Sword Art Online Episode 25

The World Seed (世界の種子) is the twenty-fifth episode and final episode of the Sword Art Online anime adaptation. It aired on December 22, 2012.

Plot
Kazuto continued riding his bicycle to the hospital, and arrived at the parking lot. While running towards the entrance, someone jumped out towards him. When he realized that he had been cut in his right arm, he turned around to identify his attacker, Sugou, who, despite feeling a lot of pain, decided to kill Kazuto himself.

Kazuto fell on the pavement and Sugou started kicking him. Finally deciding to finish him off, he tried to stab Kazuto, but fails, saying that it was because his right eye was still blurry (because Kirito had stabbed him in his right eye with the pain absorption level at 0 while at level 3 and lower, it would affect the body in real life). Sugou then tried stabbing him again, but this time Kazuto grabbed his arm and reversed the situation. He took the knife, smashed Sugou's head against a car and put the knife to his throat. Contemplating everything he had done to him and Asuna, he was about to kill him for revenge, but, in the end, he decided to spare him, leaving the fainted Sugou to the police.

Kazuto arrived at Asuna's room and moved the curtain only to find her waiting for him, so he came up to her and told her that everything was over at that moment. They then hug and kiss and, afterwards, Kazuto looked at the window and saw their SAO avatars, who held their hands and left together.

Months later, on May 16, 2025, Kazuto was at his new school. As one of his classes was now over and it was time for a lunch break, he walked to park outside the school, where Asuna was waiting for him. She greeted him as Kirito but he reminded her that it was bad manners to call another person by the names they used in games, but they finally laughed when they remembered that the school was specially formed for the survivors of the Sword Art Online incident who were still students, so everybody must have guessed their identities by now, due to their in-game avatars being replcas of their real life bodies.

Kazuto then told her that on that snowy day, Sugou was arrested in the parking lot. He was then interrogated, trying to frame Kayaba for the expirements, but once one of the employees agreed to testify, he confessed. The players who hadn't escaped from SAO were freed, and could return back to society. However, because of these expirements in ALfheim Online, the VRMMO game industry reputation was extremely damaged (first time because of the SAO death game, and now the ALO expirements). RECTO Progress Inc. was disbanded, and even the main RECTO branch suffered a huge loss. The VRMMO game dangers also made Kazuto expect to see five or six other VRMMO games to die out eventually.

After telling her what had happened, Asuna asked what happened to the Commander. Kazuto told her that he had died, and the authorities suspected that he had committed suicide, suprising Asuna. Kazuto told her that when SAO collapsed, he performed a high-output scan on himself, which was to copy his consciousness onto the Internet. Kazuto also told her that he had a 1/1000 chance of succeeding, and was mainly thinking about him because of meeting him in ALO and also thinking about the seed he had given him.



After spacing out thinking of Kayaba, Asuna reminded him of the meeting with the others, and then leaned on him. In the cafeteria, as Rika is angrily watching them, Keiko called her to stop and reminded her of the reunion they were going to hold later.



Kazuto and Asuna were walking on the street holding hands, while Suguha was following them quietly. Kazuto then turned around to ask her if she had met Agil. She answered that she had, but only in ALO, so Kazuto warns her that he was equally tall in real life. When they arrived, everyone was already there. Kazuto asked them why was everybody already there and Rika explained that they had arrived an hour earlier to greet them as the main stars of the party. Everybody congratulated Kazuto for clearing SAO and freeing them from the game. Meanwhile, Suguha only sat quietly in a corner, feeling out of place with the SAO survivors.

Later, Kazuto sat at the bar with Thinker and Klein and they chatted with Agil about the World Seed and how the VRMMOs were developing. Agil told them that it was going well, with 50 mirror servers, 100,000 downloads and 300 major servers that were running it. The program Kayaba had given to Kirito was a program that ran a FullDive MMO creation and management package, called «The Seed». He had asked Agil to upload it to a public server. Then everyone that downloaded it, could create their own virtual reality world. This "revived" the VRMMO virtual franchise. ALO data was transferred to another company created after the ALO incident by former players of the game, while other companies and even people began to run their own server of their own game, and those began to be compatable with the others, achieving the goal that the same avatar could be used in different games.

In ALO, Leafa was flying alone and tried to reach the moon, but was stopped by the Altitude Warning sign. While falling, she recalled the recent events and in the clouds she was caught by Kirito, who had come to get her since they were about to meet with the others soon at Yggdrasil City. She asked him why had he not return to his SAO avatar. Kirito responded that the job of his SAO avatar was completed. She then taught him of a new mechanic in the game, dancing, and opened a bottle which played music for them, all just to lighten up the mood, since she was sad that she would never be able to catch up to everyone else. Kirito did not believe her, so he grabbed Leafa and started flying towards Yggdrasil City, but did not manage to reach it on time, so he stopped midway near the World Tree to show her the new Aincrad Castle that was recreated in ALO.



She asked why was it in ALO and he explained that this time he was going to finish it to the end. He then told her that his stats had been reset and asked her if she would help him to which she gracefully agreed. Klein yelled that Kirito was late and then other players appeared, among which were the survivors of SAO as well as players of the old ALO, with everybody heading to the New Aincrad. Asuna stopped and called for Kirito and Leafa. Kirito muttered something before he starting to fly, surprising Asuna and Leafa, but then just said "lets go" heading to the floating castle.

Locations

 * New Aincrad
 * ALfheim Online (above Freelia, the capital city of Cait Sith)
 * Real World: Torokazawa Hospital, School, Dicey Cafe

Adaptation Notes

 * Adapted from Sword Art Online Light Novel Volume 4 Chapter 8 and 9


 * It was not mentioned what happened to the known orange players in the anime after the SAO incident, while in the novel, they were put under counseling and observed.
 * Kazuto did not tell the receptionists what happened in the anime, while in the novel he told them and grabbed a guest card in the process before heading off to see Asuna.

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