Sword Art Online is a Japanese light novel series written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by abec as the story takes place in a near future and focuses on virtual reality MMORPG.
Fans of the hit anime series "Sword Art Online" eagerly await the release date of Season 3.
However, they may have to wait much longer. Recent reports at When-Will.net have retracted their former statement that it might release by the end of 2015 (as it's obviously impossible at this point) and has now declared that "A-1 Pictures studio is yet to renew or cancel the anime."
Fans at the Sword Art Online Subreddit remain optimistic citing tha the length between Season 1 and 2 is almost two years. User 'AfroNinja117' said:
"The way I look at it, there was a two year gap in between seasons 1 and 2. Season 2 just came out last year, so following the pattern we can reasonably expect a season 3 by next summer. I wouldn't be too worried, there's plenty of content out for Alicization currently so at the very least they'd need two seasons to cover it."
While it is widely predicted that Season 3 will cover the Alicization arc, there are also rumblings that the creators are thinking about using "SAO Progressive" on Season 3-or even a spin-off series as the early volumes of the series were well-received. User 'TUSF' explains the difference between SAO and SAO Progressive:
"The first Volume of SAO basically skips the entire game, all the way to the end. You only learn about the combat system, and hardly much else, and only 2 floors are really given any details. (74th and 75th. 1st floor showed up at the start of the volume, but not much was said)."
Apparently, "Sword Art Online" was written by Reki Kawahara as part of a contest, but he wanted to place more details in the story.
TUSF continued: "Progressive is an attempt to retell the whole story from the start. It's not right to call it a 'reboot,' but a 'retelling.' Both are considered part of the same canon. (Though, Kawahara has admitted that some details in Progressive retcon certain information from the main story, but nothing major."
"Most of the retcons I've observed are basically numbers, though the biggest one was how Kirito and Asuna weren't supposed to have gotten very close or known much about each other, until a few months before the end of the game, but Progressive contradicts that."
It's possible that Season 3 would be presented similar to Progressive, wherein each floor will be presented with more detail. But that series is not finished yet and it could be the reason for the delay.
