Accel World is the story of a short, bullied, overweight nerd, Haruyuki “Haru” Arita, and his school’s famous and intellectual vice-captain, Kuroyukihime. They venture into the world of Virtual Reality to play an exciting game. They try to earn points to reach the maximum level, level 10. The anime is an excellent blend of sci-fi and isekai, then why has there been no news of Accel World season 2?
Season 1 left us with several mysteries and exciting questions. We still don’t know who the creator of the Accelerated World is. What happens to Haru and Kuroyukihime’s relationship? How will the story progress further now?
There haven’t been any official announcements on a new season. We can’t be sure whether the series will be green-lit; however, we can find the answers to our questions through the source material, the Light Novels.
Here, we will see the various factors that affect an anime’s renewal and how Accel World’s chances are for getting another season. The most decisive and essential factors are the source material’s status, the sales, and the popularity of the show.
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Accel World Source Material
The anime was adapted from the Light Novel series, written by Reki Kawahara, who authored Sword Art Online. To determine the status of source material, we consider the total number of volumes available, whether the story is ongoing or completed (if concluded, the anime has reduced chances of renewal, as was the case in Air Gear Season 2), and how many books were used to adapt the first season and Infinite Burst Movie (a series may get canceled if there is no continuity available in the story, this was the case for the anime No Game No Life)
The series has sold 25 volumes of the Light Novel in Japan and is ongoing. A manga adaptation was concluded with eight volumes. However, the Manga was primarily just a retelling of the anime.
The latest episode of the Light Novel was released on September 10, 2020. However, only 1 volume has been published every year for 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
The anime in 2012 used material from volumes 1-4 and 10; meanwhile, the movie, Infinite Burst follows the storyline from Volume 19. Thus Volume 5- onwards, there’s enough story for three seasons to be produced in 2021.
Therefore, the source material of Accel World is not the reason for the absence of a second season.
Accel World: Sales and Profit
A whopping 90% of anime’s don’t receive sequel’s because they don’t generate enough profit. Moreover, additional seasons are considered to be less profitable. For instance, the second season of Noragami wasn’t able to generate as much profit as its first season.
A two-cour (a cour is a 3-month period of broadcast for any show) anime like Accel World is very costly and takes around 5,000,000 dollars to produce. The profits of a show are calculated based on its Blu-Ray Sales, Light Novel Sales, Merchandise numbers, Movie earnings, and Game sells
Accel World Blu-Ray Sales
Accel World was released on 8 Blu-Ray disks in Japan, each selling about 9,000 copies: Additionally, a BD-Box, released on December 23, 2015, sold 1,500 copies.
Animes that sell close to 10,000 copies have a good chance of getting continued. However, Blu-Ray sales don’t matter much since streaming revenue has increased, and many viewers tend to avoid buying the expensive discs as they once used to. Take the case of One Punch Man season 3, which will be announced, like streaming services, like Netflix and Crunchyroll, profited well from the show.
Accel World Light Novel Sales
The Light Novel of Accel World has been declining in copies sold. The 24th volume, released on September 10, 2019, sold 55,000 copies, whereas volume 25 sold only 45,000 copies.
The unfortunate fact is that, with every forthcoming volume, the sales of the Light Novels drop. Currently, they’re less than half of what they once were. The 16th volume of the series had sold 109,000 copies.
That said, Accel World is still in the Top 30 Best-Sellers by volume sales. It sells better than new series, like Kenja No Mago, which will most likely get a Season 2 itself.
Accel World Merchandise Numbers
The series has 100 figures, 70% of which are those of Kuroyukihime. The rest are of Silver Crow, Chiyori, and Scarlet Rain. Additionally, the series has 250 goods, like mugs, shirts, keychains, straps, plushies, clear files, and cushions.
The first season of Accel World had sufficient sales numbers of merchandise, mostly Kuroyukihime. More than half of them being the cheapest versions.
These numbers, while not bad, aren’t fit for a two-cour anime with ten years for production and selling of merchandise.
Accel World Movie Box Office
The Infinite Burst movie earned around 1 million dollars and sold about 7,000 Blu-Ray copies in Japan; moreover, Viz Media released a film for the USA in 2019 in English Dub.
One million dollars in earnings is considered a total flop; however, one should acknowledge that the movie was shown only on 19 screens, and half of it was recap. The Blu-Ray discs sold well, on the other hand.
Excellent Box-Office performance increases the chances of a sequel in most cases. However, some anime like Goblin Slayer gained a sequel despite the lousy performance of the movies. Comparatively, Accel World did better even with all of its problems.
Accel World Game Sells
The first game of Accel World, Ginyoku no Kakusei, sold about 30,000 copies. The second one, Kosoku no Choten, sold 20,000. Additionally, the Accel World x Sword Art Online game sold 80,000 copies.
