Funimation Entertainment announced on Wednesday that its FunimationNow streaming service will stream the Sword Art Online: Alicization anime in Japanese with English subtitles. In addition, the service will add Sword Art Online and Sword Art Online II to its catalog both with Japanese with subtitles and with the English dub.

Sword Art Online: Alicization will premiere on October 6 in Japan and also stream on Crunchyroll and Hulu. The series will air for four cours, or four quarters of a year.

Manabu Ono ( Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere , Saki , The Asterisk War ) is directing the anime at A-1 Pictures. Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale animation directors Gou Suzuki and Tomoya Nishiguchi will join Shingo Adachi for the character designs. Yuki Kajiura is returning to compose the music.

The anime will cover the entirety of the novels' "Alicization Arc." The Alicization arc is in volumes 9 through 18 of the original novel series. Ono said in an interview on the anime's official website that he accepted the job as director around the time of the Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale film's preview screenings, and he has heard from Aniplex staff since that time that the plan is to adapt the original novel series all the way to the end.

Thanks to jlaking for the news tip.

Source: Funimation's Twitter account