Anime series have a great number of easter eggs that can sometimes be found years after the release of the episodes themselves. We see this in the case of Naruto, Boruto, Dragon Ball, and several others but our most recent example is with the MMORPG themed anime, Sword Art Online. One keen eyed fan managed to find the subtlest of easter eggs buried in the opening scene of the first episode, revealing one of the character’s outside of the digital world.
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Reddit User PsychoticFrog12 noticed that while Kirito was studying to get ready for the virtual world of SAO, a popular ancillary character, Klein, was on his screen, being one of the first recipients of a copy of the game:
With over ten years to its name, originating as a light novel, the Sword Art Online series first dropped our characters into a medieval fantasy world where if your avatar died, you died. The character of Klein was a newbie to the game who so feared for his life, that he asked Kirito for his help, recognizing the “black swordsman” as one of the players who had originally played SAO in its testing stages.
Klein was a hopeless romantic but did his best at surviving the game world, even managing to create his own guild in an effort to not just save himself, but assist Kirito as well. Luckily, Klein eventually manages to survive the long period trapped in the confines of the digital world and find his path to freedom. He did manage to appear briefly in the series past the first arc, but only in a flash when a new version of SAO was introduced.
What do you think of this easter egg from the very first episode of Sword Art Online? Any other tidbits you saw in the series? Feel free to let us know in the comments or 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.
