Sword Art Online announce the decision of making the third season, Alicization, following the release of the movie. Dengeki G’s Magazine recently publishes an interview with its director Manabu Ono. They will talk about the production behind this anime.
Production Problem
When the TV anime Sword Art Online (SAO for short) went out, Ono was an audience, having nothing relevance to it. However, he become the director for Alicization because Aniplex’s producer, Ichiro, had come to the door. And Ono took this work after talking with him. They also decide to make four phases during the conversation. Ono wanted to animate all the content in the original without omitting anything. So such a long term was necessary. Please check interview with Sword Art Online: Alicization producers if you are interested in it.
The end of the first episode of SAO left Ono a deep impression. Meanwhile, he feel director Tomohiko Ito really good at calculating. Ono says that Ito would think ahead for what they want and then show the results in the end. Unlike Ito, Ono considers himself the type taking a step each time. Although in the production he would consider the allocation of progress. He will mainly focus on the current work and do his best.
Regarding anime production, Ono would ask the author Reki Kawahara when original novel didn’t describe in detail. He believes that this aspect would vary from person to person. Furthermore, everyone’s understanding, feelings and imaging supplements would be different after reading. Therefore, Ono would discuss the script with Kawahara again and again to deduce the part of their consensus.
Phases Division
Alicization is a long story and takes 4 phases. Ono mainly focus on how to animate the moving performance during the first 2 phases. This is a litter similar to the “sword skills” in SAO and ALO. Besides, Ono also gets a lot of opinions from Kawahara .
However, the director expresses the effect of magic in ALO in the form similar to games. But in UNDER WORLD (UW for short) it gets different. In UW, this magic has not been used so far. As a result, some kind of system call resembling magic. Regarding this part, Ono refers to “Lord of the Rings” and wants to express in a serious fantasy way.
And during last 2 phases, Ono’s focus will be the fighting part that is never shown in the SAO so far. Ono says it’s a very big challenge for himself. And even Kawahara have concerns like “is it really can be animated?”. However, Ono also makes it clear that he has deeply been aware of the challenges.
Art And Settings
Regarding to art background, Ono thought about this style after seeing the beautiful view in the movie “Beauty and the Beast”. The town looks like the European style for this reason. Aside from the gorgeousness of the battle scene, from Ono’s view, the word “beautiful” is used to express the world of “UW”. Therefore, Ono also wants to present the beautiful towns such as UW to the audience. To this end, Ono has done his utmost to collect reference materials for investigation, such as “what’s the life of people in the 18th to 19th century as in the stage of Alice in Wonderland”, “how’s the city’s infrastructure and food”, etc.
Speaking of the difficulty of this animation, Ono says that the most troublesome place for him is Alicization’s new terminology. These new terms such as “Soul Translator” and “Fluct Light” once made Ono very upset. He was not sure how to use anime to explain to the audience. Ono did a great deal of effort in the first episode with full explanation words to keep audience not feeling bored. Times are changing, anime technology is increasingly progressive. From the first season of SAO’s airing, it’s already 6 years apart. Technologies previously impossible to implement are now free to express. So Ono believes that this time would bring the highest level of anime to the audience.
Characters
Kirito
When talking about the four main characters, Ono says Alicization begins with the 11 year old Kirito. When painting this part, he paid great attention to keeping the original character of Kirito. Meanwhile, he try to show with a little childishness that’s never been seen before.
Asuna
As for Asuna, he believes that the audience can perceive Asuna kinda got trouble after watching the first episode. But that’s just because she loves Kirito so much. This time Alicization will show how Asuna take the desperate struggle to save Kirito when he is in a life crisis.
Eugeo
And Eugeo is the first time shown in SAO. Ono says that Kirito’s partners were female characters so far. So this time, Eugeo is the first male partner of the protagonist. Therefore, in the process of painting, he paid attention to showing their complementary, mutual relationship and their joint combat forces.
Ono says that Kirito is the type that will go straight ahead. However, Eugeo is not good at fighting with his conspicuous gentleness. Ono has to present Eugeo’s strong persistence in order to achieve the goal.
At this point, Ono discloses that Kirito’s voice Mr. Yoshitsugu Matsuoka and Mr. Nobunaga Shimazaki, who is Eugeo’s voice, are good friends both at work and in private. Their relationship is so good from the start of the first episode. Even he feels the illusion like “they have been working together as partners all along”.
Alice
Finally, Ono says that 19 year old Alice will appear as an integrated knight later. She will show everyone a cute and handsome female knight figure. And after the transformation, Alice will meet Kirito again. As for what kind of changes will happen, please looking forward to it.
Expectations
After watching the first episode, Ono thinks their objectives, such as drawing out the previously mentioned beautiful “UW”, is achieved. Ono says that the world is set to be more real and more natural. Therefore it would bring more natural Kirito and Eugeo to the audience.
Besides, Ono think it difficult to handle the gap between the virtual world and the real world handover process. Ono says, the first episode is composed of two episodes as in one hour SP broadcast. It will be incomplete for the audience not reading the original novel before if broadcasting separately. They will kinda have feelings like “although Kirito came out but what happened” if only airing the first half of 30 minutes. In order to eliminate this doubt, the audience would continue to watch the second 30-minute half. Let the audience directly break into the second half without understanding the first half. And then in the second half of the explanation, they would get the feeling that “we are really watching SAO”. That’s exactly the effect Ono wants. So Ono thinks he handled it quite well about this part.
In the end, Ono says that the second and third episodes have already begun to explain to everyone what rules “UW” is running under. And from the fourth episode, the story will make great progress. Please continue to look forward to future story!
Source: Dengeki G’s Magazine December issue