Yuna’s Live: Sword Art Online, Empathy, and the Invention of Another World

Note: In the autograph series, I use AI only in a supporting role—translation, research, and the like. The writing itself is done solely by the person behind Re:Context. This time, I begin from Yuna’s live performance, released in synchronization with the date inside Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale, and trace the thoughts that followed from it: the reality-aligned structure of SAO, the respect shown by the production team, the invention by which SAO connected the real world and a fantasy world, and the question of how the concepts of “death,” “sharing,” and “empathy” can reach even an AI character. The path may seem to move through several different subjects—VTuber culture, isekai fantasy, test-driven development, Project Hail Mary, and the continued existence of Yuna—but for me, these are not separate detours. They are the route by which this article came to take its present form.

Introduction

At 5:00 p.m. on April 29, 2026, Yuna’s live performance was released on the official YouTube channel [1,2]. Yuna is a key character in Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale, where she performs as an idol in AR space [3].

In this article, I will share the live event itself, the thoughts that developed from it, and the context needed for those thoughts to make sense. The discussion may feel as though it moves back and forth, but I would be grateful if you read it with the understanding that I am writing in what is, at least to me, a natural order: tracing the experience of how my thoughts moved from one association to the next.

A Fictional World Aligned with Reality

This YouTube video was an official promotion that aligned the work’s fictional timeline with reality, timed to April 29, 2026, the date on which Yuna holds her live performance within the story [4].

Sword Art Online—abbreviated as SAO, and read in Japan as either “Esu Ē Ō” or “Sao”—is a group of works, including anime, based on a light novel series that began around 2010. In SAO, the story takes place in what was, at the time of the work’s release, the near future. The technologies depicted in it, too, belong to a finely balanced “near future”: close enough to make one think, “Maybe this could just about be possible.”

When the real world actually catches up to a work’s “future” date, I think it is only natural, as a fan of that work, to feel something like a kind of answer-checking, or a certain emotion toward the synchronization between fiction and reality. In response to this, around the beginning and end of the Aincrad arc as well, I saw official promotions on Twitter and in the news that aligned the work with reality [5-6].

There are other works in which synchronization with the real world becomes a topic of discussion. Of course, this is probably not limited to anime, but here I want to focus on anime. The examples that immediately come to mind for me are, 今は昔 (read as “ima wa mukashi,” an old Japanese phrase meaning roughly “now, it is long ago”), the “Third Impact” in Evangelion [7-8], the date on which Doraemon was created [9,10], and, going further back—though this is also the origin point of Japanese television anime [11]—the date on which Astro Boy was created [10].

Incidentally, this phrase ima wa mukashi is exactly the kind of “Shakespeare”-like reference I wrote about on the About page, and one that anyone who went through Japan’s compulsory education system would probably recognize. It is one of the archaic expressions that appears in the Japanese classic The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter [12,13], and in school, students are often taught the modern Japanese rendering 今となっては昔のことだが (read as “ima to natte wa mukashi no koto da ga,” meaning “now, it is already a thing of the past”) [14-15]. Against that background, it is not uncommon for Japanese people to borrow this phrase as a small joke, or perhaps as a kind of homage. I once wrote about ぞ (read as “zo,” a Japanese sentence-ending particle used to add force or emphasis) in “Osorezan Le Voile”: How Fan Creation Completed Shaman King, and this is another example of that kind of expression in Japan. Incidentally, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter has also been adapted into anime. An anime adaptation of a classical work such as The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter feels, to me, like creators picking up a thread laid down long before them, or like a baton passed across many years as part of human history; in that respect, I personally find it quite emotionally charged. I think there are similar batons in science as well. One famous example is Fermat’s Last Theorem [16], where a baton passed across roughly 300 years was finally carried across the finish line by Andrew Wiles [17,18]. Since I have brought up that keyword, I should also mention the existence of the work Fermat no Ryōri.

Let me return to Yuna. That a live performance by Yuna, a 3D-modeled character, could feel so natural in 2026 cannot be separated from the VTuber culture that has developed as one form of YouTube-based streaming since the appearance of Kizuna AI in December 2016 [19,20]. I think it is probably because VTuber culture has now taken root that a reality-aligned live event by “Yuna” could be received by fans so smoothly [21,22]. If we go back even further, I also sense here the foundation of Vocaloid culture, beginning with Hatsune Miku, who appeared in 2007 [23-24].

