
The anime doesn't dramatically deviate from the manga or light novels, and reading the literature isn't mandatory to understand any of the anime. The series' aesthetic is intended to be surreal, so the setting and characters might seem fantastical or even inconsistent even if watched in the recommended order.

RELATED: Great Anime Like Sword Art Online Keeping an eye on the Story Arcs, which are numbered, is one part of the guideline. The series is easy to find on a variety of streaming services, but there's an ideal order to watch them in. Even fans of the series might be overwhelmed as they try and keep up with new material, so new fans have a lot of catching up to do. It's a lot of media for one franchise, even in the anime category. The video game section of the Sword Art Online franchise has 16 titles. Almost two decades later, the franchise has grown to include light novels, anime television series, and movies for both television and theaters.

The saga of Sword Art Online began with a series of novels written by Reki Kawahara between 20.
