Sword Art Online Novel Series' 'Unital Ring' Arc Gets Manga Adaptation

The May issue of Kadokawa's Monthly Shōnen Ace magazine published the 41-page special chapter 0 of Masato Kanetsuki's Sword Art Online: Unital Ring manga – the adaptation of the "Unital Ring" arc of Reki Kawahara's Sword Art Online light novel series – on Saturday. The manga will start its serialization in the magazine's June issue on April 26.

The "Unital Ring" arc's story begins one month after Kirito and Asuna returned from Underworld along with Alice, who had taken a physical form in the real world. They suddenly get caught up in a mysterious survival Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game called Unital Ring, which fuses all the Virtual Reality MMOs that were built with the "The Seed" program. As soon as the game starts, Kirito loses all his favorite equipment, and is left with just one pair of pants. Kirito and the others have to start the game from level 1.

Kōtarō Yamada launched the Sword Art Online: Phantom Bullet manga, the adaptation of the novel series' "Phantom Bullet" arc, in 2014. The manga ended temporarily in July 2016, then resumed in December 2020. The manga ended in December 2021. Kadokawa published three complied volumes for the manga in Japan between 2014-2016, respectively, and Yen Press published the three volumes in English.

Source: Anime News Network