Sword Art Online is a legendary anime series with a massive fanbase. One reason for Sword Art Online’s success is the work of its director, Tomohiko Ito, who handled the show’s first two seasons. Outside of Sword Art Online, Ito also directed a criminally overlooked movie that Sword Art Fans will love.
Released in 2019, Hello World is a film written by Mado Nozaki and produced by Graphinica, the studio known for working on Record of Ragnarok and Tokyo Mew Mew New. The movie found plenty of popularity not only in its home country of Japan but also overseas, especially in places such as China and Hong Kong.
What Is Hello World?
Hello World follows Naomi Katagaki, a high-school student who lives in Kyoto in 2027. The city is undergoing a massive change as the government has begun the Chronicle Kyoto project. This project involves using a fleet of drones to scan the whole city in real time, and all the information they gather is fed to a massive computer called the Alltale.
This technology doesn’t help Naomi, as he is shy and socially awkward, preferring to read books rather than socialize. However, when a three-legged crow steals his book, Naomi’s life is turned upside down as he meets a mysterious man. This man tells Naomi that he’s a version of Naomi from ten years in the future and that the young Naomi isn’t the real one but a version living inside the memory of the Alltale. The older version of Naomi tells the younger one that he has a mission for him. He needs his younger self to undo the events that led to his classmate Ruri Ichigyo falling into a coma so that history will be recorded differently. However, Naomi soon learns that changing history is far from easy.
Why SAO Fans Will Love Hello World
One of the most notable similarities between Sword Art Online and Hello World is that Ito uses similar visual techniques in both projects. Ito expertly uses color and light to build atmosphere and convey emotion. For instance, both the dark dungeons of SAO and the high-contrast virtual environments of Hello World exist to help the audience feel the anxiety the characters experience as they venture into a space they know is unsafe and unnatural. In both projects, Ito frames action scenes in a way that helps capture the chaos and confusion of battle, making all these scenes memorable and pulse-pounding.
Additionally, SAO and Hello World approach their characters similarly. Both Naomi Katagaki and Kirito are teenage boys who aren’t amazing socially, leading to both of them being emotionally isolated. While they’re both intelligent problem-solvers, they’re also thrown into situations way beyond their wildest dreams, meaning that despite their urge to overcome the odds, they always feel like realistic underdogs. Their subsequent actions always have an organic teenage edge to them, making them highly relatable characters despite the fantastical nature of the plot.
These similarities stretch to the themes as well. Sword Art Online and Hello World both look at technology in similar ways. They discuss how technology, specifically virtual reality, can shape reality — and how, despite its immense potential for good, this technology could easily be subverted by bad actors who aim to use it for selfish or inhumane reasons.
There are also several direct parallels between the two stories. The Alltale is similar to the Sword Art Online game world and comparable to the Underworld from SAO’s “Alicization” arc. Not only is the universe inside Alltale a life-like virtual world that’s nearly impossible to tell from reality, but it is also full of conscious beings who believe it to be reality. Moreover, outside forces try to manipulate this false reality for their own benefit, twisting the personalities and events that exist within it. However, while one can draw parallels between them, Hello World does take the idea in a different and mind-bending direction, meaning that it works as a kind of companion piece to Sword Art Online while still feeling very original.
Fans of Sword Art Online will find lots to love in Hello World. Both analyze technology and its effect on the human experience, focusing on characters thrown into strange situations that they aren’t equipped to handle as their realities collapse around them. Tomohiko Ito’s direction helps elevate these stories, turning them into visual and emotional treats that will keep viewers hooked from start to finish.