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Sword Art Online: Alicization Anime Gets 1-Hour World Premiere in 7 Countries

The official website for the Sword Art Online: Alicization anime announced on Friday that the anime will have a world premiere event in seven countries: Japan, the United States, Australia, France, Germany, Russia, and South Korea. The premiere will show the anime's first episode, which is a one-hour-long special.

The site only revealed the date of the Japanese premiere event, which will take place on September 15 at the Tokyo International Forum Hall C with cast members Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Haruka Tomatsu, and Ai Kayano as guests. The site did not reveal the dates and venues for the premiere events in other countries.

The anime will premiere on Japan television in October.

Manabu Ono (Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere, Saki, The Asterisk War) is directing the anime at A-1 Pictures. Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale animation directors Gou Suzuki and Tomoya Nishiguchi will join Shingo Adachi for the character designs.

Ono said in an interview on the anime's official website that he accepted the job as director around the time of the Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale film's preview screenings, and he has heard from Aniplex staff since that time that the plan is to adapt the original novel series all the way to the end.

The series will again star Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as Kirito and Haruka Tomatsu as Asuna. Ai Kayano will play Alice, and Nobunaga Shimazaki will play Eugeo.

The anime will cover the entirety of the novels' "Alicization Arc." The Alicization arc is in volumes 9 through 18 of the original novel series.

The novel series has two television anime adaptations, an anime special, and a recent film. The franchise has also inspired multiple manga series, games, and a virtual reality demonstration in Japan. Aniplex of America releases the anime in North America. Skydance Television is planning a live-action series on Netflix based on the novels.

Sources: Sword Art Online: Alicization anime's official website, MoCa News