A new trailer for the upcoming anime film Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria of a Starless Night released earlier today on 29th March 2021. The trailer first surfaced online during AnimeJapan 2021, revealing its 2021 Fall release window in Japan. You can watch the trailer for the movie here:

The trailer revealed Mito, a new character who will appear in the film. Inori Minase will be voicing Mito. You may recognise her as the voice behind other characters such as Hestia from Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Rem from Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World and Itsuki Nakano from The Quintessential Quintuplets. Yoshitsugu Matsuoka and Haruka Tomatsu will return to voice Kirito and Asuna respectively.

The movie is the second film in the Sword Art Online franchise. However, chronologically, it takes place in the earlier episodes of season 1 of the Sword Art Online anime. This is because it is based on the Progressive light novel spin-off series of the main franchise. Sword Art Online: Progressive revisits Kirito and Asuna’s earlier days and how they climbed the starting floors of Aincrad Tower.

As for the mobile game adaptations in the series, it will be interesting to see how they might incorporate Progressive into the mix. With the games adding the Unital Ring arc as new content, they will be ahead of the anime.