Character · Sword Art Online
Asuna Yuuki
The fastest rapier in a castle of ten thousand people, and she started out planning to die there.
In Otakana the clue reads: Rapier fencer nicknamed the Lightning Flash
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Sword Art Online
- Letters
- 5 · Easy
Asuna logged in because her brother could not, spent the first weeks refusing to sleep in an inn, and decided that if the game was going to kill her she would at least stay herself while it happened. That is the version Kirito meets. She then becomes sub-commander of the Knights of the Blood Oath, the strongest guild on the front line, largely by being better at fighting than the people giving orders.
Her weapon is a rapier, which the game's system rewards for speed rather than weight, and her nickname follows from it. The Lightning Flash describes what witnesses actually see: a thrust that lands before the animation seems to have started. She also runs the kitchen skill up to absurd levels, which the series treats as equally serious work.
Kawahara's early volumes give her the sharpest arc in the cast, from a girl who intends to burn out at the front to a person negotiating what a life inside a machine is worth. Later arcs put her in supporting roles more often than readers wanted, and the argument about that has been running since 2012.
Spelling ASUNA
ASUNA is the given name and five letters, with A at each end and a U in the middle. The family name, Yuuki, holds the long vowel that would cause trouble, and the game does not ask for it. In Japanese her given name is written with the characters for tomorrow, which is a reasonable thing to call a girl in a story about surviving until then.