The following is a list of characters from the light novel, anime and manga series Sword Art Online. Most of the characters are introduced as gamers who play and consequently become trapped in a virtual reality massively multiplayer online role-playing game (VRMMORPG) Sword Art Online. The series chronicles their interactions in multiple online worlds: Sword Art Online (SAO), Alfheim Online (ALO), Gun Gale Online (GGO), and Underworld (UW).
Sword Art Online has an extensive cast of fictional characters. The series focuses Kazuto Kirigaya as he attempts to clear and explore the virtual world of Aincrad in the VR game, Sword Art Online. He is accompanied by Asuna Yuuki, and they work together and support each other as the series progresses.
Main characters Kirito / / (birth name)
As the main protagonist of Sword Art Online, Kirito was chosen to be one of the one thousand beta testers for the closed beta of Sword Art Online, the first ever Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG) for the NerveGear, and later joined the official version of the game where he became one of the 10,000 players trapped in SAO. At some point in the game, he became known as the due to his tendency to wear black clothing.
Asuna /
The main heroine of Sword Art Online and main protagonist of Mother's Rosario and the Progressive series (which tells the entire Aincrad arc through her perspective), Asuna – who is 17 (born: 30 September 2007) – is a friend and later to be girlfriend and the in-game wife of Kirito in Sword Art Online and ALfheim Online. In SAO, her skills with the rapier had her earn the nickname . In ALO, she had earned the nickname due to her tendency to charge into battle with a rapier despite being a healer.
Major characters Yui
Originally a side-story character in SAO, Yui later becomes an accompanying/support character in ALO. At first thought to be a lost child in SAO, she is an artificial intelligence. Her full designation is «Mental Health – Counselling Program», MHCP version 1, codename, «Yui». Yui is shown to have a human form and a Navigation Pixie form where she is always barefoot in both forms. She was designed to monitor the emotions of players and appear at their sides to hear and help them out. However, since the moment everyone was imprisoned in Sword Art Online, she was forbidden to come in contact with the players and complete her prime directive. Unable to do anything but suffer as she monitored the emotions of the trapped players, she came upon Kirito and Asuna whose emotions stood out as a beacon of joy and peace in a sea of fear and despair. She sought them out, appearing to them as an amnesiac child whom they adopted. In the end she was nearly deleted by Cardinal, the management system of SAO, but is saved by Kirito by converting and storing her data into his own NerveGear. Yui later shows up in ALO as a Private Navigation Pixie and helps Kirito along with Leafa to find Asuna. She refers to Kirito as "Daddy" and Asuna as "Mommy" and gets very annoyed if any other girls try to flirt with Kirito, she also asserts Kirito not to keep any secrets from Asuna. Kirito uses his skills and resources in the real world to construct a device for Yui to view the real world even while she is in virtual reality and gives her the ability to communicate with them.
Leafa /
Suguha, also known as Sugu; she is in actuality Kazuto's cousin, as her mother had been raising her sister's child from a young age after his parents died from an accident, though neither Suguha nor Kazuto knew about this until later. She is a diligent worker and has been practicing kendo for eight years, partially to escape the loneliness and isolation in her life. After Kazuto Kirigaya (the name of Kirito in real life) gets trapped in Sword Art Online, she begins playing Alfheim Online as a Sylph in an attempt to try to understand him better, and it is at this time that she finds out they are cousins rather than siblings; with her mother revealing to her that he is not her biological brother, but is actually her cousin and was adopted into their family when he was young. This causes Sugu to develop feelings for him that she doesn't really understand; however, because he is trapped inside SAO, she never acts on them. That being said, when Kazuto awakens after his two-year ordeal, those feelings come back, but she realizes that he is already in love with someone else, namely Asuna.
Coincidentally, she meets Kazuto's avatar, Kirito, in Alfheim Online after he saves her from an attack by player killers. Unaware of his true identity, she decides to help him on his quest to find somebody which eventually leads them to the world tree. After understanding the depth of Kazuto's love for Asuna, she resolves to give up on him and instead becomes attached to Kirito in ALO. However, when Kirito's true identity is revealed, she is heartbroken and the two of them have an awkward exchange in the real world where Sugu reveals her feelings for him. Not knowing how to respond or comfort her, Kazuto tells her he will be waiting for her in game. When they meet up they engage in a fight which culminates with both of them letting down their guard expecting the other one to kill them, however that only leads to them hugging and apologizing to each other. Leafa lets go of her feelings for Kirito and after pulling herself together she helps him rescue Asuna from the top of the world tree.Reki Kawahara, Sword Art Online 4: Fairy Dance, Yen On, 2015 She regularly plays ALO together with Kirito, Asuna, Silica, Klein and the rest of their group. Leafa, Lisbeth and Silica also feature as protagonists in the spin-off manga series Sword Art Online: Girls' Ops, where they form a team with Kirito away on a study program and Asuna tied up in family affairs.
