he made in the Beta Tester being coerced by delinquents to be their errand boy, and he becomes wracked with guilt over how he decided to ignore it and keep walking, feeling he could have easily helped if he asked his friend if he wanted to walk home together. This however ignores the fact that these people were delinquents, who for all he knew could have extorted or even harmed him if he did try and help his friend.
  • After he and Asuna reach Floor 5 in Progressive, they do the "Curse of Stachion" quest that he did in the Beta, which has them investigating the curse that has the main town of Stachion be plagued by puzzles on basically every door. In the initial final stretch of the quest, he lets him and Asuna get paralyzed by the Big Bad so they can transported to a labyrinth to dispel the curse themselves as part of the quest. This leads to Morte, a fellow Beta-Tester who also did the quest and a member of The Conspiracy that they've been foiling, trying to attack them while they're vulnerable and kill the Big Bad, not only causing the quest to diverge dramatically, but also put him and Asuna close to getting killed.
• Took a Level in Badass: Every time Kirito picks up a(nother) weapon in a different world from the last, it qualifies. In order:
  • Surviving in SAO, The Most Dangerous Video Game;
  • Dual Wielding in SAO, something no other player can do;
  • Surviving in ALO, and defying all the world's PvP rules in the process;
  • Dual wielding in ALO, which means he's controlling two swords separately rather than getting system assist like in SAO;
  • Threatening Sugou in the real world, using a knife several times lighter than anything he's good with;
  • Surviving in GGO's BoB tournament with a sword;
  • Fighting in GGO with Sword and Gun, despite having no experience with the latter;
  • Dual wielding in ALO with Sword Skills.
  • In the UW, raising his Object Control Authority so that he is able to use the Blue Rose Sword.
  • Dual wielding in UW, with the broken Blue Rose Sword being reforged to be his off-hand sword, and ending Quinella's reign with his dual blades.
  • And finally: waking up from his Fluctlight-damage-induced Heroic BSoD, repairing the Blue Rose Sword with his Incarnation alone, and using it and his Night-Sky Blade to kill two of the most dangerous player killers: PoH and Subtilizer.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In the early episodes of Aincrad, Kirito maintained a very cold disposition, often appearing mean and unsociable to those he spoke to, such as his first encounter with Lisbeth who he is smug towards and constantly belittles. This is in part due to maintaining his Beater guise, along with his Survivor's Guilt over the deaths of the Moonlit Black Cats. However over time he warms up in a genuine Nice Guy.
• To the Pain: At the end of the Alicization arc, he takes the time to explain what's going to happen to PoH as he traps him in a tree in full detail. As he puts it, PoH will spend ten or more years of isolation and insanity, and then die after another thirty years of brain activity; he finishes by telling him to pray that his allies will bail him out, otherwise he's stuck in there, rotting for the rest of his life until someone else cuts him down with an axe.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Anything cooked by Asuna. Other than that, Kirito's favorite food is Teriyaki chicken burgers. Thus, Teriyaki chicken burgers cooked by Asuna is number one.
  • He also has a liking for stew, salt-flavored ramen and honey pies, though those are because they remind him of experiences in the virtual world.
• Tragic Dropout: He notes in Volume 12 that he's essentially dropped out of school three times. The first was from his middle school during the SAO incident, although he technically was considered to have graduated, and thus allowed to enroll in the SAO Survivors' school. The second time was when being attacked by Johnny Black and rendered almost braindead resulted in him being spirited away to Underworld, and thus being unable to attend school. The third time was when after he and Eugeo attack Raios and Humbert to save Ronie and Tiese, resulting in Raios' death, Kirito and Eugeo are banished from the academy and placed under arrest.
• Tragic Keepsake: Keeps Eugeo's sword in his arsenal at the end of Alicization.
• Tranquil Fury: When he pulls off his Heroic Second Wind against Sugou. He's clearly furious at him for all the horrible things he's done, but barring a moment of Suddenly Shouting, he remains calm and collected, the cool glare on his face the only sign of his rage as he literally tears Sugou apart piece by piece.
• Troubled, but Cute: He's got several issues from finding out that his parents had died in a car accident to having his first guild die in front of him to watching his girlfriend nearly raped by a psychopath. But he's still pretty.

U-Z

• UltimateGamer386: As the series mostly takes place inside of MMORPGs, Kirito both becomes and meets several of these across games. In the first game, he becomes famous for being a solo player on the assault team (the single most dangerous role in the game, which most consider to be suicide without a large group to back you up). While it's implied there are others like him, he's the one everybody recognizes. This gets downplayed in later stories; most of the people who recognize the name "Kirito" instantly are fellow SAO survivors, and most other player bases don't really have any idea who he is. That being said, Kirito has a knack for quickly making a reputation for himself in any game he tries and rapidly became famous in both ALO and GGO after only a few days spent in each game.
