Moon Cradle: Kirito, Asuna and their 200 Years in the Underworld
Warning: the following contains spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen/read through Sword Art Online Moon Cradle.
If you find yourself staying up at night wondering what in the heck Kirito and Asuna were up to in the Underworld for 200 years that made them want to forget everything they did there, then Moon Cradle is the perfect place for you to start.
Sword Art Online may be slightly infamous for its time skips, but the single biggest time jump happens at the very end of the third season where Kirito and Asuna spend two hundred years in a virtual world, and we only get a few glimpses of what occurred during their time there.
The aura of mystery surrounding these lost years isn’t helped by the fact that they have their memories wiped when they come back out, meaning there’s a fat chance of ever figuring out what they were up to.
However, we do have something of an idea of what Asuna and Kiritos’ lives were like during their stay thanks to the Moon Cradle arc — a short story that takes place in the Light Novel series in-between Alicization and the Unital Ring arcs.
Below, let’s look at key aspects of the Moon Cradle arc and why they are relevant to the SAO story and fans.
Kirito and Asuna get very involved with governance of the Underworld
Even in just the anime, we get something of a hint of what happened during Kirito and Asuna’s life in the Underworld. Apparently, at some point during their 200 years in the virtual world they become “Star” King and Queen.
While we don’t get to see their rise to rulers in Moon Cradle, we do, however, see Asuna and Kirito become increasingly intertwined in government. Indeed, there’s a pretty large void left in leadership for the human world following the Underworld War. Kirito seems to be filling that void even though he’s not given a title higher than Swordsman Delegate.
While Asuna is also given the somewhat lowly Swordswoman Delegate title, it’s clear that her stunning entry into the Underworld where she used the Goddess Stacia’s powers have not been forgotten, and there’s an aura of majesty surrounding her wherever she goes.
Apart from all that, however, the two lead fairly ordinary lives, and their time in the Underworld (or what little we see of it in Moon Cradle) is a happy one.
Moon Cradle focuses heavily on Ronnie and Tiese
For those of you hoping to get a full look at what Asuna and Kirito were up to during their 200 years in the Underworld – you’re out of luck. While the light novels do share a few touching moments that are certainly worth the effort of reading the books, the main plot of Moon Cradle is focused primarily on Ronnie and Tiese.
For me, this wasn’t ideal as I really didn’t feel much connection to those two characters when watching the SAO Alicization arc. Also, a good deal of time in the first Moon Cradle novel is spent dwelling on Ronie’s feelings for Kirito – feelings which will undoubtedly go nowhere as they tend to in SAO for any female character other than Asuna.
On this note, however, one interesting insight we get into Asuna’s character is that she is indeed troubled by the attention Kirito gets from their female friends, saying that it causes her pain whenever they pretend not to feel the way they do about him.
It’s not that Asuna is threatened by these other women so much as it is more she knows that they will never have their desires satisfied. She resolves to address the issue with Ronnie this time instead of letting it slip under the rug as she always has in the past.
All of that being said, fleshing out the stories of Ronnie and Tiese – particularly Ronnie and seeing her come into her own as an Integrity Knight – does add to the world building in SAO, helping readers feel like they are inhabiting a “real” place with multiple complex characters and lives going on.
Moon Cradle is another murder mystery
One of the most interesting things about Sword Art Online is its ability to fluctuate between genres. That being said, murder mysteries aren’t exactly a new concept for the show/series. Indeed, all of the Phantom Bullet arc was essentially a high stakes murder mystery.
In Moon Cradle, we get yet another murder mystery. Although, it’s less compelling than the one we got in Phantom Bullet, without a named protagonist to hunt or super compelling threat to fear. The murder does serve as a macguffin, however, to dive deeper into the political complexities of the Underworld, especially with how things work within the Dark Territories. However, I would have found another central conflict to be more compelling in this specific case – one perhaps that felt more personal to our central characters.
Sheyta and Isakahn get married
Another huge plot point that actually was pretty interesting was that Sheyta and Isakahn end up getting married and have a baby. It’s fun to see characters get their lives so fleshed out romantically in the SAO universe as opposed to other anime stories where side characters and their personal lives filter out in favor of more action-heavy sequences.
Kirito invents the Underworld version of the Airplane
Asuna and Kirito devote themselves fully to helping out the Underworld and really waste no time in doing so. One of the bigger things Kirito does right away is to create the Underworld’s first man-made flying contraption. It doesn’t always work out the best, forcing Asuna to use some of her goddess powers to save him and the contraption.
This plot point is important as it helps explain how civilization in the Underworld becomes so advanced to even enable space travel, as we get a glimpse of at the very end of SAO season three. Clearly Kirito aids the Underworld in accelerating their technology in a way that hasn’t been possible for the civilization before. Is this ultimately a good thing? As of Moon Cradle we can’t know for sure, but we’ll hopefully find out in the following Light Novels what the full impact of this rapid modernization has on the societies of the Underworld – both human and monster.
As an aside, Asuna is so devoted to the people of the Underworld that she even thinks she might not choose to go back to the real world even if she could since she isn’t done with her work there yet.
For the pair, helping the people of the Underworld is more than just a hobby to keep busy with while they’re trapped: it’s something they are actually very committed to.
Asuna and Kirito share romantic moments
Finally, we do get a solid amount of time spent with just Asuna and Kirito together in their lives in the Underworld, and they even go off on an quest together, complete with a scene that feels straight out of a Superman film where Kirito wraps Asuna in his arms and flies her great distances across the Underworld.
Apart from the action (which there is plenty of in Moon Cradle), this is my absolute favorite part of the story. After all, by the time we get to this part in the story it’s been a very long while since Kirito and Asuna got any significant one-on-one time. And as Asuna mentions herself, Kirito has grown mentally past her during his time in the Underworld, making him for the first time older than her.
She notices this increased maturity in small gestures he makes, and the way he talks. Of course, bearing the weight of the people of the Underworld probably also increases his sense of responsibility. But it’s very clear from their scenes together in the book that the two love each other more than ever. It’s a fitting subplot to the Moon Cradle arc that fans of the romance-side of SAO will enjoy immensely.
Why would Asuna and Kirito have their memories wiped?
The last point we’ll touch on is the whole memory-wiping issue that occurs when Kirito and Asuna return to the real world after their long stint in the Underworld. Although it’s hinted at that some sort of trauma may have occurred during their stay, none of that is present in Moon Cradle. Instead, their time there (apart from a few conflicts we see in the story) is a relatively happy one. Asuna and Kirito get plenty of time together, despite their sadness over the liklihood of never seeing their loved ones again.
While Moon Cradle is a story that takes place very early on in Kirito and Asuna’s stay in the Underworld, it’s possible that overtime these feelings of separation, isolation, and continued conflicts took their toll on the couple. Human minds aren’t intended to hold the memories of centuries in them, so choosing to erase their time there might have been more of a necessity than a desire to remove “bad memories.” Based on the story, it’s quite likely that Asuna and Kirito had many more good times together, meaning the decision to erase their memories was likely as much of a sacrifice as a relief.
While ultimately Moon Cradle only offers a glimpse of Asuna and Kirito’s time in the Underworld, the result is a story surprisingly hopeful and human. We get to explore the lives of lesser characters we hadn’t before, and get an inside look at what life is like for our two main heroes when they are left to their own devices with one another in a foreign world.
Hardened fans will love the opportunity to dive deep into unknown territories of this new world, even if there certainly have been better Sword Art Online arcs before it.
