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Sword Art Online: Alicization UK Premiere in Glasgow on September 23

Anime Limited announced that the UK premiere of the Sword Art Online: Alicization anime will take place at MCM Scotland at the GLASGOW SEC on Sunday September 23.

The event will be at 12 noon on the MCM main stage. According to Anime Limited, "This special UK premiere event will be open to any attendees with a valid MCM Scotland Comic Con ticket on the day, and will feature not only your first chance to see the opening 50-minute episode of Sword Art Online: Alicization in Japanese with English subtitles before its October broadcast date, but also an exclusive video introduction from member's of the show's voice cast. We're also working hard on acquiring some additional goodies available to give away to attendees on the day."

The series is also having premiere events in Los Angeles, Australia, France, Germany, Russia, and South Korea. 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.

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. Anime Limited described the story:

Before he knows it, Kirito has made a full-dive into an epic, fantasy-like virtual world. With only a murky recollection of what happened right before he logged in, he starts to wander around, searching for clues. He comes upon an enormous, pitch black tree – the Gigas Cedar – where he encounters a boy, Eugene. Although he is supposedly a resident of the virtual world – an NPC – the boy shows the same array of emotions as any human being.

As Kirito bonds with Eugeo, he continues to teach for a way to log out of this world. Meanwhile, he remembers a certain memory deep down within him. He remembers racing through the mountains with Eugeo as a child… A memory that he should not have in the first place. In this memory, he sees someone other than Eugeo, a young blonde girl. Her name is Alice…

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. 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 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.