• Unknown Rival: Amusingly, Kirito dosen't get why Mito coldly declares she hates him after he told her Asuna keeps the sword she gave her because she treasures her as a friend, completely oblivious that Mito also loves Asuna (her Only Friend since the days of Real Life) and sees him as a threat that will take her away from her.
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Meets Silver Crow/Haruyuki from Accel World in the side story Versus. Of course, as pure fanservice, he's back to his old Black Swordsman Kirito form as the two fight in an epic battle. It ends in a draw.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: He actually looks quite like his cousin Suguha. In the games Kirito reveals that back when they were younger, other people often mistook the two of them for twin sisters.
• Unique Protagonist Asset: In SAO, Kirito is the only player to acquire the Dual Wielding unique skill, which the system granted to the player with the fastest reaction time. This skill bolstered his already powerful status and had him overshadowing nearly every player. Two swords allowed him to deal double the damage, while they also allowed cross-blocking as a much more efficient defense than one sword. It is what enabled Kirito to solo the Gleam-Eyes boss on his own and what he uses whenever he gets serious.
• Unreliable Narrator: Contradicts himself in different accounts of the incident with the Black Cats of the Full Moon. This suggests he may be giving a distorted account of other past events.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: When he and Sinon first met, she mistakes him for a girl. They get along and she helps him get his equipment, but when it's time to put on their battle suits Sinon gets undressed right in front of Kirito and he awkwardly tells her he's a guy. Sinon slaps him for that.
• Unskilled, but Strong:
  • Because SAO and ALO are built on the same source code, Kirito's compatible stats from SAO are transferred over. For the duration of the ALO arc, he uses the default starting skills and equipment of the Spriggan class. However, since his SAO stats are through the roof (and ALO stats are limited by there being no levels to grind), he's rendered unbelievably powerful. He was able to one-hit kill the Salamander PKers using starting equipment, while his flying speed outpaced that of Leafa who was previously the fastest flyer in-game. The effects of his basic spells have also been amped up beyond belief: a small smokescreen spell turns into a massive explosion of smoke, and a basic illusion casting spell ends up being a metamorphosis spell that turns him into a Gleam-Eyes like monster, that he was trying to create a facsimile of, broken party-killing moveset and all. He later resets his stats so he can make a proper Spriggan build and have fun with it.
  • This translates over to GGO as well. Once again having a converted account with all of his stats from his old account, his speed is unbelievable and he can dodge bullets from almost point-blank range, and deflect bullets with his Laser Blade even without the Trajectory Prediction Line. Sinon notes that he can pull off these impossible dodge maneuvers even though he lacks even the most fundamental knowledge of guns in the game.
  • He uses a facsimile of his avatar's swordsmanship in a real life sparring match with Suguha early on in the Fairy Dance arc. His style is more Good Old Fisticuffs with a shinai than Sugu's practiced Kendo, but, through pure muscle memory and experience, he matches pretty well.
• Unstoppable Rage: Go ahead, just try to harm anyone he cares about. Especially Asuna. Hopefully, there's still enough of you to fill a bucket once he's through.
• Unwanted Harem: Despite his Official Couple status with Asuna (the first heroine of the series), he gains a number of admirers as the series goes on with the number of girls in his always increasing.
  Klein: Man, you chick magnets have it tough, huh?
• Unwitting Pawn: The Alicization arc is kicked off when Kirito agrees to a part-time job to test the Soul Translator, unaware that Kikuoka and Higa are using him as part of a plan to create AI soldiers for military purposes. Asuna states outright that had Kirito known the true purpose of the Soul Translator, he never would have agreed to test it.
• Vocal Evolution: Kirito's voice gets deeper over the course of the series, with him sounding noticeably older in Alicization than he did in Season 1.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: He learns a Metamorphosis spell in ALO that transforms him into a Gleam-eyes monster.
• Voluntary Vampire Victim: In a desperate attempt to keep her alive for a bit longer during the fight with Aghyellr, Kirito tells the poisoned Nirrnir to drink his blood to prolong her life. This turns him into a Citizen of the Night, and allows him to wield the Sword of Voluptia without it's drawbacks^note  unless you're a vampire of some kind, using it will drain your experience points and can even knock your level down to defeat Aghyellr. While there's no known cure for it, making Kirito weak to sunlight and silver, he's evidently able to turn back into a human by the present.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • He's this in real life. While he retains the muscle memory of sword skills he picked up in SAO, his real body isn't very athletic. Nonetheless, he was able to hold his own against Suguha, a kendo quarterfinalist, after two months of physical therapy in a sparring match, only losing because he tried to activate a Sword Skill in real life. This is especially prominent in Ordinal Scale where the Augmented Reality game requires players to use their real bodies. Kirito initially struggles against early bosses, even tripping over during battle which results in a Face Plant. He gets better after undergoing a Training Montage with Suguha.
