The POINT of Sword Art Online

For the sake of addressing the topic at hand, I must first preface it with this:

Every work is not without flaws. Plot holes will plague any tale, hindsight affects that which could have been solved, etc. However, the true merit of a work is not in how absolutely perfect it is, but rather how it gets across the idea it wants to portray. So with this in consideration, I ask you:

What is Sword Art Online about?

Is it a wish fulfillment fantasy led by a purposefully blank main lead who is so overpowered he can do no wrong? Is it a wooden romance between two individuals with no chemistry? Is it about the ultimate video game experience that we all crave? In my personal opinion, from taking a look at the franchise and what it has to offer, it’s not hard to see what the story is about.  In seeing the adventures of those who delve into the world of Full Dive and Augmented Reality, Sword Art Online at its core is simply about one thing: reality. 

This concept of reality is something the show has been covering since the moment Kirigaya Kazuto donned his NervGear on the fated day: the day the tragedy of Sword Art Online began. Those two years spent in Aincrad caused the deaths of thousands. It took them months to even clear the first floor as hysteria and fear prevented them from venturing out. Children were separated from their parents and people from their loved ones. They struggled for years until finally they were freed from that hell. Even after that, there were still those who were trapped by Noboyuki Sugou in the world of Alfheim. Even as tragedy after tragedy swept over, those who were trapped in this game still chose to return to the virtual world.

Why would Kirito, Asuna and everyone else who was caught up in the SAO incident continue to use the very technology that trapped them for two years and threatened to end their very lives? Why do others follow suit knowing the dangers that lie within the technology? Surely no sane person would risk their lives to play a simple video game, right? It’s just a game, a fantasy. It’s nothing more than that. At least it is to us who view it as such.

But was SAO truly nothing but a horrifying death game where thousands were brutally slaughtered? Were they truly tortured by this hell that they were placed within? Were they doomed to die…or were they given a chance to experience a new life?

Virtual reality. A reality that exists within the digital world. A landscape created by ones and zeroes that housed the deaths of thousands, but also the lives of all those who resided within Aincrad’s walls. For those who experienced the world of SAO firsthand, it was more akin to a new life within a medieval fantasy landscape moreso than it was a hellish death game. In any fantasy world, the deaths which occur are merely parts of that life. Life is survival, life is fighting for one’s right to survive in this world and life is to cherish that which has been given to them. The world of Aincrad is no different from that of Berserk, ReZero or any fantasy or isekai world in the sense that death is merely a consequence of life. 

These lives that those who resided in Aincrad were no longer the ones that they had within what we consider “reality.” This new reality that was presented to these players was a chance to be new people, to be something they could have never been outside of it. A little girl could tame a dragon. A boy who never belonged could become a hero and could fall in love with a girl formerly crushed by expectation and transformed into a mighty warrior. Families were created, relationships and bonds formed that couldn’t be possible before and all of this in a period of two years within a reality created just for them. Death, rather than being a punishment, was merely a consequence of life. Sword Art Online was no death game. It was a new reality.

With this in mind, the words of Akihiko Kayaba are all the more clear.

The motive itself is not important because it’s obvious. What Kayaba desired was what he gave to the citizens of Aincrad: a new life. Aincrad was his creation, a new world not bound by the limits of this one. The death penalty that he created was to truly create this new reality and to once again cement that this is not a game but rather a new world that he created. But unlike those within the game, Kayaba was weak. He attempted to play God in this new world. The death penalty that he gave to others was not something he was at first willing to apply to himself, using his powers as an admin to make him immortal in this new world. While he wanted to experience a new world, he was trapped within it. His desire was to abandon this reality and escape to one where he had all of the control. But that isn’t what living is.

His defeat at the hands of Kirito and Asuna was that of two individuals who experienced this new life. They had found love, created a family, raised a daughter, experienced death and pain but also great joy and happiness. Yui was proof of this, as she was nothing more than a computer program but was able to find love in Kirito and Asuna. They were the ones who achieved Kayaba’s dream while he merely cowered behind his control. His words were hollow. His power only existed within that reality.

Sword Art Online, along with being a story of personal reality, also deals with what the creation of virtual reality can do within one’s real life. Upon exiting Sword Art Online, Kazuto was able to make amends with his cousin and create relationships outside of the game. Asuna was able to stand up to her mother and pursue that which she desired. Those who came out of Sword Art Online and used that reality to improve their lives outside of the game are those who benefited from it. 

This brings us to the story of the Pink Devil who conquered Squad Jam. Kohiruimaki Karen, better known by her username LLENN, was a girl who was always self-conscious about her height. No matter where she went, she stood out among a crowd. Because of her complex about her height, she had issues socializing with others, relying only on her one close friend. She went through life with no confidence and a desire to become more than who she was, but with no idea how. That was until her friend introduced her to the world of Virtual Reality. In this world, appearances don’t mean anything because you can be whoever you want to be. Whoever you are in the real world is irrelevant because here you’re a new person, and in the brutal futuristic world of Gun Gale Online, Kohiruimaki Karen was no one but LLENN. LLENN, unlike Karen, was confident, vocal and most importantly small and adorable. She was also incredibly strong, stronger than anyone in the battlefield, and everyone knew to fear the Pink Devil and her P90 submachine gun…or P-chan.

