The official website of the anime Sword Art Online: Alicization, the third season of the animated television adaptation of the Sword Art Online novels by Reki Kawahara, has announced that the series will feature a special premiere event in seven countries: Japan, United States, Australia, France, Germany, Russia and South Korea. The event will show the first episode of the series, which will be a one-hour special.
In Japan this event will be held on September 15 at the Tokyo International Forum Hall C, with several members of its cast participating: Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Haruka Tomatsu and Ai Kayano. At the moment nothing has been specified about the events in the other countries.
The anime will premiere in October on Japanese television.
Manabu Ono (Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon, Saki) will direct the anime under A-1 Pictures. Shingo Adachi will return as character designer, joining him Gou Suzuki and Tomoya Nishiguchi, who were animation directors in the movie Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale.
To them join:
Management assistance: Takashi Sakuma
Music composition: Yuki Kajiura
Fund design: Mami Hayakawa, Kiminori Ito
Monster design: Toshiya Kawano
Direction of action animation: Yoshihiro Kanno, Tetsuya Takeuchi
Artistic direction: Yukako Ogawa, Yoshito Watanabe
Artistic design: Kenichi Morioka, Yuuho Taniuchi
Design color: Naomi Nakano
Direction of photography: Kentaro Waki, Kenta Hayashi
Graphic animation: Takemune Oshiro
CGI Address: Ryuta Undo
Edition: Yuji Kondo
Sound direction: Yoshikazu Iwanami
Sound effects: Yasumasa Koyama
Yoshitsugu Matsuoka will return as the voice of Kirito and Haruka Tomatsu as that of Asuna. Ai Kayano will be Alice's voice, while Nobunaga Shimazaki will voice Eugeo.
The anime will completely cover the Alicization arc of the original novels, that is, volumes 9 to 18 of them.
