Sword Art Online is undoubtedly one of the anime with more fans in the world, so much so that many consider it a cult anime or one of the potential stories when entering the world of anime. It goes without saying that it is a franchise with a great career behind that stopped being just a light novel, to have a number of anime adaptations, as well as video games.
FUJI TV OMITS ASUNA’S UNCENSORED SCENE IN SWORD ART ONLINE: ORDINAL SCALE
Sword Art Online is one of the biggest franchises in the world if we talk about anime, but one of its movies in particular is remembered by all anime fans, since it introduced for the first time content not suitable for all ages in one of the many adaptations, albeit for a few seconds.
We are talking about Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale, one of the stories that would mark a before and after, since the adaptation not only contains a mythical uncensored scene, but it is the last anime adaptation in which we can appreciate the performance and songs of the much-loved Sayaka Kanda. Who died on December 18, 2021, after being reported to have jumped from the 14th floor of the hotel where she was staying, undoubtedly one of the saddest news of the anime. To this day it is still unknown why he did it or if it was really an attempt to take his own life.
After the Blu-ray version was released, a scene was released where Asuna, the main character of Sword Art Online, was completely unclothed and taking a shower, and her attributes could be clearly appreciated.
This scene marked one of the most viral moments of the Sword Art Online franchise on the internet, since this type of content had never been added to any of its series or movies, before we could only see scenes of death or blood. This is how many people started to buy the Blu-ray in Japan, as much as in the West just for this scene. History repeats itself again after Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale was announced to be broadcasted through the Japanese TV channel FUJI TV. This made many Japanese fans start tweeting that they were looking forward to see the mythical scene of Asuna taking an uncensored shower.
To the surprise of many it was the Blu-ray version of Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale, this version is the one that comes with the uncensored scene of Asuna taking a bath. But apparently Fuji TV had already contemplated how it would handle that scene. Since many fans started commenting via Twitter that Fuji TV had placed commercials at the exact moment of the scene.
This made Japanese fans of Sword Art Online and anime in general upset, because it is not the first time Fuji TV does something similar not only with anime but also with western movies. A clear example could be the time they broadcasted Kimetsu No Yaiba and cut the scene of Renguko’s death with commercials, another clear example would also be a Hollywood production well known around the world, we are talking about Titanic, which also cut several scenes and put commercials.
Fans claim that if Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale had been broadcast on another Japanese television network, such as TBS or TV Asahi, the scene would have been seen by many anime fans who would have been watching one of those channels. But things were very different with Fuji TV, which in recent years has been gaining a bad reputation for censoring scenes from anime and series.