Critical commentary
Leafa has received generally positive critical reception. Karen Mead of Japanator.com critiqued Suguha's character as "a fairly nuanced, sympathetic portrayal of someone falling in love with a blood relation due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, which is entirely different from the 'I love you, Oni-chan!', fetishism that we see all too often in anime... We get to know Suguha entirely too well for that", thus debunking criticism of "Suguha falling for Kirito [being] toxic, awful siscon crap". Noting that the focus shifts away from Asuna towards Leafa in the Fairy Dance arc, Anime News Network's Theron Martin wrote in a review that "Suguha's unrequited love seems more like a play meant to pander to 'Big Brother Complex' fans, though she does get some nice emotional development out of it and some very good scenes later on when the matter of her attempt to replace her misplaced love for Kazuto Kirigaya with Leafa's attraction to Kirito (who is also unknowingly her brother) blows up". Reviewing the spin-off manga Sword Art Online: Girls Ops, Martin praised it for Leafa's prominence in the storyline, and "while Suguha was a veritable co-lead for one story arc, she has now been relegated to that role in the franchise, too".
Rebecca Silverman, also of Anime News Network, referred to Leafa as a "somewhat more interesting character" than Kirito, despite her crush on him being "annoying". She referred to her having "promise as a character" as one of the positive aspects of the third Fairy Dance light novel. Silverman, in a review of episode 15 – 25 in the Sword Art Online anime, went on to say that "Leafa shows more emotional strength as a heroine than Asuna ever did", and she "also stand[s] out as one of the more interesting, developed characters", due to not being overly reliant on Kirito. Silverman also found Kirito and Leafa's relationship to have developed more naturally than Kirito and Asuna's. In his Sword Art Online: Girls' Ops review, Theron Martin also wrote that "That the first such [Sword Art Online spin-off] manga would feature Silica, Lisbeth, and Leafa is... no surprise, as fans have clamored for the former two in particular to get more attention ever since they were first introduced".
Sinon /
Sinon is the main character of the Phantom Bullet Arc. When she was two years old, her father died in a car accident.Sword Art Online 5: Phantom Bullet, p. 84 Nine years later, while at a post office, an armed robber attempted to shoot a pregnant woman, but lost control of the gun after Shino bit his hand. Afterwards, she shot him three times, killing him.Sword Art Online 5: Phantom Bullet, p. 89 Since that event, she developed a fear of guns, entering panic attacks whenever one is visible. As a result, she is bullied at school by her peers, with a finger gun being enough to trigger her phobia. To help ease her trauma, her friend Kyōji Shinkawa convinced her to play Gun Gale Online. Known as Sinon in-game, her main weapon is the «PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II» sniper rifle, which she earned after defeating a monster in a dungeon.Sword Art Online 5: Phantom Bullet, p. 48
Shortly before the Bullet of Bullets (BoB) tournament, Sinon encounters Kirito, deciding to help him after believing he is female due to his avatar. After Kirito's true gender was revealed, an embarrassed SinonSword Art Online 5: Phantom Bullet, p. 138–139 attempts to leave him, but they meet again during the BoB.Sword Art Online 6: Phantom Bullet, p. 75–76 The two are confronted by Death Gun, who causes Sinon's PTSD to relapse when his weapon was revealed to be a Type 54 pistol, the same weapon she had used in the post office shooting.Sword Art Online 6: Phantom Bullet, p. 149–153 She is rescued by Kirito and the two escape, though she is afraid to attack Death Gun.Sword Art Online 6: Phantom Bullet, p. 156–160 With his help, Sinon overcomes her fear and the two defeat Death Gun.Sword Art Online 6: Phantom Bullet, p. 294–298 Afterwards, the two end the tournament as co-winners after Sinon kills them both with a «Gift Grenade».Sword Art Online 6: Phantom Bullet, p. 304–305 Upon exiting GGO, Shino is visited by Kyōji, who congratulates her on winning the BoB. However, angry at Kirito, he attacks her with intentions of raping and eventually killing her, revealing himself to be Death Gun's creator.Sword Art Online 6: Phantom Bullet, p. 314–324 Shino manages to resist his attack and escape, but is stopped by Kyōji before she could exit the house; Kirito arrives and fights Kyōji, the latter eventually being knocked out by Shino throwing her stereo at him.Sword Art Online 6: Phantom Bullet, p. 333–346
After the Death Gun incident, Sinon seems to have gotten over her fear and is moving on from the incident, no longer vulnerable to her classmates' threats of using a gun on her. In Agil's café, Shino meets Asuna, Rika, and Sachie Oosawa, a woman who had survived the post office incident, who convinces her that she had saved her and her daughter's life. Sinon eventually decides to play ALfheim Online with Kirito and his friends.
Yuuki /