Excelling socially and academically, Asuna Yuuki is on track to ace her high school entrance exams. Her friend and classmate, Misumi Mito Tozawa, advises her to take a short break from studying and join her on the launch day of Sword Art Online (SAO)—the highly anticipated online virtual reality multiplayer game. Asuna accepts her offer and soon meets her in the game. In a cruel twist of fate, Asuna, Mito, and every other player logged into SAO find themselves trapped in the game permanently. The only way out is to clear all one hundred floors of the game, and to make matters worse, dying inside the game will kill the player in real life. With SAO now turned into a nightmare death trap, Asuna and other gamers—such as the lone swordsman Kazuto Kirito Kirigaya—must adapt and survive, all whilst attempting to beat the unforgiving competition to the top.

The project is a spinoff from Circus's D.C. Da Capo franchise and features the Yoshino Sakura character as a seemingly ordinary third grader with secret special powers. (Source: AniDB)

Extra episode of Sword Art Offline included in the Sword Art Online: Extra Edition Blu-ray and DVD.

In 2026, four years after the infamous Sword Art Online incident, a revolutionary new form of technology has emerged: the Augma, a device that utilizes an Augmented Reality system. Unlike the Virtual Reality of the NerveGear and the Amusphere, it is perfectly safe and allows players to use it while they are conscious, creating an instant hit on the market. The most popular application for the Augma is the game Ordinal Scale, which immerses players in a fantasy role-playing game with player rankings and rewards. Following the new craze, Kirito's friends dive into the game, and despite his reservations about the system, Kirito eventually joins them. While at first it appears to be just fun and games, they soon find out that the game is not all that it seems...