News Writer: Raven
SAO fans, good news! You can now catch the English-dubbed Sword Art Online: Alicization in Adult Swim’s Toonami block, starting on February 9. Toonami will premiere SAO: Alicization’s one-hour long first episode from 12:30 AM-1:30 AM EST, replacing Mob Psycho 100 and Megalobox. The block’s line-up for February 9 will then be as follows:
11:00 pm – Dragon Ball Super
11:30 pm – Boruto
12:00 am – My Hero Academia
12:30 am – Sword Art Online: Alicization
1:00 am – Sword Art Online: Alicization
1:30 am – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable
2:00 am – Black Clover
2:30 am – Hunter x Hunter
3:00 am – Naruto Shippuden
3:30 am – Attack on Titan
4:00 am – Pop Team Epic
4:30 am – Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans
To get fans excited for the much-awaited anime’s premiere in the block, Toonami released a promo video showcasing what to expect of the third season’s English dub:
Sword Art Online: Alicization is the anime adaptation of the 4th arc of Reki Kawahara’s series of novels. Alicization is set to air for four cours, or four quarters of a year. It still follows main protagonist Kirito as he participates in the experimental testing of a new FullDive machine called Soul Translator, which utilizes a completely different technology from the other machines that preceded it.
When Kirito’s encounter with a former member of the Death Gun plot ends disastrously, he is smuggled to a secret base in the Pacific Ocean. There he is connected to a Soul Translator to treat his brain damage. With his physical body in a comatose, Kirito wakes up in the Underworld, the place he visits using the Soul Translator, though he retains no memory of his time there. There he is hit by a nagging feeling of familiarity of everything around him, including a golden-haired boy named Eugeo. Who is Eugeo, and why does the name Alice seem to mean so much to him?
Sword Art Online: Alicization premiered in Japan on October 6, 2018 and is still ongoing.