Light Novel Thursday: Sword Art Online by Reki Kawahara

 

This week I’m covering the very first Light Novel I ever read, Sword Art Online by Reki Kawahara.

Plot Synopsis: Sword Art Online (SAO) is a Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG), released in 2022. With the Nerve Gear, a virtual reality helmet that stimulates the user’s five senses via their brain, players can experience and control their in-game characters with their minds.

On November 6, 2022, the players log in for the first time, and later discover that they are unable to log out. They are then informed by Akihiko Kayaba, SAO’s creator, that if they wish to be free, they must reach the 100th floor of the game’s tower and defeat the final boss. However, if their avatars die in-game, their bodies will also die in the real world. One of these players is Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya, who was chosen as one of the 1,000 beta testers in the closed beta. Since he had previous experience and knowledge of the game, he felt that he could beat the game easily. As a result, he set out on an adventure to beat the game.

Plot: The plot is very character driven and focuses on Kirito’s struggle to deal with issues like Player-Killing, which is taken to a whole new level in the first arc, and his relationship with games after becoming trapped in a death game. I really enjoyed the plot as a whole because it shows Kirito’s thoughts and makes him a much more human character rather than who you see in the Anime adaptation. It also go much faster through the plot, because the first season of the anime took two volumes the first and the second, which was made solely of side stories that happen between Day 1 of SAO and the first chapter of SAO which is two years later.

Characters: I really enjoy the characters of SAO, because while the Anime was pretty good it made Kirito out to be too two-dimensional, and didn’t show any of his thoughts which helped make him a better character in the light novels.

Art: The art in the first few novels is okay, but could have been better and it becomes much better the third volume.

Overall: If you enjoy Virtual Reality stories, or video games in general, you’ll enjoy this series.

For those who like: Science-Fiction mixed with a bit of Fantasy, Romance, Virtual Reality, Video Games, MMORPG’s.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.