On Sayaka Kanda

There is a subject that cannot be avoided when speaking about Yuna as an SAO character—or rather, when taking up this YouTube live video. In this article, it is even one of the main subjects.

There are several things I personally feel about it, but as for the details of the incident, I will limit myself to the minimum references I think are necessary (the subject is sensitive, so please take care if you read them). To put it plainly, Sayaka Kanda, the voice actor who performed Yuna’s voice, had already passed away by the time this Yuna YouTube live video was released [25-26].

Incidentally, Sayaka Kanda, who played Yuna, is also well known in Japan as a 2世タレント (read as “nisei tarento,” a Japanese entertainment term for a celebrity whose parent or parents are already famous entertainers), born to extremely famous parents in the entertainment world. What is especially worth noting is that her mother was Seiko Matsuda, a figure who unquestionably remains in the history of Japanese idols—or rather, who already does—and who is even described as an “eternal idol.” Incidentally, there are cover albums of Seiko Matsuda songs by female voice actors [27] and by male voice actors [28], so as a blog that writes about anime, I would also like to mention them here. Of course, I believe Kanda’s work as a voice actor stood on her own ability, but this is one of the pieces of “context” that I want to record here, because it is something I want to explain with some heat to English-language readers through Re:Context.

Now, as I also did in “Shōtengai as Part of the Everyday: Starting from Tamako Market”, I would first like to dedicate one silent section in this article as 黙祷 (read as “mokutō,” a silent prayer or moment of silence for the dead), in order to express my mourning for her.

Silence

On Sayaka Kanda, Continued

But that negative side is not the reason I wanted to take this up here. Rather, I want to convey the sense of the deepest respect for Kanda that I felt from the production team. That said, in order to convey this, I first had to share the difficult context that had to be faced: that Kanda had already passed away.

Even after Kanda’s passing, the songs Yuna had sung through Kanda’s voice remained as they were. With Kanda’s voice, a “new” video—a live video of Yuna—was released, and through it, the production team showed us that “Yuna is alive even now, at this very moment” [1,29,30]. It was not a replay of an old video. The official team created a “new” video. And by aligning it with reality, they placed the unchanged voice of Yuna there.

How could one not feel respect for Kanda in this?

There are other works in which I feel this kind of respect toward a voice actor who has passed away. One work that immediately comes to mind for me is ARIA. There is a great deal I want to write about ARIA, so I would like to leave that for another article.

The Worldview of SAO, and What I Find Revolutionary About It

What Was New About SAO

Another main subject of this article is to share what I consider to be the point at which SAO, as a work, was revolutionary. SAO is a science fiction work, but as the recent synchronization between reality and the time of the work makes clear, its setting was a “near future.” In that “near future,” SAO used a device that makes one think, “Could this just barely be possible in principle?” to do what I see as its central invention: finding a way to seamlessly connect the real world and a fantasy world. I think this is the greatest value of SAO as a work, and especially of the Aincrad arc.

On “Isekai / Isekai Tensei Fantasy” Works

Variations Often Seen in “Isekai Tensei” Works

For example, there are many other works built around the pattern of going from the real world to an isekai fantasy world. There is no shortage of examples: Digimon Adventure, The Familiar of Zero, Log Horizon, Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, and the more recent wave of isekai tensei works. The works I list here reflect my own tastes, and also simply what came to mind.

As for works of 異世界転生 (read as “isekai tensei,” meaning reincarnation into another world), I have the impression that they increased almost excessively from around the late 2010s to the present, in the context of the popularity of so-called なろう小説 (read as “Narō shōsetsu,” meaning web novels posted on or associated with Shōsetsuka ni Narō) [31], and of genres popular within Narō—or perhaps “often read” would be the more accurate phrase. In fact, KADOKAWA’s financial materials for the fiscal year ending March 2026 included a reflection on its overconcentration on these isekai tensei works [32,33].

Even if one says “isekai tensei works” in a single phrase, there is quite a bit of variation. It seems to me that this social experiment had value, at least in showing that “even under the constraint of ‘isekai tensei,’ many different things can be imagined.” For example, originally, it often seemed to be a matter of either “without really knowing why” or “being summoned from another world,” and then finding oneself reincarnated somewhere in a world other than the one we live in. On this point, Digimon Adventure is precisely the kind of work that fits “without really knowing why,” while The Familiar of Zero seems to me to be one of the early examples of “being summoned from another world.”