As LLENN grew stronger in the world of GGO, Karen became more confident in the real world. The brutal world of GGO that gave her a rush and a thrill that she could never experience in the real world gave her a new perspective on the life that she had been given because regardless of appearances, even the tiniest girl can defeat the strongest of enemies. And if she can do that, what’s to stop her from having that confidence in real life? Real life is nothing compared to what she faced in Squad Jam and it was LLENN who taught her that. 

Pitohui, on the other hand, is a different story entirely. She desired nothing but the escape of this boring reality we live in and sought solace in the virtual world. She let loose her violent urges onto the world of GGO, mercilessly killing and torturing everyone she came across, using and taking advantage of everyone. She, unlike LLENN, sought not an outlet to become a different person and do things you can’t do in our reality, but instead sought an escape. This world was boring, it had too many limitations, what is the point of living if I can’t be myself? In her search for the ultimate thrill, she found despair in missing her opportunity to join the most deadly game of all: Sword Art Online.

The ultimate game, the thrill that she could never experience in real life where there are consequences to the power you’ve been given. A death game where with every health point lost means more than any game can give, more excitement than the monotony of reality. But she missed her chance…Kanzaki Elsa would have to stay in this world as she is, trapped in society’s expectations of who she should be. If she wanted a death game, she would have to find a way herself. Squad Jam was that solution. If she lost Squad Jam, she and her close companion Asogi Goushi would end their lives. This game was all she had left and she was willing to give up everything she had just for a thrill.

But LLENN understood what GGO was. GGO was more than just some game, more than a mere escape from the troubles of the world. In this reality, Karen was LLENN, the Pink Demon. She was the the champion of the first Squad Jam and was capable of anything because she put her all into this new life that she’d been given. GGO is no mere game, and only those who understood that had the potential to  become strong. This world was not an escape, it was another separate from her own that was just as real and powerful as the life of the girl donning the Amusphere. Even against those who were soldiers in real life, she was able to stand against them because she took everything she did seriously. This game that changed Karen’s life was not something she would abandon to, something she would give up her other life to be in. The life of Kohiruimaki Karen was just as valid as the life of LLENN, and the life of Kanzaki Elsa was just as valid as the life of Pitohui. LLENN beat Pitohui because LLENN understood what virtual reality was: reality.

To be able to understand that both realities, flesh or virtual, are just as valid as one another is to understand and appreciate what they give you. Every character that succeeds in the world of SAO is someone who uses each reality to fully appreciate the other and improve themselves as people. Sinon, who was wracked with the trauma of what she did used Gun Gale Online to get over that guilt, becoming more open as a person and able to gain more friends as a result. The girls of the rhythm athletics club used it as a way to improve their teamwork and became closer to each other than ever after having faced the battles in the world of GGO. Suguha, who wished to understand what her brother loved so much about the virtual world, became Leafa and was able to open up her feelings that she had kept dormant. Yuuki, who couldn’t even live in the real world was able to become a fighter stronger than Kirito and meet people who she bonded with and was given a chance to see the world she couldn’t live in before giving her final breath. As they grew stronger in the virtual world, they carried that strength in their current reality. Everything they experienced, flesh or virtual, was real–something that was threatened by the existence of augmented reality.

Ordinal Scale challenges this idea, having the story focus on the removal of the memories of SAO. This machine that brings the virtual into the real world came at the expense of one’s memories in that death game in Aincrad, one of the victims of this being Asuna. But…it was just her memories. She still had her love for Kirito, he was right there by her side. Yui was still there. Every friend she gained was still there, so it shouldn’t matter if her memories were taken. But it is said that the loss of memory is akin to a loss of life. Those memories, the experiences of one’s life during that time are gone. For Asuna, every moment, every person she met and every feeling that she experienced in the castle of Aincrad was gone. The life of Asuna, member of the Knights of the Blood Oath and the one and only love of the Black Swordsman, was dead. That life she had earned where she experienced so many things and changed as a person and allowed her to change who she was was erased at the hands of the Augma for Tetsuhiro Shigemura’s goal of bringing back his daughter. Kirito, who was willing to take back the life that Asuna lost, strengthened himself to become closer to the who he was. It was because of the will given to him by that world that Kirigaya Kazuto once more returned to the world of Aincrad on the floor they couldn’t reach before.

Sword Art Online is a story that contains many flaws and issues with its execution, but to deny what it did is limiting. While it may have not been as good as it could have been, recent works such as Ordinal Scale and Alternative are returning back to that which made the original story special: the distinction of reality. What was experienced in the virtual world is just as valid as that in our real lives, and as the series reaches into its third season and the world of Underworld, we once again remember the truth that every feeling, every life we interact and cross is all a part of our reality.