The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

Sword Art Online: Progressive - Canon of the Golden Rule

What's It About? 

The SAO: Progressive series continues, following Asuna and Kirito to the sixth floor of Aincrad, where puzzles and brainteasers galore await them! Will our sword-swinging pair burn out on a mental challenge, or will the frightening gang of player-killers catch up with them first…?

Sword Art Online: Progressive - Canon of the Golden Rule has art by Mugetsu with an original story by Reki Kawahara. This volume is translated by Stephen Paul, lettered and retouched by Viet Phuong Vu. Published by Yen Press (March 19, 2024).

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Is It Worth Reading?

MrAJCosplay
Rating:

Sword Art Online is, without a doubt, one of the most popular and influential franchises in recent anime. It's baffling to me that, to this day, we are still getting spinoffs and extensions from that original first season that aired over a decade ago. I admire the confidence of Sword Art Online: Progressive in that it makes it very clear this is not a good starting point for someone who is just looking to get into the franchise. The first ten pages bombard you with a voiceover from Asuna detailing exploits that I think you would only be able to expand upon if you were familiar with the original setup. Thankfully, I watched just enough of Sword Art Online to grasp the context of where the volume takes place. So the question is, can I recommend this to people like me who have more of a passing interest in the franchise rather than a dedicated one?

Honestly, I don't think so. Sword Art Online: Progressive feels like a side adventure in every sense of the word. I would argue it is a step above the side adventures from many other tie-in manga and even some of the side adventures that were presented in the first season of the anime. There is a far more serious tone and presentation here compared to early Sword Art Online. The attention to detail in the character designs and even the use of text boxes for NPC's is also noted. By the end of the first volume, we also get some heavy conversation about dealing with situations where you might have to kill another player. It's refreshing that a good chunk of the volume is from Asuna's perspective who is more interesting than Kirito.

However, what hurts the story is how it is tied into the main series. The fact that this book almost aims exclusively to appeal to Sword Art Online fans feels like it is working against it. Since I'm burdened with knowledge of how the overall adventures in Sword Art Online wrap up, many of these moral questions ring a bit hollow for me when you consider the actions of the main story. As far as character development goes, there also has to be a limit on how involved these moral conversations go. Fans of the franchise will think differently, and I recommend picking it up to add to your collection because of its presentation and darker tone alone. In many ways, it'll make you wish the original Sword Art Online had a similar presentation. But if you have no interest or knowledge of the franchise at all, then I don't think you're missing a lot by skipping this one.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

The simplest way to put it is this: if you're still into Sword Art Online, you will enjoy this volume. Picking up from where the last SAO: Progressive mini-series ended, this one continues the adventures of Kirito and Asuna as they beat the lower floors, with the focus on the sixth this time. That means a break from the ongoing Elf Wars quest while they engage with a puzzle-themed floor full of sudoku and dexterity puzzles that sounds like a personal nightmare to me. The volume barely scratches the surface of what they'll have to do: Kirito leads Asuna to the new quest, they get started, and things go sideways when Morte shows up. That's…it.

It's by no means a bad thing. Although Kirito is still unbearably awesome and Asuna has moments of asinine “this is how girls act” garbage, the story still has plenty of the elements that made SAO fun in the first place. With Morte, Kirito is beginning to weigh the possibility of committing murder just to ensure that he and Asuna (and presumably everyone else) get out of the game alive, and that shows that he may be beginning to lose touch with reality, or at least to be reforming his ideas of “good” and “bad” to fit with the world he finds himself living in. Asuna remarks during the many pages of recap that she no longer thinks of Aincrad as a game, and that may be giving her a clearer sense of what's wrong with killing Morte; Kirito still is thinking in terms of beta testing and game functionality while she's living a life.

Their building romance remains more of a gag than anything, but let's face it, romance was never this franchise's strong suit. The art makes use of a lot of tone, which can be tricky to parse at times, but there's a mild shoujo sensibility to it that's very nice and helps to distract from some of the persistent writing issues. As I said before, if you're still a franchise fan, this is a decent entry into it, but if your SAO days are done, you aren't missing anything by skipping this latest entry, because it's much the same as it ever was.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.