Sword Art Online: Alicization Teases New Arc with New Photo

Sword Art Online's third season is one of the most ambitious in the franchise to date as it's [...]

By Nick Valdez

Sword Art Online's third season is one of the most ambitious in the franchise to date as it's currently in the middle of adapting the longest arc from the original light novel series. The Alicization arc of the series wrapped its first two cours earlier this year, and after a brief hiatus, the third season will soon be returning as part of the competitive Fall 2019 season. With War of Underworld, the Alicization arc will be exploring even darker themes than the first half and Kirito will be in a pretty rough place when fans see him again.

Fans can get a better look at just how broken Kirito has become after the events of the Alicization Rising arc as a new magazine spread, shared by Moetron News on Twitter, gives us a much closer look at his current comatose state. Check it out below:

Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld is officially slated to premiere October 12th, and fans will be able to stream the series on FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll alongside its release in Japan. The second half of the third season will be focused primarily on Alice as Kirito has been left in his currently damaged state following the raid on the outside world at the end of the first half.

It seems that his brief floating up into the air as he re-connected with the outside world shorted out somehow and left him in this limbo. But this will leave fans with an interesting perspective going into the rest of the third season as not only we'll get a better handle of Alice as a character, but this promotional image teases that Eugeo's fate won't be keeping him out of the events of the next arc.

If you want to catch up with the third season of the series before the second half returns later this October, the original Japanese release of Sword Art Online: Alicization can currently be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Hulu. Sword Art Online: Alicization is officially described as such, "Where... am I...?" Before he knows it, Kirito has made a full-dive into an epic, fantasy-like virtual world. With only a murky recollection of what happened right before he logged in, he starts to wander around, searching for clues. He comes upon an enormous, pitch dark tree (the Gigas Cedar), where he encounters a boy. "My name is Eugeo. Nice to meet you, Kirito." Although he is supposedly a resident of the virtual world - an NPC - the boy shows the same array of emotions as any human being.

As Kirito bonds with Eugeo, he continues to search for a way to log out of this world. Meanwhile, he remembers a certain memory deep down within him. He remembers racing through the mountains with Eugeo as a child... A memory that he should not have in the first place... And in this memory, he sees someone other than Eugeo, a young blond girl. Her name is Alice. And it is a name that must never be forgotten..."

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