This performance is good, considering that the game got a sequel after the first one (though, these numbers can also be since OVA’s were bundled with the game).
Looking at the sales and profit, Kadokawa did pretty well with Accel World, and it also helped boost the Light Novel sales to more than 100,000 per volume. Thus, sales and profit are not a reason to impede making the second season of Accel World.
Accel World Popularity Information
Here, we will look at Accel World’s popularity while it was on air in 2012 and how its popularity holds all these years later. As was the case for Tokyo Raven season 2, fans and even the production committee didn’t care about the franchise after many years. Thankfully, the author hasn’t abandoned the series yet.
To analyze the series’s popularity, we will be looking at its Social Media, Google Trends, My Anime List, Light Novels, and merchandise.
Accel World’s Social Media
Accel world’s official website was last updated in 2018 regarding the news of the BluRay box. Its Twitter account with 70,000 followers tweeted more recently. This year, we saw a tweet about the Accel World Radio Resurrection award. On March 10, 2021, the most recent tweet was about a talk show hosting the author, Reki.
#代アニ イベント情報🎈
3/28(土)にストレートエッジ代表 #三木一馬 さんと『ソードアート・オンライン』シリーズを手掛けている #川原礫 さんをWゲストにお招きしてトークショー開催😆🎊大活躍のお2人からいろんなお話を聞いちゃおう‼️
参加無料です✨👇お申込はこちらhttps://t.co/C6iAHEadbV pic.twitter.com/zQ6SrnMZAZ
— 代々木アニメーション学院 official (@YAG_PR) March 10, 2020
However, there hasn’t been a single tweet about the Light Novel, which the official Twitter page should be promoting ideally. This isn’t a good indication. However, the Radio news tweet is an excellent sign.
Google Trends
Accel world gained peak popularity, in September 2012, after the end of Season 1; following this, it kept decreasing to reach Pre-anime levels. The current search numbers don’t look positive, and many of them are linked to Sword Art Online in 2021.
Konosuba got the third season, despite its downward trends. The searches for peak Accel World were greater than peak Konosuba, and the latter received a sequel.
My Anime List
Accel World lies 183 in popularity, with around 606,000 members. These numbers aren’t good, as it had ten years to build a fan following, while new popular series like Jujutsu Kaisen and Dororo has way more in just 1-2 years.
Accel World Light Novel
The Light Novel has sold 5,700,000 copies in print as of June 2020. The latest addition came on September 2020, with its 25th volume. The speed of volume release has also declined, from what was 2-3 a year, is now 1 every year.
Merchandise
The merchandise’s popularity is worrying since only the Kuroyukihime bunny figure and rubber mat was received in the last two years. The movie in 2016 also had no positive effect on the merchandise sales.
Looking at these, we can say that the popularity of the 2012 series is gone. The Infinite Burst movie of 2016 didn’t help reignite the franchise either. Moreover, the lack of any new merchandise and the slow release speed of the Light Novels are also reasons why the series’ popularity hasn’t grown.
Why Has There Been No News Of Accel World Season 2?
The source media, sales, and popularity aren’t the reasons why there hasn’t been any announcement of a second season so far. There are mainly two reasons for no sequel in the series-
Studio Sunrise: The studio responsible for the first season of Accel World began working on a more popular series called Love Live! School Idol Project. There’s no doubt that this has paid off for the studio. This franchise still gets new projects and seasons, is one of the top-selling franchises in Japan, and Sunrise is a part of the production committee and thus, receives profits from it. Thus, they prefer to work on this.
However, we’re still hoping that we have another Overlord 4 situation, similar to how Madhouse found time for it; maybe Sunrise will be able to make time for Accel World Season 2 as well.
Sword Art Online: The author of Accel World, Reki Kawahara, is also the author of Sword Art Online. Predictably, after the sudden growth in popularity of SAO, his attention shifted off from Accel World; this is reflected from its slow release rate and promotion, making it almost non-existent in 2021.
Accel World English Dub
You can watch Accel World Season 1 subbed on Crunchyroll and English dubbed on Amazon Prime Video and read the Light Novel from Amazon or on Righstuf and other websites like it.
Can We Expect Accel World Season 2 To Be Announced?
There’s a chance that Dengeki Bunko could announce a second season’s release date. There are three reasons for this-
- Firstly, the franchise is getting weaker with time. If Kadokawa wants to use Accel World to make anime, now would be the time to do so. The manga sales are at 50,000 per volume and seem to keep declining. Waiting any longer would be fatal to the franchise.
- Secondly, Sunrise may be busy at the moment, dealing with a Love Live movie and a Tiger & Bunny sequel, but it can still find a different studio to animate Accel World.
- Sword Art Online is soon going to end. It is currently in its last arc, and the hope is that after it ends, Reki focuses on Accel World instead.