Sword Art Online Progressive Vol 7
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher!
The mysterious player Morte has manipulated the human guilds into fighting on BOTH sides of the Elf War! While Kirito challenges him to a duel, Asuna has an important task of her own: steal the battle plans from the Forest Elves so she can end this quest before it turns deadly. They need to stop the war before anyone loses their life--permanently!
I can't begin to describe to you how sad I was to discover this is the final volume in the Progressive manga, as I've mentioned before, I love this series because it's doing over Aincrad and fleshing it out more like it should have been the first time. I was anticipating this going for a while and I was so ready for that...but nope. This is the final volume. *ugly sobbing*
There's tension from the start of the volume because Kirito is facing down Morte while Asuna and Kizmel are finishing off a fight of their own. This volume is actually pretty action heavy with a lot of excellently drawn fight scenes throughout from the two different battles.
To alleviate some of the tension, we do have some humour thrown in too thanks to the humans from the two guilds who get involved but are on opposing sides to each other, and have no idea what's happening.
Volume 7 goes by quite quickly, and wraps up this particular story arc involving the elf quest and completing Floor 3 of Aincrad, nicely. While it's wrapped up satisfyingly, it's also an open ended finale, as you'd expect because while the manga series ends here, the story obviously didn't.
Sword Art Online Progressive Vol 6
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher!
The war between elves rages on, with Kirito and Asuna caught in the middle! The forest elves seek the dark elves' Secret Key, but to what end? Though Kirito tries to stay detached, Asuna can't help being swept along for the ride. Kizmel is supposed to be just an NPC, right? But then why does she seem so very human...
Kirito and Asuna finally leave the camp after hooking Asuna up with a veeerrryyy familiar sword *wink wink*, and they head off to a meeting. Hilarity then ensues as the ALS and DKB Guilds decide Asuna and Kirito can't join the same Guild because it'll upset the 'balance of power' and they're worried Kirito will start his own Guild. Like I could have told them that Kirito won't bother with that. Anyway, I love how he was all "I'm the beater, who'd want to join my guild?" and it pans to show Asuna, Agil and some others like "yeah I could go for that". Meanwhile a shadowy figure watching proceedings is revealed to be another familiar face, and let's just say he has the idea of starting a third guild.....
Asuna appears to be coming over all elf and has a distinct disgust for humans in this volume, which was kind of funny. They basically end up heading back to the forest to continue the quest line. But someone's pitting the two guilds against each other and it has to be another Beta tester.
It was nice to see Argo getting involved in the plan, I actually quite like her! Kirito pretty much has a shadowy little plan/mission of his own that he's been carrying out while we've all been focused on other stuff. He mostly just lurks in the background until it's his time to do his big reveal. There's plenty of action and humour in this volume, as well as some tidbits dropped, not to mention blanks filled in and mystery woven throughout. The big plan is revealed just in time for the end of the volume, as the battle kicks off!
I really do like how little details and background information is being filled in while still giving us new content to go with the old, there's so many connections to be put together! There's also more of a focus on Asuna, which is nice! Don't get me wrong, Kirito is still in there too, but a lot of the time he's like a shadowy presence in the back.
We get a cool little bonus manga that's a collab with the governments cybersecurity awareness month project which was a fun little addition!
Sword Art Online Progressive Vol 5
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher!
It's time for the "real" SAO--the third floor! Kirito and Asuna are hardly out the door when they stumble upon the start of the Elf War quest. When they decide to side with the elite dark elf Kizmel, they're set on a path that will push them harder than ever before. But together, nothing can stop them...right?
This volume of SAO Progressive carries straight on....like literally we're just a few hours on from the end of the last volume, and Kirito and Asuna have just hit the third floor. I've got to say, I'm loving the pace that this manga is taking, a couple of volumes for each floor. It's also funny, along with full of action.
I love getting to know Asuna better in these volumes, we get to know her in Aincrad, and we get to see her past in little flashbacks...and we get to see how she adjusted and coped and became the Asuna we see for most of the main SAO. You guys might remember there was a point in SAO when Asuna refused to sacrifice NPCs...in this volume we see her struggling to deal with NPC's and how different they are. Kirito has a more logical approach. NPC's aren't real...whereas he and Asuna are and could die if they aren't careful. Whereas Asuna doesn't like letting the NPC's die. You see what made her feel that way, it was very well done.
We also indirectly get to know Kirito better too as we see him quite a lot throughout the story, obviously. It's nice to get to see him in different situations, and during the beginning of Aincrad. In the original story there's a load of huge time jumps, and while we know Kirito....I just feel like we get to see that there's more to him, more sides.
I also really love watching Asuna and Kirito's relationship in these volumes. In the original story...they meet a couple of times and then they end up together. In this volume we get to see how their acquaintance started, and watch as their feelings develop and their relationship develops and they get to know each other. They already know each other pretty well...Asuna knew straight away which Elf Kirito sided with in the Beta test...which cracked me up.
I'm also loving all the new insights in to Aincrad and I was always so curious about what happened on the other floors and what the other floors where like. Turns out that SAO has Elves on the third floor. Yup. Didn't see that coming. We get a new character in this volume called Kizmel, she's a dark elf and an NPC and I'm interested to see how this is going to play out as Asuna is quite attached. Plus it's a Quest, and I don't recall seeing a Quest before in the original SAO.
The only problem with this volume though...is that I spotted a couple of inconsistencies with the main/original story. Like Kirito makes a comment about SAO not having a marriage system or whatever the wording was, and um.....yeah there is. Because there's that whole murder mystery thing that goes on in the main story. I distinctly remember it in the anime at least. The guy murdered his wife to get an item or whatever it was and they had shared storage because they where married, I think was how it went. Either way, we know they do have a marriage system because.....Kirito and Asuna. There where a couple of other little things too. I mean, we pretty much saw the first floor and then skipped a tonne, so the author kind of has free reign, but some things do stick out as not fitting.
I'm not going to lie to you guys. The art in Progressive is waaaaaaaayyyy better than the original Aincrad arc. Way better. Sword Art Online Progressive is the Aincrad we all deserved and seriously should have gotten. It's so damn good. We get to explore the world of Aincrad, see more of it, see the other floors. It's more fleshed out and so are the characters and their relationships. I know at the end of the SAO Ordinal Scale movie it says "SAO will return" or something, and I know they'll probably do the Alicization arc which is yaaaaay because continuing the story finally BUUUTTT, my heart longs for a Progressive anime too. Because awesome. But for now I'll have to settle for the manga, and I'm a-okay with that!