  • Kirito is also this when he first enters the Underworld. In an unusual twist for him, Kirito finds his stats have been low and he lacks "Object Control" to use any powerful weapons. He has to make do with very flimsy weapons against his first proper fight against the goblins and rely on his skill with the blade alone. Over the course of the time spent in the Underworld he adapts and becomes accustomed to moving about and fighting there, to which he is established as one of the greatest swordsman in the land.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: As for Leafa/Suguha not taking well to finding out Kirito is really her cousin/adopted brother...
  Suguha: "If that's how it is, I wished you kept on being a jerk to me."
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • Part of his Character Development in Progressive concerns this. Initially, while not exactly malicious about it, he seemed to largely see the NPCs in Aincrad as merely ones and zeroes with scripted actions in response to all situations that can occur in their questline. This causes him to get caught off-guard when he and Asuna manage to save Kizmel, causing her to gain her own personality and becomes near indistinguishable from a human. While at first he looks for signs that could re-affirm his beliefs, such as her going through the process of confirming how his and Asuna's names are pronounced like all NPCs, he progressively loses the mindset the more he and Asuna interact and bond with the Dark Elf, as well as encountering other NPCs who also appear more human than their programming should suggest, which culminates in him saving an ally NPC from being killed by a traitor in front of her daughter, and giving her some comforting about the death of her lover who died earlier in the quest. Years later, it would lead to him opposing a strategy to defeat a field boss using NPC villagers as bait.
  • The start of the Alicization Arc has him questioning whether he is the real Kirito or an AI copy, which he tests by seeing if, based on what he has gathered about Fluctlights and their almost forced loyalty to the Taboo Index during his time there, if he's capable of breaking one of his own taboos of his own volition with no outside interference, doing so by giving Selka a kiss on the forehead, which he ordinarily wouldn't do to anyone due to his relationship with Asuna.
  • Also from the Alicization arc, Asuna realizes that Kirito would never have agreed with Kikuoka and Higa's plan to create AI soldiers to fight in a war, because his opposition to using NPCs as bait for a floor boss proves that he considers artificial intelligences to be people, too.
  • In Hollow Fragment he also starts considering the possibility he's a Hollow Data copy and not the real Kirito, although his friends snap him out of this and a test from Yui confirms he's the legitimate Kirito.
  • In the gameverse he has a bit of a habit of unintentionally adopting AI girls as his daughters, all three of which he treats as though they were human and even as full members of his family willing to go to absolutely insane lengths to keep them safe if the need arises.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Sugou of all characters has the nerve to call Kirito out on torturing and killing him in-game, saying what he did to him was very cruel. This coming from the guy who had it fully coming given that earlier he had just tortured Kirito and tried to rape Asuna.
  • He gave one to Eugeo in Lycoris after his plan to kill Quinella might got him killed instead. Eugeo genuinely felt guilty about this and decided to be more careful next time not only for Kirito sake, but also for his own sake this time.
• What You Are in the Dark: A major theme of Kirito's character throughout the Fairy Dance arc, as Kirito believes that if you indulge your baser instincts while anonymous online, you end up becoming a worse person as a result. When given the opportunity to kill Sugou, the man who nearly ruined his life and tried to rape Asuna, Kirito simply gives him a beatdown and leaves him to the cops.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Kirito prefers swords. Even GGO, which focuses heavily on ranged combat.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Four of his costumes involve him (in his GGO Avatar) cross-dressing as an Idol Singer, a French Maid, a Magical Girl, and a Bride in Code Register. Asuna, Lisbeth, and Silica tried to forcefully put him in a maid uniform at one point in the Maid in Aincrad Omake.
• Wife-Basher Basher: Even though he was successful in stopping his wife Asuna from becoming a victim of Sugou's lust, since that day Kirito has gained an intense hatred of rapists, to whom he reserves the true volcanic fury of his deeply suppressed righteous rage and cruelty. Particularly, after literally disarming Raios of both his filthy paws for laying them on Tiese, Kirito rubs salt in the wounds by tossing him a curtain rope, quipping "Here, stop your bleeding with this", in spite of the fact the worthless rapist has no hands left to tie-up his stupid bleeding stumps with.
• Willfully Weak: Lisbeth and the rest of the girls speculate this is the case for Kirito.
  Lisbeth: This is what I think. Probably, in a normal game, Kirito won't fight seriously anymore. On the other hand, Kirito only fights seriously when the game isn't a game anymore when the virtual world becomes real... That's why it's better if situations which force him to fight seriously don't appear. From the beginning, he was the type to easily get wrapped into troublesome things.
