Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-98.95.22.178-20140731190807/@comment-3250527-20140805073958

Reki was very insistent on not making 16.5 non-canon. First, if it was real and to be published, it would have already been written into a Material Edition (but they're already up to 16.8). No, the chapter was left to gather dust in the fan fiction portion of the Wordgear website (not that I can locate it now) until some people started digging around and publicizing it. Although I do not have a source, I can recall that Reki actually wished to forget about 16.5 altogether (but he's going on about those Material Editions, 16.x...).

And anyways, the anime animators and the manga people probably did what they wanted and didn't ask for Reki's opinion, save for maybe a few discrepancies. With that belief, the anime people probably animated Asuna as having no clothes on because they wanted to and Nakamura Tamako wanted to do it because she wanted to.

To put it bluntly, no amount of "research" or "proof" will change our stance of accepting the act of intercourse between Kirito and Asuna as canon. The only proof we will accept is by Reki's own word that 16.5, or the act, was canon. Until then, this argument can be laid to rest.