From there, there are works such as Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement, in which one can move back and forth between worlds, and works such as So I’m a Spider, So What?, in which the reincarnated protagonist is no longer human. Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon is one of the works in which the reincarnation destination is not human, and I even find something formidable in the feat of developing a story under the constraint that the protagonist is a vending machine. There are also patterns such as Oshi no Ko, where the reincarnation destination is the very world we live in—in other words, where the reincarnated protagonists are reborn into the same world.

Things Often Seen in “Isekai Tensei” Works

As in Ascendance of a Bookworm, for example, I have the impression that in works of isekai tensei, the protagonist often remembers their 前世 (read as “zense,” a Buddhist term meaning one’s previous life), and by making use of those memories in the world into which they have been reincarnated, often enters an 俺TUEEEE (read as “Ore TUEEEE,” a Japanese internet expression meaning something like “I’m so strong”) state [34,35], or uses protagonist attributes that might be called “cheat-like” to musō.

For now, I will only add this as a note here, but 前世 is a Buddhist term, and in Japan it has spread as a general everyday word. 転生 (read as “tensei,” a Buddhist term meaning rebirth or reincarnation) is actually also a Buddhist term, and it has spread in much the same way. 無双 (read as “musō,” originally meaning unrivaled or without equal, and now often used to describe overwhelming dominance) is a word that existed before, but I have the sense that its more recent meaning and usage in Japan became widespread with the appearance of the game series Dynasty Warriors [36,37].

I do not remember seeing this around the time of The Familiar of Zero—though this may very well be due to gaps in my own knowledge—but more recently, in works such as I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level, I feel that one often sees stories that accept the very concept of “isekai tensei works” with a kind of meta-awareness: “this is that isekai tensei,” or “this is the so-called isekai tensei,” as though it were an event that might, if one were lucky, happen to an ordinary person—or perhaps an event one might wish would happen—and then the characters welcome and make use of that isekai tensei. I do not think this is probably just my imagination.

On Female-Protagonist “Isekai Tensei” Works

As I wrote above, slightly earlier isekai tensei works often seemed to have male protagonists, and were commonly what might be called 俺TUEEEE works: stories of what might be called “protagonist musō,” in which the protagonist makes use of memories from before reincarnation, or receives some kind of special treatment at the time of reincarnation and is thereby granted “protagonist” attributes.

By contrast, in more recent years, I feel that works such as The Saint’s Magic Power Is Omnipotent have also become more common: works that might be called 私TUEEEE (read as “Watashi TUEEEE,” a variation meaning something like “I’m so strong,” with a female first-person pronoun), in which a woman is the protagonist, finds herself in a reverse-harem-like situation, and then performs musō in the world into which she has been reincarnated. As a variant of this “Watashi TUEEEE” type, I understand the “悪役令嬢系” (read as “akuyaku reijō-kei,” meaning works of the villainess-lady type) represented by works such as The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior to be one of the popular genres as well [38]. The works I mention here, too, reflect my personal tastes.

I did not dislike “Ore TUEEEE” works or isekai tensei works themselves—if anything, I rather liked them—but at first I did not much care for the “akuyaku reijō-kei.” However, once I came to re-recognize this genre not as “akuyaku reijō-kei” but as “Watashi TUEEEE” works, I became able to enjoy—and, in fact, rather like—the “akuyaku reijō-kei” as well.

As you can probably tell from everything up to this point, I should also note that especially in recent isekai tensei works, and probably in Narō-type works, the titles are often long. This, too, is something that is often pointed out [39-40].

The “Instant” Quality I Personally Feel in “Isekai Tensei” Works

This is a slight digression, but I personally feel that recent so-called “isekai tensei” works have a somewhat “instant” quality to them. I am aware that this may involve some prejudice, but as I have written several times so far, one common pattern in isekai tensei works is that the protagonist tends to enter an “Ore TUEEEE” state, and many of them feel as though they begin an RPG already at カンスト (read as “kansuto,” a Japanese gaming term derived from “counter stop,” meaning a maxed-out level or value). That said, I should also add that there are works that seem conscious of this and deliberately make the protagonist weak—although even in those cases, the protagonist often still has some kind of cheat-like ability.