• The Worf Barrage: Kirito's strongest Sword Skill in SAO was the 27-hit combo The Eclipse (not mentioned in the anime). It's only use was against Kayaba/Heathcliff where every single attack was blocked with ease due to him having programmed all Sword Skill before that he memorized every single strike of it.
• World's Best Warrior:
  • Shares this honor with his wife Asuna in Sword Art Online.
  • In Alfheim Online, he likely would have held that status (given he beat the former holder of that title) prior to Yuuki the Absolute Sword showing up.
• Would Hit a Girl: He expresses that he does not like to fight women, but if he has to he doesn't hold back either and fights them as hard as he would as if he were fighting a man.
  • He threatened the female leader of the player-killing guild "Titan's Hand" to intimidate the guild.
  • He once dueled Asuna due to their disagreement on using an NPC village as bait for a floor boss and won.
  • He took out the female GGO player Musketeer X during BoB.
  • He duels Yuuki twice and loses in both instances. Though it's unclear if he was fighting with all he had due to avoiding Dual Wielding.
  • He tells Fanatio that he has no issue fighting her seriously despite her being a woman.
  • He cuts off Quinella's arm and stabs her in the chest to finish their fight.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Zig-Zagged. Being a veteran MMO player, Kirito can often spot plot lines in Quests, and in the case of some of the early SAO ones outright knew what would happen thanks to his Beta-Tester experience. However, there are plenty of moments where something will go in a way that he couldn't have predicted.
  • In "The Day Before", he's baffled when Asuna and Argo opt to skip the objectives of regaining the scarecrow, tinman and lion's stolen objects and going straight for the witch's castle. This ends up saving them a lot of time since Asuna and Argo knew that, even without receiving the stolen objects, they'd face no problems due to remembering the story of the Wizard of Oz and it's Aesop.
  • In Calibur, he and the rest of the party assume that Freyja is actually a trap, and that rescuing her would only result in her being revealed as a powerful enemy monster who'd attack them, and gets annoyed when Klein frees her despite these concerns. As it turns out, Klein made the right call, as not only is Freyja a powerful Support Party Member who increases their max HP, but she turns out to be Thor, who is able to turn the fight against Thrym in a Curb-Stomp Battle once he gets his hammer back.
• You Are Already Dead: When PoH keeps on bragging about killing both Kirito and Asuna in the RW once he gets out of the STL, Kirito's reply:
  Kirito: No, this is it. You'll never log out from Underworld.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • Gives one to Asuna after the first boss battle when Kirito had pulled a Zero-Approval Gambit and labeled himself a Beater. He tells Asuna that she could be great and powerful in this world, but also not to hesitate to join a guild with someone she trusts as there were limits to what a solo player could do. Asuna takes this advice to heart and becomes vice-commander of the strongest guild in the game.
  • Years later, when he is about to crush his own heart in the Underworld, Asuna, along with Suguha, Shino, and Eugeo, help return the favor and getting him out of his Angst Coma.
• You Are the New Trend: As revealed in Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online, Kirito's time in GGO and being the first player to wield a Photon sword started a trend of players wielding that weapon in an attempt to parry bullets.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Played for Laughs. Kirito typically avoids using honorifics when addressing his friends including Asuna, but whenever he realizes Asuna is on the warpath and out to kill him, he'll address her as "Asuna-san".
• You Shall Not Pass!:
  • His confronting General Eugene in the Fairy Dance arc has shades of this. Bluffing that he's an Ambadassador, Kirito gets challenged to a duel to prove his claims. Kirito had gambled everything on this duel, reasoning that even if he can't win he could at least buy time for the Sylphs and the Cait-Sith to flee.
  • Kirito pulls one in Mother's Rosario to stall some rival guilds and nbuy time for the Sleeping Knights to kill the boss. He gets serious by not only Dual Wielding but by using Excalibur.
  • In the Alicization arc, his Final Battle with Gabriel is very much this. Kirito had almost no intention of winning against this Invincible Villain, instead simpling wishing to stall Gabriel and buy enough time for Asuna and Alice to escape into the real world. Gabriel himself is all too aware and only intends to provide him with enough time for the girls to reach the system console.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: Outs himself as the first "Beater"^*a portmanteau of "beta tester" and "cheater" to reduce prejudice against beta testers. By doing this, he focuses the stigma exclusively on beta testers who selfishly keep foreknowledge of the game to themselves, protecting other, less unscrupulous beta players (such as his friend Argo).
  Kirito: "Beater", that's not a bad name. That's right. I'm a beater. From now on, don't think of me as a mere beta tester.

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