Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night is the latest entry in the Isekai series that has become one of the most popular examples of the genre, and while fans in North America will have to wait until next month to see the prequel movie hit the silver screen, the movie is making bank at the box office in Japan. With this new film revisiting the events of the first season, wherein Kirito and Asuna were attempting to escape from a deadly world that recreated the parameters of a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Opening into Japanese theaters earlier this week, Aria of a Starless Night has already passed one billion Yen in box office sales, which is the equivalent of around $8.75 million, if you aren’t familiar with the conversion rate. While the franchise that got its start as a light novel series has yet to reveal when, or if, it will be making a comeback to the small screen with a new anime series, a new movie will be arriving in 2022 that one again explores the stories of the Progressive series in Sword Art Online Progressive: Scherzo of a Dark Dusk.
The Official Twitter Account for Sword Art Online shared the big news that Aria of a Starless Night has pulled in over one billion Yen at the box office, proving to be a successful new entry in the Isekai series that helped make the genre a popular part of the medium that is anime:
The translation of this Tweet reads as such:
“”Theatrical Version Sword Art Online -Progressive- Starless Night Aria” has exceeded the box office revenue of 1 billion yen.Thank you to everyone who supported this work and everyone who visited the theater.Please continue to enjoy at the theater!”
The new prequel film will hit North American theaters on December 3rd, with the series set to hit theaters in Australia and New Zealand on the 9th. The official description for the first of the Progressive films reads as such:
“This is a tale of the time before “Lightning Flash” and “The Black Swordsman” were known by those names…The day that she happened to don the NerveGear, Asuna Yuuki was a third-year middle school student who’d never even touched an online game before. On November 6, 2022, the world’s first VRMMORPG, Sword Art Online, is officially launched. But the players, still euphoric over having logged in, suddenly find themselves trapped inside the game when the Game Master deprives them of any way to log out.”
