Sword Art Online: Alicization Confirms War of Underworld Arc’s Return

Sword Art Online remains as one of anime’s top titles years after its debut. The high-tech show helped usher in the era of isekai stories which reign today, but few can touch the popularity of its predecessor. In fact, Sword Art Online is more popular than ever thanks to its successful third season, but fans need to take a breath before sitting down.

It turns out this latest arc of Sword Art Online will not be as linear as fans hoped. A new report says the War of Underworld story is being split up and will return in early 2020.

Over in Japan, Anime Recorder (via Reddit) shared the news with fans after taking a peek at Sword Art Online‘s schedule. It turns out the anime will reportedly take a break after this cour’s eleventh episode. It will then return in three months to join the Spring 2020 cour through its end.

For now, fans are feeling a bit surprised by the break. When it comes to anime, cours are usually self-contained nuggets. A show will run that entire season before wrapping or approving a sequel. That means Sword Art Online is a little unusual since it is splitting one of its cours in half. Half of the order will have premiered this year before the Spring 2020 cour wraps things up later. Hopefully this extra time will give A-1 Pictures the space it needs to finish out season three properly lest it wants to incur Asuna’s wrath.

Will you be tuning into this season when it returns? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB 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. This October, Sword Art Online: Alicization will return with its second arc.