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‘SAO: Ordinal Scale’ Movie Cover And Creator Reki Kawahara’s Interview Suggests Asuna And Other Heroines Of Anime Get More Screen-Time And Importance In ‘Sword Art Online’ Movie

By Patrick Frye
Published on: 04:51 PST, Jan 17, 2017

Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale is a few weeks shy of its release, and fans are expecting the movie to do justice to the leading ladies of the popular Japanese manga and anime. According to creator Reki Kawahara, besides Kirito, Asuna, Silica, Lisbeth, Leafa, and Sinon could be prominently featured in the upcoming SAO movie.

About to be released in one month’s time, Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale is one of the eagerly awaited movies in the New Year. The SAO movie is slated to be released on February 18 in Japan and expected to make its stateside debut on March 9. As reported by the Inquisitr earlier, Aniplex America, the official distributor of Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale in North America recently started selling tickets.

As part of the promotion, the company released an impactful visual of Kirito and Asuna. Apart from the painfully short clipping on Twitter, Aniplex America shared a poster of the movie as well. Although the SAO poster prominently features the lead protagonist, Kirito, he is accompanied by Asuna, one of the leading ladies in the franchise. Fans will soon be offered a new round of advanced tickets for the movie. Starting January 21, fans who can grab the tickets to Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale, will be offered B3 posters of the main visual and one of three charter art pieces of Kirito, Asuna, and new idol Yuna.

For quite some time, fans of Sword Art Online have openly grumbled about the relegation of the leading ladies to the background, while the heroes take center stage and tackle the danger. In fact, quit a few book covers featured a cute visual showing the ladies petitioning for “More Deban”, which loosely translated means more screen time.

Fortunately, creator Reki Kawahara recently delighted fans by offering some new information and several hints about the movie, but most importantly, he confirmed that the heroines would be getting significantly more screen time. According to an interview with creator Reki Kawahara in Sword Art Online Magazine volume 2 and the latest Dengeki Bungo Magazine, the leading ladies, especially Silica, will be prominently featured in the anime movie Ordinal Scale, reported Crunchyroll.

When asked if any of the characters from the Sword Art Online franchise be particularly featured, Kawahara said,

“I was not aware of this while writing the story, but Liz’s and Silica’s screentime has increased. I even had 120 minutes to work with, so their screentime increased rapidly as I fleshed out the story. Particularly, Silica became a rather important key character.”

Interestingly, Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale is an anime-only story. In other words, the movie will feature a brand new story penned exclusively for the movie. Yuna is one of the three new characters that the movie will feature. Apart from Augmented Reality idol Yuna, Ordinal Scale will also have swordsman Eiji, and the Augma developer Professor Shigemura.

Augma is the competing Augmented Reality (AR) based gaming system to NerveGear, an invention by the genius programmer, Akihiko Kayaba. It is said to be a better and safer alternative not only to NerveGear but also to its second iteration, Amusphere. The most popular title that is making the waves in 2026 is Ordinal Scale.

[Image by ASCII Media Works]

Experienced players like Asuna and others are actively playing the game when they realize that everything’s not as perfect as promised. Finding his friends in danger, the hero, Kirito, decides to intervene. Although the hero plays a very important, role, Kawahara noted that Asuna too will have a lot more screen time.

“Asuna had a considerable increase in importance. At first, it was a story of Kirito fighting against the mastermind’s plot, but then producer Kashiwada (Shinichirou) said ‘more Asuna’ at a meeting. Since then, Asuna’s role became bigger and we decided to depict the relationship between Kirito and Asuna in more detail.”

It appears Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale will have several scenes wherein the heroines too, will play an important role in the movie.

[Featured Image by ASCII Image Works]

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