Kazuto Kirigaya

* SAO
* Real life
* Female form

## Voices

**Kazuto Kirigaya** (桐ヶ谷 和人, *Kirigaya Kazuto*), born as **Kazuto Narusaka** (鳴坂 和人 (なるさか かずと) , *Narusaka Kazuto*), and known as **Kirito** (キリト, *Kirito*) is the main protagonist of the *Sword Art Online series*.

## Appearance

Kirito is a handsome young man with black hair, fair skin, and black eyes.

Kirito described the appearance of his avatar at the beginning of the game and the beta-testing phase as having the appearance of a ridiculously handsome protagonist from some fantasy animation, looking noticeably older than he actually was. His in-game height was equal to that of his height in the real world to prevent the extra height from hindering his movements.

In the full version of the game, during Kayaba Akihiko's tutorial, all player avatars were changed to reflect their real life appearances. After this change, Kirito's SAO avatar had slightly long but neat black hair and black eyes. His delicate face showed no trace of masculinity, allowing people to easily mistake him for a girl.

Kirito's clothes later in the game consisted of black pants with a black belt that had a large silver buckle, a black V-necked shirt that was worn underneath a black trench-coat with gray lining going down the sleeves, and black boots with silver plates to protect his shins. He had a silver plate worn on the left side of his coat, and a pair of black fingerless gloves. He wore a strap that went over his right shoulder and under it to wrap around his left side. In the last months of the game, he used «Elucidator» and «Dark Repulser» as his main weapons. After being defeated by Heathcliff in a public duel and being forced to join his guild, Kirito donned the red and white uniform of the Knights of the Blood.

At the beginning of Project Alicization, Kirito wore a hand-sewn pale blue short-sleeved shirt with a V-shaped cut on the chest which was tied with a light brown cord along with trousers and hand-sewn leather shoes. Two years later, after he became a valet in the Sword Mastery Academy, he wore the standard gray uniform, like all first years and non-elite swordsmen do. In the second year of the academy, after he became one of the twelve elite swordsmen in the academy and was allowed to choose a color for his uniform, he wore a pitch black uniform.

### ALfheim Online

Kirito's initial appearance was that of a default «Spriggan», which he chose because of the race's black-themed equipment. Instead of the normal black forelocks hanging from his head, his black hair stood in natural spikes. His large eyes appeared mischievous, his ears were pointy, and he had dark greyish blue wings. He was equipped with a large greatsword, intended for larger players, such as «Imps».

On June 23, 2025, Kirito changed his previous spiky hairstyle into his old SAO style due to Yui complaining about it being hard to sit on the spiky hair. Later, he also acquired a new coat and switched his greatsword to a new long sword, with an extra one in his inventory.

On December 28, 2025, he obtained the «Holy Sword Excalibur», and used it as his second weapon when dual wielding, but only in extreme cases, as he promised himself not to use the sword for personal gain.

### Gun Gale Online

Kazuto's avatar in Gun Gale Online belongs to the rare «M9000» series. It is an avatar that many male players dream of having, due to its feminine appearance. Kazuto's avatar in Gun Gale Online is both shorter and more slender than his spriggan avatar in ALfheim Online. Although the two avatars share the same black hair and eyes, his hair now flows down to his shoulder blades, while his eyes are larger and shinier. The innocently bewitching gaze from his eyes, framed by long eyelashes, was so different from his previous avatar that Kirito himself momentarily forgot that he was looking at himself when he inspected his appearance for the first time. The avatar also has pale white complexion and red lips. These characteristics often allow others to confuse him as being female. This often causes great confusion to people, such as Sinon. He is equipped with a 5.7mm «FN Five-Seven» handgun and «Kagemitsu G4» photon sword.

## Personality

Kazuto is someone who is not good with words, as stated by Klein, and can be quite direct.[citation needed] This is due to him not having many friends and closing others off because of his love for computers. Thus, he can appear to be rude to others, such as Lisbeth and Sinon. Sometimes, he actually seems to enjoy angering and teasing people as well. Also, from time to time, Kazuto can be quite overconfident thinking he can do things others cannot

Kazuto is almost always a calm and collected character, rarely showing any signs of distress. When Kayaba Akihiko announced that Sword Art Online had become a Death Game, Kirito was able to quickly accept the new conditions of the game and take immediate action to increase his chances of survival.

However, Kazuto is actually a kind person, willing to sacrifice himself to help others. When the death of Diavel during the 1st Floor Boss battle resulted in players accusing Kirito of withholding information as a beta tester that led to their leader's death, he decided to become a scapegoat by naming himself a Beater to distance himself from the average beta tester, ensuring that they would not become victims of unfounded hate by drawing all the ire of the players onto himself. He also tends to comfort others when they experience hardship, such as Silica after she lost Pina.

