Dengeki Onlinepublishedan interview focusing on the upcoming PS4, Xbox One, and PC JRPGSword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris.The interview featuresSAOAuthorReki Kawahara,SAOProducerKazuma Miki, andSAOconsole games ProducerYousuke Futami. Divided in multiple parts, the interview covers various aspects ofAlicization Lycoris.Including Medina Orthinanos, the newestSword Art Onlinegame original character appearing inAlicization Lycoris. Producer Futami and Reki Kawahara shared multiple interesting details and anecdotes regarding Medina’s conception.
InSword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris, Medina is voiced by Miho Okasaki. Medina the ninth head of the Orthinanos house in the Human Empire, a family of second class nobles. She has a pretty calm personality, but becomes fierce when in battle. Medina fights with a one-handed katana. She strives to become an Integrity Knight, earn military exploits and clear her family’s name. Her father, the previous head, passed away in an incident when she was younger, and the Orthinanos has been since then labeled as defects.
In the interview, Yousuke Futami first explained howSword Art Onlinegames until now started with Kirito immediately meeting said game’s original character. This isn’t the case inSword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris, as Medina first appears shortly after the beginning of the game, which covers the very beginning ofAlicization. Kirito and Eugeo meet her when they depart from Rulid Village.
Following that, Medina is also studying at the Sword Mastery Academy, and players will interact with her multiple times during that part of the main story. Overall, this part of the game will show multiple aspects of Kirito and Eugeo’s sword school life, not depicted in the anime or novel. The game’s main story has a stronger focus on Medina once it delves into its original story part.
In case you forgot,Sword Art Online:Alicization Lycorisadapts up to episode 24 of theSword Art Online Alicizationanime. Following that, in the game’s second and longer part, we switch to an original plot, instead of the Dark Territory invasion events depicted in theWar of Underworldanime.
Producer Futami then explained how Medina is based around two themes. The first one is how she has a huge inferiority complex, because of everyone shunning her family. This is a similar trait to Renly, another character inAlicization. In Renly’s case, however, you don’t notice it as much in the game since he lost his memories. That trait of Medina is displayed especially during the Sword Mastery Academy story part.
The second theme Medina is based on is how she strongly wishes to be acknowledged. Futami explained how when he first read theAlicizationarc, he felt that Alice and Eugeo’s souls were vividly depicted through the story. He hopes that players will have similar feelings when playingAlicization Lycorisand experience Medina’s story and emotions.
Reki Kawahara added that theAlicizationarc in a sense is a cruel story. At the end of the day, Higa and Kikuoka only made Underworld because they want a single AI: the one who surpasses its limits. This turned out to be Alice, and they only needed Alice, and could have disposed of all the other Underworld inhabitants. From the perspective of real people in the real world, Medina is just another unit. However, in Underworld, she’s more than enough human, has her own story, and a destiny she must face. Medina will make players realize this contrast, and that’s what makes her an interesting character according to Kawahara. He’s looking forward to playingSAOALhimself at release.
Reki Kawahara and Yousuke Futami also explained Medina’s character design. In particular, Producer Futami is the one who decided to give Medina those short, thick eyebrows. It’s far from being an uncommon feature of female characters in Japanese media, but it’s relatively unpopular when compared to other elements. Reki Kawahara jokingly added Medina is pretty much everything you shouldn’t do when trying to sell a “Heroine” character. For example: her short hair with the tips pointing to the outside, which isn’t a very popular hairstyle either.
Alicizationalready has Alice as its “Heroine” character. So forAlicization Lycoris' original “Heroine”, Futami wanted to do something different than the usual pretty girl. Instead of focusing on whether Medina’s character design will be popular or not, Futami believes the most important was picking a charadesign that would fit her story the most. He wants players to experience the game, feel Medina’s soul, and see what they think of her then.
Yousuke Futami also explained how similarly to Medina, all theSAOOriginal Game Character “Heroines” have relatively short hairstyles, to not clash with Asuna’s long and girly hairstyle.
Strea, Philia, Seven, Rain, Premiere, Kureha, Koharu and Zeliska all have short hair or shorter hair than Asuna.
Producer Futami also recently explained Silica isn’t wearing a red outfit inAlicization Lycorissince Medina (and Lisbeth) already wear red. Silica also wore blue or yellow outfits in past games.
As an important note, in Japanese media, a “Heroine” character do not designate a female hero or protagonist, but rather points to a female character central to the story. The term is most notably used to designate characters the protagonist can hook up with in Galge / Bishoujo Games. However, “Heroine” characters don’t necessarily develop a romantic relationship with the male protagonist. There are also many cases of stories with “Heroines” and female protagonists, or with “Heroine” roles not filled by a female character. You often see these cases in theSuper Robot Warsseries for example.
Personally. I’d add that Medina’s charadesign isn’t that anti-heroine. Medina does have a well-endowed chest and an outfit which emphasizes it. She has a Zettai Ryouiki too. So she’s not that different in that regard. On a recent stream, Producer Futami also said Medina’s three sizes will be revealed at some point. That’s a regular occurrence with female characters in Japanese stuff and pretty normal.
Medina Orthinanos was first revealed by Bandai Namco on July 04, 2025,at the SAO Beater’s Meeting 2019 event.Five months after the game’s first announcement in March 2019. She’s definitely an interesting character and I’m looking forward to discovering her story inSAOAL.
SAOconsole games sales havetopped 5.6 million units in the world.
If you’d like to learn more onSword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris, you can check out: Our summary of thelatest stream and gameplay,gameplay trailers forLisbeth, Silica, Leafa, Sinon.The game’soriginal story and characters. Thebattle systemalong withcharacter creation and online multiplayer.Planned DLCs, the returnof bed scenes, and more comments from Producer Futami,including the game’s length and regarding a Switch version.
Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycorisrecently went gold.The game will launch July 9 in Japan and June 16, 2025, worldwide. You canpreorder it on Amazonto support us.
