Over this past weekend, Aniplex held two different online panels (one at Anime Expo and another of their own) highlighting some of their most popular titles and giving us some solid updates regarding their future plans. One of these titles was Sword Art Online which, as we already know, is getting a brand new movie adaptation of the Progressive spinoff light novels and manga. These retell the original Aincrad story arc floor by floor from Asuna’s perspective. What we didn’t know was when the movie was going to hit theaters in Japan, or anywhere else for that matter.
That changed this past weekend, however, when Aniplex announced the movie will hit theaters in Japan on October 30th (just in time for my birthday!) with a global release to follow. Unfortunately, we have no further details regarding the global release, but stay tuned to the J-List blog for more information as it becomes available.
Titled Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night, the crew for this movie is remaining mostly the same as previous seasons and movies. The new director is Ayako Kono, but other than that things are staying mostly the same; A-1 Pictures is still producing the animation and Yuki Kajiura is composing the background music. Meanwhile, in the voice cast, they have confirmed that their original cast members will voice Asuna and Kirito while Inori Minase will play the new character, Mito.
While I may have fallen out of the television series during the Alicization arc (please no judgment, I tried… I really tried); I am super excited to get back into the swing of things with this movie! Asuna has always been my favorite character from the series and to finally get to see things from her perspective will be a welcome breath of fresh air for the anime series that is almost ready to celebrate ten years of continuous success.
Source: Aniplex of America Anime Expo Panel