Kazuto is also a very emotional person and lets his emotions control him from time to time. The deaths of Sachi and the Moonlit Black Cats had haunted him until his marriage with Asuna in Sword Art Online. Sachi's death, in particular, had a huge effect on his personality and motives, making him very distant from others for a while. Kirito also temporarily lost his will to live when Asuna was killed by Heathcliff.

Kazuto is a person with incredibly strong resolve, willing to do anything and everything in his power to accomplish something that is important to him without any hesitation. When Asuna was being held in ALfheim, Kirito was bound and determined to set her free and immediately attempted to fly up World Tree when Yui confirmed that she detected Asuna being at its top, despite this being an impossible task. He also attempted to fight his way to the top by himself twice despite being annihilated the first time.

After escaping Sword Art Online, Kazuto attempted to atone for his past mistakes, such as mending his relationship with his cousin Suguha, whom he had ignored before becoming trapped in the death game.

## Trivia

* The name Kirito is a portmanteau of his real name, Kirigaya Kazuto ("Kiri" from **Kiri**gaya and "to" from Kazu**to**).
* Kazuto currently lives at Kawagoe City in the Saitama prefecture with his family, though his uncle is frequently away from home.
* Kazuto has notable skill with computers, managing to build a computer from parts during elementary school, finding his erased records in the national registry at the age of ten, as well as managing to stop the SAO server from deleting Yui by converting her program into an object and storing her into his NerveGear as environmental data.
* Kazuto rides a bike which has also had a multitude of passengers including Asuna, Suguha, Shino and Alice.
* Kirito is a two-time first place winner for the Top 10 Male Characters in the Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi!  awards (for 2012 and 2013). He placed third in 2011 and 2014.
* Kirito/Kazuto usually refers to himself using the personal pronoun ore (俺, ***ore***).
* Kirito likes calculating random things, like the volume of the cake that he is going to eat.
* Kirito has a tendency of using a window instead of a door to exit the room more quickly, usually when he senses danger or in awkward situations, though sometimes just for convenience.
* Kirito's favorite skill is fishing. He even continues raising his fishing skill in ALO.
* Kirito has attempted to climb Aincrad via its outer wall. However, his ascent was halted by a system barrier, nearly causing him to fall to his death.
* Kirito uses a self-made PC with a 24 GHz octa-core CPU.
* If Kirito were to be an animal, he would be an orange wolf.
* Kazuto's favourite dish is brown stew chicken with mushrooms due to its similarity to Ragout Rabbit Stew from SAO. Due to Asuna's influence, his other favourite dishes include teriyaki and mayonnaise hamburgers, shio ramen, and honey pies.
* Kirito used to dislike spring onions until Asuna cooked some for him.
* Kirito believes he would have pursued Asuna as a love interest sooner if she had not been so cute. He now regrets this, as he only had good food in SAO when he was with Asuna.
* Kirito has attempted wielding three swords at once but had to abandon his idea when he realised that it felt like his teeth would fall out.
* Kazuto/Kirito likes to poke on the cheeks of sleeping girls. He has already done that with Asuna,
* Kirito said that it seemed that everyone in SAO, including Asuna, viewed him as being older than he really was and, since he had never denied it, he had trouble admitting it to her at some point in the story.
* Kirito suspected Asuna to be older than him but thought she probably viewed him older than he really was.
* Kazuto got an extremely average IQ score in the test he took during middle school.
* Ever since the second year in SAO, Kirito has been known to sleep a lot. His sleep also seems to be an "AOE" skill, as people looking at him sleeping, with Pina and Yui sleeping on him, get sleepy themselves. He himself states that sleeping when one can is the 2nd most essential point of the Aincrad-style.
* Kirito was an ideal person whom Kawahara wanted to become. Kawahara commented that he always hesitates to act, pointing out that it took him seven years to finally apply for the Dengeki Award.
* Kirito's preference for black clothing began with the first rare item he obtained from a boss drop: the black coat called the «Coat of Midnight». After that, he began to like colour black and, by the end of the game, all of his clothes were mainly black.
* According to Yui, Kirito's in-game yawns last about eight seconds on average.
* When doing Kirito's GGO character design, abec first drew him with breasts to not think of him as being male and then erased the breasts when the designs were done.
* Kazuto's GGO avatar is informally referred to as «Kiriko»Template:NoteTag. The series' author acknowledged this as a commonly used name.
	+ In Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, a non-canon game adaptation set in Gun Gale Online, Kirito's secondary avatar, with his canon Gun Gale Online appearance, was registered in the game as «Kiriko» by Kikuoka Seijirou, when he created the avatar for Kirito to use for the Bullet of Bullets.
* In an official character popularity poll hosted by Dengeki Bunko for the cover of abec Art Works, Kazuto's SAO avatar ranked fourth, GGO avatar ranked nineteenth, his Alicization avatar ranked twenty-eighth, while his real life persona ranked twenty-second.
* In the web version, Kazuto's avatar in SAO's beta was twenty centimetres higher than his actual height and with long, mint color hair.