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Sword Art Online the Movie -Progressive- Aria of a Starless Night Will Be Released in U.K. and Ireland Cinemas
posted on by Andrew Osmond
Funimation has announced that the Sword Art Online the Movie -Progressive- Aria of a Starless Night anime film will be released "soon" in the UK and Ireland.
It will also be released in cinemas in the United States and Canada on December 3, Australia and New Zealand on December 9, and will open soon in Latin America, The film opens in Japan on October 30.
Ayako Kawano (unit director on Black Butler: Book of the Atlantic, High School Fleet, The Seven Deadly Sins the Movie: Prisoners of the Sky) is directing the film at A-1 Pictures, and Kento Toya (Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld, The Seven Deadly Sins: Revival of The Commandments) is designing the characters. Yasuyuki Kai is serving as action director, and Yuki Kajiura is returning to compose the music.
The anime is based on Reki Kawahara's Sword Art Online: Progressive light novel series. The novel series launched in 2012 as a revised retelling of Kawahara's original Sword Art Online novels. The story depicts Kirito's journey through the floating Aincrad castle from the beginning, floor-by-floor.
Funimation describes the story as follows:
"This is a tale of the time before 'Lightning Flash' and 'The Black Swordsman' were known by those names… The day that she happened to don the NerveGear, Asuna Yuuki was a third-year middle school student who'd never even touched an online game before.
"On November 6, 2022, the world's first VRMMORPG, Sword Art Online, is officially launched. But the players, still euphoric over having logged in, suddenly find themselves trapped inside the game when the Game Master deprives them of any way to log out.
"The Game Master then gives them this warning “This may be a game, but it's not something you play.” If a player dies in-game, they die in the real world. Hearing this, all of the players panic, and pandemonium reigns.
"One of those players is Asuna, but despite not yet knowing the rules of this world, she sets off to conquer the floating iron castle, Aincrad, whose peak is too high to be seen.
"As the days go by in this world where death is never very far away, she has a fateful encounter. And then, a parting…
"Though she's at the mercy of the reality before her eyes, Asuna fights on with all her might, until someone appears before her: the aloof swordsman, Kirito…"
Yen Press is publishing the Sword Art Online: Progressive novel series in English, as well as two manga adaptations.
this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history