Character · Sword Art Online
Klein
The first person Kirito ever taught anything, and the one who kept saying thank you for it.
In Otakana the clue reads: Red bandana player who logs in on day one
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Sword Art Online
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Klein logs in on launch day knowing nothing, gets shown how to swing a sword by a stranger in a field, and thirty minutes later has to decide whether to abandon the friends waiting for him in the starting town. He goes back for them. Kirito runs the other way. That fork sits underneath every conversation the two of them have afterwards.
He founds Fuurinkazan, a guild of ordinary players who are never going to reach the front line and stay together anyway. Klein fights with a katana, wears a red bandana, is loud in a room and hopeless with women, and functions in the story as the friend who keeps arriving with backup at the moment it is needed.
He is also the reminder of what the game costs people who are not exceptional. Kirito clears floors. Klein keeps six people alive for two years, which the novels treat as the harder job, and he never once asks for credit in a scene where it would be convenient.
Spelling KLEIN
KLEIN is five letters and the vowel order decides it. E before I, the German way, which is the opposite of the instinct English gives you when reading it cold. The Japanese katakana spells it out with an opening K and no L sound available, so the L is a translation choice. Watch for KLIEN, which is the wrong row every time.