While we’ve had a handful of images since the show was announced, new information has come in along with a new key visual for Sword Art Online II. At the panel hosted for the property at the Dengeki Game Festival 2014, it was confirmed that the new season will premiere this July.
Yoshitsugu Matsuoka will be reprising his role as Kirito for the series while Miyuki Sawashiro, who playing Shinon in the PSP game Infinity Moment, will be taking on the same role for the anime series. In addition to that, Tomohiko Ito will direct the series for A-1 Pictures while Shingo Adachi has signed on to return as the original character designer.
Sword Art Online II was announced at the end of the Extra Edition episode as part of the New Year’S Special. The focus of the series, at least to start, will be on the fifth and sixth novels of the series that revolves around the game Gun Gale and specifically the Phantom Bullet Arc. In continuity, the game takes place in 2025 as the game itself becomes the most popular game since SAO went online. The game is a science fiction type that focuses largely on firearms but also delves into other types of weapons as well. One of the characters from the game, Shinon, makes an appearance in the Extra Edition episode.
Game setting: The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth, which had become a wasteland after a huge war long ago, that people had returned to on space ships. The capital city of the game, called SBC Gurokken, with SBC meaning Space Battle Cruiser, was originally the spaceship that was used to return to this planet. A huge city of ruins from the war, which has an unlimited number of number of automated fighting machines and mutant creatures that await adventurers, sleeps beneath the capital city.