Takemiya Kotone

Takemiya Kotone (竹宮 琴音), known as Philia (フィリア) in «Sword Art Online» (SAO), «ALfheim Online» (ALO), «Sword Art: Origin» (SA:O), «Gun Gale Online» (GGO) and «Project Alicization» (PA) is one of the heroines in the game adaptations of the Sword Art Online series: Hollow Fragment, Lost Song, Hollow Realization, Fatal Bullet, and Alicization Lycoris. In Hollow Fragment, Philia was an orange player. In ALO, Philia is a Spriggan. Philia also appears in Alicization Lycoris as a Wayfarer copy.

Real World
Kotone has short, brown hair and blue eyes. She wears a blue hoodie with a blouse underneath, a yellow skirt, black thigh-high socks, and white shoes.

Hollow Fragment
Kotone's avatar has short, dandelion hair. She wears a blue coat over a tube top that has several shades of blue, a silver arm-guard on her right arm, thigh-exposing black shorts, and thigh-high black socks. She wields a dagger named «Sword Breaker», which is jagged on one side and straight on the other.

Lost Song
Takemiya's ALO avatar has black hair, blue eyes, and an outfit that resembles her Sword Art Online (SAO) outfit. Players have the option to change her outfit to her SAO Test avatar, which changes her hair colour but not her appearance.

Sword Art: Origin
Kotone's SA:O avatar has brown hair and blue eyes. The upper half of her outfit consists of a brown jacket, a light brown chest piece, as well as a blue-white layered top and brassiere underneath them. She also wears a light blue neckband, a metallic ring that attaches a blue cloth sleeve to her arms with a tight fitting just under her shoulders, a brown armor with additional metallic decor, and a white material under the sleeve of forearm up to her wrist. A brown waist belt attaches a V-cut blue material around her buttocks and the back of her thighs. Underneath it, she wears a white skirt with blue decor lines sewed in. A tight-fitting blue material is fixed to her legs with a metal buckle and she wears brown boots with metal heels and toe caps.

Personality
During her first encounter with Kirito, Philia gave an impression of being cold and distant. However, as she spent time exploring the Hollow Area with Kirito, she slowly became more friendly and sociable. Following her return to Aincrad from the Hollow Area, Philia retained her cheerful demeanor, as well as developing a bit of a mischievous side, as shown when she tried to prank Kirito by giving him extra-spicy takoyaki.

Philia has little interest in fighting monsters or clearing quests to get stronger, instead opting to devote her time to hunting for treasures hidden deep within dungeons. She takes pride in her treasure hunting skills, boasting that she had never encountered a treasure chest she could not open.

Hollow Fragment
Kirito met Philia immediately after being suddenly teleported to the Hollow Area region of Aincrad. She immediately engaged him in a short but intense battle. Kirito asked her some questions and ended up getting her down on the ground, but the arrival of a weakened version of The Skull Reaper interrupted them. Kirito proposed the idea to cast aside their differences and join forces to defeat it.

Shortly afterwards, Philia requested Kirito's aid in reaching an area within the Hollow Area known as the Administration Area. Working together, they were able to reach the area. Afterwards, she parted ways with Kirito, who promised to come back. As he continued to return, Philia and Kirito began to form a bond. Philia shared information about herself, such as being unable to find a safe place to rest within the Hollow Area before the Administration Area, and having noticed that Player Killing (PK) incidents had been occurring around her as well. She began to warm up to Kirito when he promises her that he would help remove her orange cursor. However, she also attracted the attention of PoH, the leader of Laughing Coffin. Claiming he knew her better than Kirito, he tried to convince her to ally with him and betray Kirito, worming his way into her heart as he talked about how the end of Aincrad would be the end of them, as they were "data" and not human.

Eventually, Philia gave into PoH's words and helped him lure Kirito into an area within the Hollow Area where he could not use warp crystals or contact anyone, unaware that PoH liked to use this area to kill other players. With Kirito out of the way, Philia continued staying with PoH while he began his plans. After he finished, Philia asked to be released, seeing as she did what he wished. But PoH then revealed the true reasons for wanting Philia's help, making her realize that she truly did send Kirito off to his death. Heartbroken and on the verge of tears, Philia tried to hurry off to help him, but PoH got in the way and began to abuse her physically and emotionally before concluding that she was of no further use, deciding to decapitate her with his Mate Chopper. But before he could, Kirito charged in and sliced off his hand, freeing Philia from his grasp.

Philia then watched the battle between Kirito and PoH, who was revealed to be the Hollow data collected from the real PoH in Aincrad. With his defeat, Kirito helped Philia back to the Administration Area. Upon return, Philia was sure that Kirito would hate her for deceiving him, but all was forgiven as Kirito reassured her that she did nothing wrong. Slightly mistaking his words as a confession, she was surprised when Kirito told her she was important to him. Philia jokingly mocked Kirito afterwards, but truly told him that he had helped her regain her "human emotions", as she had felt hollow inside after becoming trapped in the Hollow Area. After defeating the Area Boss of each region of the Hollow Area, Philia traveled with Kirito into the underground part of the Administration Area to stop PoH's update. Having dealt with the guardian of the area and an uploaded Hollow Kirito, they stopped the upload.

Philia's orange player status was actually a system glitch, which occurred when Philia was teleported into Hollow Area, when Kirito fought against Heathcliff after the 75th Floor boss battle. In the Hollow Area, the Hollow data of herself collided with her and they fought each other. The system would automatically delete the data clone of a player should they come in contact with the real life player, but the glitch prevented it from reacting in time and mistook Philia injuring her Hollow clone as attacking another player, thus giving her the orange cursor and trapping her in the Hollow Area. Thanks to Kirito finding the main console and correcting this error, Philia was freed and allowed to travel back to Aincrad with Kirito.

Another Heroine Inverter
When Kirygaya Kazuto's (Kirito) location on the Ocean Turtle was discovered after he had been critically injured by Kanamoto Atsushi, Philia and the others waited as Strea and Yui continued to monitor the situation while Asada Shino (Sinon), Ayano Keiko (Silica), Kirigaya Suguha (Leafa), Shinozaki Rika (Lisbeth), and Yuuki Asuna (Asuna) used the Soul Translators to enter Underworld to assist Kirito. Shortly after the five logged into Underworld, Philia learned a connection had been formed between the Ocean Turtle and the Gun Gale Online (GGO) servers, through which a massive amount of player data had been downloaded. Realizing it was likely the only opportunity they had to help Kirito, the group followed Strea's, Yui's, and Zeliska's instructions in infiltrating the hidden area of an underground dungeon in GGO that contained an emergency control console for Zaskar employees. Once she destroyed the first of three in-game surveillance servers guarding the console, the girl reported her success to the other teams handling the other surveillance servers, before moving to rendezvous with them in the control room.

Gallery

 * See Takemiya Kotone/Image Gallery

Trivia

 * If Kirito brings other characters to meet Philia in the Hollow Area, cutscenes of the girls introducing themselves to her will be triggered.
 * In different cutscenes in Aincrad, including her side quest for Hollow Fragment, Philia continues to feel awful for almost causing Kirito to be killed by the virtual PoH. During her bed scenes, she will ask to sleep with Kirito as she is having nightmares in which she was just data and not human.
 * Philia makes a cameo appearance in the movie adaptation “Sword Art Online Progressive: Scherzo of Deep Night”. She can be spotted during the New Year celebration where two players are seen toasting.

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