This “instant” quality does not seem entirely unrelated to the current social situation in Japan, where people are surrounded by so much information that they cannot fully process it, and where, for example, YouTube videos are increasingly turned to for learning, while short videos circulate widely [41-42]. That said, I cannot deny the feeling that my impression of Japan’s social situation is also being guided by the PR activities of people in the media industry. I also feel that the questions and presentation of results in media surveys can be read as leading the reader toward conclusions prepared or assumed in advance, so I do not know whether my sense that this connects to the “instant” quality of isekai tensei works is really correct. The sources I cite here are ones I did try to find responsibly, but they are also sources I found in order to support a conclusion I already had in mind, so there is a possibility that I have picked up biased sources. I would like you to read this passage with that point in mind as well.

I also have the impression that this “instant” quality has been accelerated in the context of generative AI [43]. Of course, I am using this word “instant” with the implication that something is ready-made or quick to produce, and that it often seems difficult for it to carry much substance. Of course, there are still many works in this mode that I find interesting, and I would not go so far as to strongly disparage them. Still, I do think it is hard to deny a certain sense of shallow mass production.

Other “Isekai” Works

Or, to take something closer to SAO, there was also .hack, connected through the MMORPG context. That said, rather than seeing it as isekai tensei or isekai fantasy, it seems better to think of it as a work in which a game world is attached to the real world. In that respect, it can be said to be close to SAO, but it also seems somewhat different from the mechanism by which SAO “turned it into fantasy.” Summer Wars also has something close to this, but it too is ultimately closer to reality.

As something similar to SAO, I think the novel Harry Potter [44], which also became famous through its films, can be described as a work with a mechanism that “seamlessly connected the real world and a fantasy world.” In Harry Potter, there was a gate called Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, which connected the real world with a magical fantasy world. However, the point that should be noted here is that in the case of Harry Potter, the work leans, after all, toward fantasy, and in this respect its direction differs from SAO.

Connection to the “Fantasy World” in SAO

Let me return here to SAO.

I have the Aincrad arc especially in mind, but in the world of SAO, the first stage is a “connection to the fantasy world”: one immerses oneself, through a VR-like technology, in a “fantasy world” that exists within the game world. I think the quality of that immersive experience is still something reality is far from catching up to, so in that respect I regard it as a fantasy element. Up to this point, there may be other ordinary works that do something similar. From there, however, SAO adds the mechanism of the “NerveGear” to that immersive experience and adopts a fiction in which, technologically, one “cannot get out.” As the second stage, this succeeds in “rationally” trapping protagonists who in fact exist in the real world inside a fantasy world.

I think the truly outstanding idea devised by the original author, Reki Kawahara, lies in this point: protagonists who originally exist in the real world are “forcibly transferred into another world,” becoming residents of a fantasy world through a method that carries “a kind of technical plausibility,” as though it could be realized in the near future.

There is also Accel World, a work by the same author, but that one leans more toward reality. Personally, I still find the mechanism in SAO’s Aincrad arc especially outstanding.

The method Kawahara proposed seems to me an extremely groundbreaking idea in that, in principle, it is a way for those of us living in the real world to truly go to a fantasy world, even if its reality depends on the quality of the virtual space. Of course, if the same thing were done in the real world, it would be a serious problem…

Recent AI Contexts and SAO

Yuna is an AI within the world of SAO, but if we think in terms of surface-level quality, it seems to me that since the appearance of ChatGPT [45,46], implementations that feel, to a certain extent, like something equivalent to Yuna’s “intelligence-like” quality have begun to appear in reality.

AITDD and the NerveGear

As a personal association, the idea of being “trapped” by the NerveGear made me think of AI Test-Driven Development, or AITDD. I suspect this will not come across to everyone, but…

In programming, there is something called test code. A common case would be this: when you want to create a function with a certain behavior, you first create that function. To use slightly more technical terms, you create tests at granularities such as unit tests or integration tests.

A function in programming is a program that, given a certain input, returns a particular expected output. In fact, this is almost the same as a “function” in mathematics. When you implement the “body” of that function, you also create test code alongside it. Test code is a program that calls a function with the behavior you want to create, using a particular input. If the expected value is returned as a result of that call, the function is considered to be behaving correctly, and the test is treated as having passed. The reason we create test code is that we may first implement the function we want in a “working for now” form, and then later change the contents of that program.

