Sword Art Online (Part 3)

As a follow-up to the previous posts where we discussed Fidelity, Appropriation, and Focalization, let's discuss the Chronological order of events in Light Novel(LN) and the Anime Adaptation and on the artwork involved.

One of the critical differences between anime and LN is the chronological order in which the events occur. For example, the LN sometimes goes back to past instances and recaps the reader, that is analeptic account of the past events, unlike the anime, where the events occur sequentially. This is sometimes frustrating to keep track off.

Also, there are a lot of side stories in LNs compared to the OVAs of Anime. The side stories usually fill in the times between the main arcs, whereas in the anime adaptations, these are just depicted as flashbacks or are entirely avoided.

Coming to the artwork, the original drawings, illustrated by abec, were brilliantly showcased in the anime adaptation. The artworks are simply gorgeous, they make me and many others want to live in the virtual SAO world. This shows the great anime aesthetics and artwork included in the animes and Light Novel, respectively.

There is another point on appropriation that I forgot to mention in the first blog post. The sword styles used by Kirito are appropriated from the Japanese Samurai fighting styles and Kendo (Modern form of japanese sword fighting). This also brings up the point on Fidelity of the fighting styles. They are depicted differently in the anime compared to that of the Light Novel fighting style (like the initial pose, etc.).

-Pavan Kumar Reddy Yannam

-2019A7PS0038H