April 11 special, April 18 digest lead into final Alicization episodes

The official website for the Sword Art Online: Alicization anime announced on Tuesday that the second cours (quarter year) of Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld, the anime's second half, will premiere on April 25. It will premiere on that date at 24:00 (effectively, April 26 at midnight) on the Tokyo MX, Tochigi TV, Gunma TV, and BS11 channels and on the Abema TV service. It will then run on MBS at 26:00 (2:00 a.m.), and finally on TV Aichi on April 28.

Before the actual anime returns, a special will run on April 11 at 24:00, followed by a digest program of the first cours on April 18 at 24:00.

ReoNA is performing the anime's second opening theme song "ANIMA," which will debut with the "Last Season."

Sword Art Online: Alicization premiered in Japan last October and is streaming on Crunchyroll, Hulu, and FunimationNow. The series is adapting the entire "Alicization Arc" of Reki Kawahara's original novels and will air for four cours, or four quarters of a year. In October, the website had listed the anime with 23 episodes, with a three-month gap between the first four home video volumes and the last four home video volumes.

Toonami began airing the anime on January 18.

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 are joining Shingo Adachi for the character designs. Yuki Kajiura is returning to compose the music. Haruka Tomatsu is performing the show's opening theme song "Resolution." LiSA is performing the show's ending theme song "unlasting."

Source: MoCa