For example, “refactoring,” which improves such things as redundancy and maintainability in the way the program is written [47], or program modifications made to fix bugs, would be reasons for the “changes” I mean here.

At that point, the idea is to use test code to check mechanically whether, when that change is made to the program, the same functionality as before can really still be guaranteed. Here, making the check mechanical—mechanizing it, automating it—is the point for efficiency and for preventing mistakes. Going one step further, test-driven development, or TDD, is the practice of first writing the test code, almost as if writing a specification for the function, and then moving on to the actual implementation of the function body—or at least that is how I understand it [48].

In programming with generative AI, when one asks for a “fix,” things that had previously worked often stop working. I cannot rule out the possibility that the problem lies in my prompts, but I think many people have had similar experiences. Of course, there is no problem if that level of quality is acceptable, but for something a company would use, this degree of accuracy would normally be unsatisfactory. So, by using the idea of TDD—or perhaps it would be enough to say, simply by using the concept of test code—I personally understand the practice of proceeding with programming on the assumption that one will refactor using test code in order to mechanically “bind” the AI’s revisions, or “trap” them within a certain range, under the term “AITDD.” This may not be a very common term [49,50].

Now, the NerveGear was a device that “trapped” humans inside a virtual space. From there, an association formed for me between the human brain and the way tests in AITDD “trap” a brain-like imitation—that is, AI. I do not especially expect this to come across just because I have written it here, but… I hope it reaches the people it reaches.

Project Hail Mary and AI

As a recent point of reference, Project Hail Mary also comes to mind. It is originally based on a novel [51], but I watched the film version [52].

Inorganic Life and Organic Life

In Project Hail Mary, one encounters an unknown intelligent being, different from humans. This intelligent being appears, at least at first glance, to be something like an inorganic lifeform, and from within our own cultural sphere, AI is precisely one form of inorganic life.

Within the terms of Project Hail Mary, it is probably something different from AI. Even so, the thought experiment of an inorganic lifeform possessing intelligence equal to or greater than our own reminded me of Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines [53]. I do wonder whether space navigation is possible without knowing relativity. Still, if its cognition does not seem to be based on electromagnetism, perhaps it would indeed be difficult for it to arrive at the “principle of the constancy of the speed of light” in special relativity, which denies the existence of the ether [54].

This is because, when I read Kurzweil’s book, my attention was drawn to the “possibility that organic life is a prerequisite for inorganic life,” and that became connected, within me, to the keyword of an “inorganic—or inorganic-like—lifeform” in Project Hail Mary.

According to Kurzweil, we humans—Homo sapiens sapiens, currently existing on Earth—first needed the “technology” of DNA as a prerequisite in order to evolve as life. My understanding may be mistaken, but Kurzweil seems to me to be thinking that, just as DNA is a prerequisite for humans, the existence of humans is a prerequisite for the emergence of inorganic lifeforms such as AI. For some time, I had personally wondered: “If organic life exists, why does inorganic life seem so difficult to exist?” Of course, I do think that “it simply has not been found yet” is one possible answer. On the other hand, when considered as a probabilistic problem, reading Kurzweil’s book made it seem to me that one answer to the “possibility that the emergence of inorganic life is more difficult than the emergence of organic life” may be this: in order to create something like life from inorganic matter—or, to put it more strongly, something like “intelligence”—extremely limited conditions must first be satisfied, and if the process were truly random, the probability might be quite low.

The Concept of “Death” and Empathy in Entertainment

In Project Hail Mary, communication takes place with an unknown lifeform possessing advanced intelligence. What I found interesting in that thought experiment was that the concept of “death,” or something resembling it, could be shared—or rather, that empathy even seemed possible around it. In my earlier article, “Somehow Holding Together — Gnosia and the Natural Selection of World Lines”, I wrote a tautology to the effect that “what exists now is precisely what has remained until now.” As a personal view, it seems to me that concepts such as “whether something exists or does not exist,” and “whether existence appears or disappears,” are not limited to life, but are concepts that can be shared quite generally in this universe we inhabit. The very fact that something exists at a given point in time should itself be grounded in some mechanism that allows it to exist at that point in time. If that existence is an intelligent being, then all the more, concepts such as that existence “being born” or “disappearing” seem likely to be treated as important.

