High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sword Art Online is a 2012 sci-fi action anime based on the light novels written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by Abec. Set initially in the year 2022, a Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG) called Sword Art Online (SAO) has just been released. In the game, players control their avatars just as they would with their real bodies using the Nerve Gear, a VR Helmet that stimulates the user`s five senses via their brain. However, on its first day out of the beta testing period, the players soon discover that they cannot log out. The creator of the game, Akihiko Kayaba, makes an appearance shortly after and issues them an ultimatum: if they die in the game so would their bodies in the real world, and if they wish to be freed from the game, they must reach the 100th floor of the game`s world and defeat the final boss. As the players try to face their new deadly predicament, two skilled swordsmen, Kirito and Asuna, are determined to win and be free. Later episodes take place in the world of ALfheim Online, a spiritual successor to SAO developed by the company who took over the maintenance of SAO during the crisis, where it is discovered that Asuna is being held captive in the new virtual world, still unable to logout and hospitalized in the real world, and follows Kirito fighting alongside new allies in ALfheim to rescue her.