Sword Art Online

Yes.

There was a surprising author blurb in it too - Kawahara is writing up a new SAO series called Sword Art Online: Progressive, to be released in autumn. It's a basically a retelling of Aincrad with a lot more detail, something which I felt was really missing in volume 1 since it timeskips and glosses over floors all over the place. I wonder if some of the stuff he's already written will be used as 'new' material for the anime?

edited 10th Jul '12 4:35:39 AM by Thrombin

I'd imagine he's pretty much informed the anime staff of just about everything he's adding. Though, like Accel World, the adaptation will likely be streamlined to remove anything not strictly necessary to the plot, so it probably won't affect anything at all.

I always felt that jumping ahead to the high floors was really jarring. Kawahara was clearly constrained by the length limit of the Dengeki Game Novel prize and I felt that Aincrad could have been so much more than 90% endgame content.

The side stories mitigated this somewhat, but I think that overall, the portrayal of Kirito's growth in Aincrad was patchy and not satisfactory, and that problem will really show if the anime does decide to air everything chronologically. I actually wouldn't mind if major plot threads (especially anything in the middle levels) from Progressive was used to make 'new' anime content to make the story more cohesive, making the Aincrad arc long enough to take up both cours.

A short divergence on volume ten (I hope you can overlook this Belian)... things get really big and the stakes are shown to be much higher, perhaps even more so than Aincrad. The Alicization arc actually has two concurrent wars that eventually converge - one taking place in the Underworld and one taking place in the real world, which I think will please many fans who were disappointed at the lack of real world plot threads in Aincrad - I myself was very excited to hear the plot summaries.

edited 10th Jul '12 5:08:55 AM by Thrombin

ugh... its already out? time to hunt it down...

I wonder if the series you mentioned will publish aria, rondo and concerto... one shot! floors one, two and three

edited 10th Jul '12 5:44:00 AM by Pryun

It's new stuff. Though I think Kawahara might paste the sidestories in the appropriate sections to make it one complete, comprehensive series on Aincrad.

... he has time to WRITE new stuff?

I thought his hands were full with modifying SAO, writing AW and managing the anime...

Progressive falls under 'modifying SAO'. Well, it's more SAO: Complete Edition. I'm not sure if it is his answer to the webnovel fans clamouring for SAO5.

edited 10th Jul '12 6:37:21 AM by Thrombin

Not like I can stop you from talking about it, can I?

Anyways, I wish I could read Japanese, know what happens in volume 10, and talk about it as well. I'll just have to wait for the translation.

I give it two weeks. To a month. at least, that was how fast vol 9 came out.

The translation project seems to be working on Rondo at the moment, so I imagine that vol. 10 is next in line.

Well, I just saw the first episode of the anime. Holy shit quotient overload. Guess I gotta read it now.

Anyway, this would never ever happen in real life. Such dangerous software would never be released to the public in the first place. But once you get past that...holy shit is this amazing.

...Is the manga loyal? I have trouble with walls of text on a screen. I really prefer paper books.

The chapters are fairly short (so far), so it's actually not so bad.

Although I already feel bad for the monsters.

edited 10th Jul '12 6:50:32 PM by Ruise

The manga is loyal, but still a poor man's substitute. The anime is probably going to eclipse them both, but the best experience is going in and reading the light novel totally blind (well, as close as you can get).

You can try copying the Baka Tsuki texts onto more palatable word documents, which might do the trick.

edited 10th Jul '12 6:41:00 PM by Savoie

There are fairly decent pdfs floating about in the BT forums. You can print them out if you dislike reading books on a screen, I guess.

edited 10th Jul '12 6:48:13 PM by Thrombin

I forgot about those; that makes it even easier.

Well it's not that I can't, I just prefer not to. Like how I don't like to watch 3D movies because I find it adds nothing to the experience, if it doesn't actually subtract. I can still enjoy the books. But thank you.

@ translation team working on rondo: no, at the moment the translator is too busy rewatching SAO over and over and over again..... the one working on rondo and volume 10 are also different people, even if they collaborate a little here and there.

@ sword art progressive: look here◊.

For those of you that can't read katakana, it reads, sword art online progressive,then in hiragana/kanji mix, Aria in the Starless Sky First Floor aincrad date bla bla bla(please be able to read the date at least), <<The black swordsman>> and the rapier user <<The Flash>>, the story of how these two(sorry, the other kanjis are beyond my level)

edited 11th Jul '12 4:03:51 AM by Pryun

It says "Aria in the Starless Night" so isn't that just a continuation of the short stories?

I don't understand what you are asking, clarste.

I'm saying he already has a series being written with that title, so rather than being a new work it's just publishing the stuff he's already written.

Wait, that was a rhetoric question? *smacks self* sorry, had no idea, I assumed you were actually asking something and was wondering what you were asking.

Anyway, he is probably working on monochrome concerto...(hopes real hard that he is working on monochrome concerto.)(spoilered to keep anime viewers from getting confused.)

Preview for the next episode is up.

So Aria and Rondo are from SAOP?

I think they're just part of it.

In that case we can confirm that SAOP content is gonna be in the anime.

On the other hand, I am under the belief that they just want to intro Asuna into the anime... Since, you know, the female lead in the novels actually appear quite late(if you take volume two into consideration, without counting AISS)