Sword Art Online: Alicization Confirms Special Anime Expo Event

In the midst of Sword Art Online’s 10th anniversary celebration, the series has announced a special event that they’ll be unfurling at the upcoming Anime Expo in LA next month. While having already created a special Instagram account and new series of artwork, the MMORPG anime promises to give attendees of Anime Expo an in-depth view of the series from several of the creative minds behind SAO. Whether details about the series future will be thrown into the mix is anyone’s guess, but the event, as it is, would certainly be worth any Sword Art fan’s time.

Anime Expo dropped the news on their Twitter Account that a special event for Sword Art Online: Alicization would take place on July 6th:

The guests of honor that will be attending Anime Expo’s upcoming event include both the director of the series Manabu Ono and the character designer, Shingo Adachi. On top of these two creative minds, the English voices for Asuna and Kirito, Cherami Leigh and Bryce Papenbrook respectively, will be in attendance to give more insight into the behind the scenes look at the series. Finally, the script writer and voice director for the English translation, Alex Von David, will also be in attendance.

Sword Art Online is easily the most popular anime that deals with a massively multiplayer online role playing game, ratcheting up the stakes of your regular rpg but adding in life and death consequences. While the series has progressed, the virtual environments have changed drastically from medieval to military fantasy and back again.

What do you think about this upcoming line up for the Anime Expo’s special event? How have you felt about Sword Art Online: Alicization so far? Let us know in the comments or feel free to hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics and anime.

Sword Art Online was originally created by Reki Kawahara with illustrations provided by abec for ASCII Media Works’ Dengeki Bunko line in 2009. 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.

If you have yet to catch the new season of Sword Art Online’s anime adaptation, the original Japanese release of Sword Art Online: Alicization can currently be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Hulu. The English dub of the series is now airing Saturday nights on Adult Swim’s Toonami block. The series will be returning for the second half of its Alicization season with War of Underworld in October.