There's been a lot of talk regarding Netflix's live-action Sword Art Online, with some fans looking forward to the adaptation, while others are nervous thanks to the hilariously bad Death Note movie. However, with the promise of Asian actors in leading roles, along with faithfulness to the source material, this could be one of the better anime adaptations to come out, though that isn't saying much.
Speaking with Collider, Laeta Kalogridis has high hopes for the story. Unlike Altered Carbon, a dark sci-fi film Kalogridis worked on, SAO will be more aspirational and fantastical. She compared it to Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones but with a more modern aesthetic, with it being an online game and all.
"The second thing, in terms of what I would like to see for SAO, is that I feel it's a much more aspirational story about hope and much less about darkness than Altered Carbon is. Asuna is sort of the savior of the world, in my mind and in the mind of the showrunners, [Patrick] Massett and [John] Zinman, who are doing the show. There's a real ability to explore a fantasy-based The Lord of the Rings / Game of Thrones kind of world through the lens of these people who are trapped in it and don't necessarily want to be there, but who have to learn how to survive in it. What I'm most interested in is all of the human stories, when everything else falls away and it's life or death, in a place where you were never expecting to be trapped. That's what I loved about the original anime and that's what I love about the live-action adaptation, as we are currently envisioning it."
Sword Art Online is a fun, if somewhat flawed anime. Lead character Kirito is really hard to like at first, though the MMO setting of the series remains compelling. Hopefully, the Netflix series can work on this since the character can be grating.
No release date for the anime adaptation has been revealed.
Read:Netflix's Live-Action Sword Art Online Won't Be Whitewashed
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