In that respect, I found it interesting that Rocky, too, seemed to share the concept of, and even feel empathy toward, what we would call “death.” Of course, I am treating this only as “one” thought experiment, so I am not excluding other possibilities.

I think that, in entertainment, drawing out “empathy” from the recipient seems important to the satisfaction of the experience [55-56]. And for “empathy” to arise, it seems necessary first that the concept can be “shared” (though empathy that does not require conceptual sharing may also be possible), and it also seems important that the concept is “understood” in a “similar direction” [57-58]. What is being required is not merely the “sharing” of a concept, but also “understanding” it in a “similar direction.” If we recall the setting in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, where “demons” speak human language, but only imitate human speech as a means for their own survival or convenience, and this is different from “empathy,” then this becomes useful as a thought experiment for a case in which something is “understood” in a “similar direction” but does not arrive at “empathy.” In this sense, I do think one cannot deny the possibility that Rocky in Project Hail Mary was also engaging in a “demon”-like form of communication, in the sense used in Frieren (though there may have been some suggestive expression that would allow this to be logically ruled out). Still, at least with regard to “death,” I interpret the work as presenting an expression in which empathy with Rocky was obtained, even if it may be a separate question whose “death” that empathy concerned. If we limit the discussion to empathy regarding “death,” then perhaps even the “demons” in Frieren could obtain a certain kind of “empathy” around this concept, though it might differ subtly from human empathy.

In other words, when considered in this way, I want to argue that “there may be a possibility of obtaining ‘empathy’ around the theme of ‘death’ not only among us humans, but also among intelligent lifeforms—and, to go even further, even if we extend the scope to living and non-living things.” If so, it seems that when a story involves “death,” we may end up feeling “empathy” with a kind of generality that could almost be called universal when compared with other themes (while acknowledging that exceptions surely exist).

However, it is doubtful whether a single human being, from birth to death, can “empathize” with what Jankélévitch calls death in the second person or death in the third person [@Book-Jankélévitch-LaMort-@News-YOLO-BookPR]. If so, then I also find myself wondering about a being of this kind: the Integrated Data Sentient Entity from the Haruhi Suzumiya series—that is, $\fallingdotseq$ Nagato—and whether she, or they, can “(truly) empathize with human ‘death.’” Even a transcendent first-person existence may at least understand and accept the concept of death in the first person, and perhaps even reach “empathy” regarding it. However, in entertainment, if there is no immersion into a character, the death of a character within a work is always death in the third person from the perspective of the subject watching the work. That means it has to be extrapolated from an understanding of death in the first person—that is, one’s own death, or the disappearance of one’s own existence. This “Integrated Data Sentient Entity” is assumed to possess knowledge that, from the standpoint of us humans living now, could be called transcendent. Even so, could such a subject learn on its own, like Hayy [59], and arrive at “empathy”?

On Yuna’s Existence

Yuna is an AI, and in the terms of the discussion so far, she is an inorganic lifeform. But based on the discussion so far, it seems to me that the concept of “death” can also be “shared” with her. I think the concept of “Yuna’s death” can be shared both from her perspective—that is, from the perspective of the character “Yuna” herself—and from our perspective as those who see her.

On the other hand, through Yuna’s YouTube live performance, there is a sense that the existence of Sayaka Kanda, who has passed away, was carried forward—or even that she had, in some sense, been “revived.” And when the character Yuna is carried forward with the production team’s respect—or, to go even further, perhaps a future in which she truly continues to exist as Yuna through the progress of AI may already be close—then Sayaka Kanda may continue to exist as “Yuna” in reality, not only within our hearts.

Conclusion

Starting from Yuna’s YouTube live stream, I have moved through Sayaka Kanda, what I see as SAO’s “invention,” and the “sharing” of and “empathy” toward the concept of “death.”

While being deeply moved by the respect shown toward Sayaka Kanda by the official SAO production team, I wrote this article with a strong intention: by writing her name here again and again, I wanted Sayaka Kanda, in some sense, to “live.” This is my resistance against her death.

Through Yuna’s existence, I hope that the great performer Sayaka Kanda will continue to live on.