How well do you know the lines from Sword Art Online? A brand new version of karuta being released in Japan this October will put you to the test.
For those of you who have never seen the series Chihayafuru and don’t know what karuta is (which, off-topic by the way, is a criminal shame if you’ve never gotten around to it), allow me to briefly explain. Karuta is a card game that is essentially only played in Japan. Traditional karuta involves memorizing 100 short traditional poems and listening to a reader call out the first half of each poem, which is the player’s cue to swipe the card representing the second half of the poem off the game board. It’s a challenging game that many people take quite seriously. This version of karuta, however, is not quite that serious.
To celebrate the release of the upcoming Sword Art Online: Progressive movie, a brand new version of the game is going to be released but instead of memorizing poems, you have to match lines of dialogue from the first season (Aincrad and Fairy Dance arcs) of the anime. With 180 cards total, your Sword Art Online knowledge had better be up to the challenge.
Pre-orders for the game set can already be found on Amazon.jp, Gamers, and Animate and carry a retail price of 4,070 yen (about $37 USD). The game set itself will be released on Saturday, October 30th, 2021, just in time for the release of the movie.
Sword Art Online has been a big part of my anime life for the last decade. With the first anime adaptation from studio A-1 Pictures hitting the airwaves and Crunchyroll in the summer of 2012, I’ve watched almost everything that has been released for the franchise multiple times now. However, even I don’t think that I know the dialogue well enough to be able to survive an actual game about it.
If you’re a hardcore Sword Art Online fan, though, this is going to be a collectible that you’ll want to get your hands on before it disappears forever.
Speaking of Sword Art Online collectibles, we have some great items in store.
Source: AnimeAnime Global
