‘Sword Art Online’ Season 2 Gun Gale Release Date Is Here For Phantom Bullet, Aniplex English Dub Coming Soon?

Sword Art Online Season 2 is here, with Gun Gale focusing on the Phantom Bullet story arc, which is an adaptation of volumes five and six of Reki Kawahara’s original light novels. You can watch Sword Art Online streaming every Saturday on Aniplex Channel, Hulu, Crunchyroll, and Daisuki.

[Update] The release date for the SAO Season 2 English dub has been officially announced by Aniplex.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, the Attack on Titan movies have been given a release date, with the first section coming out in 2014 and the second part in early 2015.

American viewers are probably wondering when the Sword Art Online Season 2 English dub is coming out from Aniplex (no, it’s not being done by Funimation, although practically all the other major anime licenses are through them). Unfortunately, if there is an official announcement, then either Aniplex had done a good job at hiding it or the English dub has not yet been discussed publicly. But to put things in perspective, the original Japanese anime for SAO came out in July of 2012 and the SAO English dub release date was not until August of 2013, so there’s a good chance we may have to wait months to a year for the Sword Art Online Season 2 English dub.

Also, there might be some confusion on whether this release is actually Sword Art Online Season 3 or Season 2. Some people thought the Alfheim Online (aka fairies) portion of the anime was considered Sword Art Online season 2 already, which would make Gun Gale Sword Art Online season 3. But based upon official announcements it seems that the Sword Art Online: Gun Gale portion is to be considered Sword Art Online season 2.

If you have not watched Sword Art Online Season 1 in a long while I’d suggest refreshing yourself with Sword Art Online: Extra Edition special right now. It’s mostly a recap of the Aincrad portion with bits of Kirito talking to a government official about what happened in the game in addition to the girls teaching Suguha to swim. There’s also a portion about Aksuna and Kirito’s relationship, which seemingly got a bit awkward now that they’re back in real life. Otherwise, they do share a new adventure that’s based in an underwater castle so it’s not like it’s completely a refresher to catch you up.

Spoiler Alert!

Otherwise, we pretty much know where Sword Art Online Phantom Bullet is taking us based upon the light novels. A new female character named Sinon will join Kirito in GGO to help unravel a series of mysterious deaths that are occurring in the real world. Since the author, Reki Kawahara, also wrote Accel World (which is also getting an English dub streamed shortly), the portion of the story specific to Sword Art Online Season 3 will share some similarities in that time flows differently while in the game world. This portion should be called Sword Art Online: Underworld although nothing official has been announced for an anime.

What do you think about Sword Art Online Season 2 Gun Gale so far?