'Sword Art Online' Debuts Asuna's Newest Swimwear With Collectible Statue

The Japanese light novel publishing company Dengeki Bunko is celebrating its 25th Anniversary this year, and have marked the occasion with lots of new merchandise of characters from its most popular series.

One such series is Sword Art Online, which is cementing the occasion with an alluring new figure of Asuna in a brand new bathing suit.

Based off of previous art from Sword Art Online light novel illustrator abec, this new Asuna figure stands at nine inches tall with a red and white bathing suit (with a removable over skirt, if interested fans wanted to just display the figure in the bikini).

Dengeki Bunko is selling the figure in a standard edition, which just includes the figure, for 14,018 yen (about $130 USD), and a collector's edition which includes the figure along with a tapestry featuring the original artwork which inspired the figure.

The collector's edition will cost interested fans 16,718 yen (about $155 USD), and pre-orders are being taken for the figure over on Dengeki Bunko's website until June 18, with an expected shipping date for those pre-orders next March. You can check out the website at this link here.

Premiering this October, the third season is set to adapt the Alicization arc, which takes part in Volumes 9-18 of Kawahara's light novel series. Directing the third season for A-1 Pictures is Manabu Ono, with Shingo Adachi, Gou Suzuki, Tomoya Nishiguchi handling the character designs. The voice cast for the season so far includes Yoshitugu Matsuoka as Kirito, Haruka Tomatsu as Asuna, Ai Kayano as Alice Schuberg, and Nobunaga Shimazaki as Eugeo.

For those unfamiliar with Sword Art Online, the series was originally created by Reki Kawahara with illustrations provided by abec. The series follows a boy named Kirito after he and thousands of gamers get trapped in a virtual reality video game known as Sword Art Online. The gamers must band together to defeat the game's final level to escape, but Kirito and his guild learn there is more behind their prison than they were originally told.

The series began as a series of light novels published through Dengeki Bunko in 2009, and has been adapted into eight different manga series by ASCII Media Works and Kadokawa. The series has been licensed for an English language release by Yen Press, and has been adapted into an anime series by A-1 Pictures.

Its first season aired in 2012 and ran for 25 episodes, while its second season, Sword Art Online II, aired in 2014 and ran for 24 episodes. The series currently gearing up for its next big arc in the light novel series, "Unitial Ring," and the next season of the anime is set to adapt "Alicization.

via Comic Natalie