u/growlingscarab7

I should preface that I have not consumed every piece of SAO material, especially the LNs. I'd wager the progressive novels would probably make this post irrelevant, but i digress.

I've been playing through Echoes of Aincrad and finally got around to also watching Unanswered//Butterfly, and despite the the game and movie taking place only across the first 3 floors, they already have a very strong interpersonal relationship. I was thinking back to the original Aincrad arc's timeline of events in season 1.

EP 2: Kirto and Asuna meet on floor 1 for only a couple days and promptly seperate after defeating the floor boss

EP 3: 4 months after their "seperation", Kirito meets the moonlit black cats on floor 11. He spends just under 2 months with them, jumping around between floors 20 and 27. Kirito ends the episode on floor 35 six months later still pretty fixed on their deaths.

EP 4: 2 months later, he meets Silica on floor 35 and spends a couple days with her traveling to floor 47 and back.

EP 5: a little over a month later on floor 56, kirito and asuna meet again for the first time from the audience's perspective and they're not on the best of terms.

Given the timeline presented, they were apart for about 15 months and both had changed a lot in that time. It makes abosulte sense that they would be somewhat combative and not see eye to eye until they proceeded to spend more time together.

However, with progressive and now echoes of Aincrad, they meet again rather quickly on floor 2 and party together. Asuna's entire goal in Unanswered//Butterfly is finding kirito because he disappeared on her without notice and when they do meet up the Movie Original character teases them because of their apparent relationship.

As for progressive, I don't know much outside of the 1st movie, but to my understanding, Kirito and Asuna's story are very interconnected and they're constantly meeting up with each other. I would assume this is because Kirito is still the main character progressing the grand SAO story depite the novels being told from Asuna's perspective. From what i've looked progressive has only gotten as far as floor 7 or 8, so its still far off from retelling EP 3s main plot on floors 20 and 27 and even further off from their "reunion" on floor 56. It makes me wonder what the cause for their conflict is if the progressive novels ever make it that far, or if some of those aspects are going to get retconned.

Id bet there are already detail adressing this within the Progressive novels and would love to hear from those who have read them and have a deeper understanding.