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Interview

Go Suzuki and Yumiko Yamamoto

Go Suzuki and Yumiko Yamamoto, animators from Sword Art Online: Alicization, recommend some favorite books.

Go Suzuki was the chief animation director of Sword Art Online: Alicization, and a character designer. He said he was inspired by his favorite artists. Suzuki-san liked The Future-Retro Hero Story. This is an eight volume seinen pulp manga written and illustrated by Takehiko Ito. It’s also known as Space Hero Tales. A young man dreams of being a hero and travelling into space. He’s a transfer student from the US and he attends the Fixed Star Academy. He meets a young religious woman at the academy, and a contemptuous teacher. A villain named King Star Brass attacks the school. It is up to the young man to become a hero like his grandfather, the legendary Captain Roger Fortune.
Yumiko Yamamoto was a relative newcomer to the series, Sword Art Online: Alicization, involved since episode 17. Yamamoto-san said she always tried to capture the natural look of the female bodyline. She said drawing the last scene with Eugeo was a challenge.
She liked Death Note, a Japanese manga series written Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. Light Yagami, a teen genius, finds a mysterious notebook, the Death Note, which grants the user the ability to kill anyone whose name is written in its pages. Light uses the Death Note to try to rid the world of crime, as a god-like vigilante named Kira. Meanwhile law enforcement try to apprehend him.
This is the third season of the Sword Art Online anime. In 2022, a virtual reality massively multiplayer online role-playing game (VRMMORPG) called Sword Art Online (SAO) is released. With a helmet, the NerveGear, players can control their in-game characters with their minds. But the players find that they can’t log out. And those who suffer in-game deaths will suffer real-life deaths. The series is based on the light novel series Sword Art Online, written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by abec.
The main characters include Kirito, who joins the Fluctlight research lab to learn about the advancement of of full-dive technology. There, he logs into the virtual world called Underworld that is created in the lab.
And Eugeo is a childhood friend of Kirito and Alice. Eugeo is a good natured boy and gifted swordsman.
Alice is the childhood friend of Kirito and Eugeo in Underworld. She is a daughter of the RULID village chief, and is good at sacred arts.

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