Takemiya Kotone

Takemiya Kotone (竹宮 琴音), known as Philia (フィリア) in «Sword Art Online» (SAO) and «ALfheim Online» (ALO), is one of the main heroines in three of the game adaptations of the Sword Art Online series: Hollow Fragment, Lost Song, and Hollow Realization. In Hollow Fragment, Philia was an orange player. In Lost Song, Philia is a Spriggan.

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.

Personality
When first introduced, Philia gave an impression of being cold and introverted. Due to her nature as a self-proclaimed treasure hunter, Philia possesses a curious nature, exemplified by her interest in the Hollow Area. However, due to the influence of PoH, Philia began to doubt her own existence, leaving her emotionally vulnerable to be taken advantage of.

Following her return to Aincrad from the Hollow Area, Philia became more open and cheerful around the others, though, for a time, she was still haunted by her crime of helping PoH.

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.

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.
 * She was briefly mentioned in the series, Forged in Fire, when the challenge is to recreate a Sword-Breaker.

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