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Yui (ユイ, Yui?) is an Artificial Intelligence (AI), found by Kirito and Asuna around the forests of the 22nd Floor of the floating castle Aincrad. Her official name is «Yui-MHCP001» (Mental Health Counseling Program 001).
Appearance
Sword Art Online
Yui had long, dark hair and bright black eyes.[4] Her default equipment consisted of a one-piece white dress with a ribbon tied around her waist.[5] She temporarily wore a long-sleeved pink sweater and a purple skirt, as well as red shoes (brown boots in the anime), during her time with Kirito and Asuna.[4]
ALfheim Online
Yui's Pixie Form
As a Navigation Pixie, Yui is ten centimeters-tall and wears a long, light-pink tube top dress with detached sleeves, pink anklets, and a blue flower in her hair.[6][7]
Personality
As Yui was originally a girl without memories, she felt insecure about not knowing who or where her "parents" were. This led her to assume that Kirito and Asuna were her parents. After the couple decided to play along as the girl's parents due to the girl's psychological condition, she became cheerful and shows great affection for her so-called "parents". According to Asuna, her behavior was like that of a baby despite her child-like appearance. However, she lacked any sense of fear, regardless of the intensity of the danger she might be in and even showed signs of rebellion and recklessness when Kirito told her that she had to stay with Sasha when he and Asuna wanted to go to a dungeon to rescue Thinker.
After Yui regained her memories, she told her in-game parents that she had become melancholic when the death game began, as she was not allowed to comfort players and was forced to continue monitoring their psychological parameters. After nearly two years of only seeing insanity, misery, and anger, she finally noticed a couple, Kirito and Asuna, who showed happiness and joy and, even though she was not allowed to interact with players, she continued monitoring them and even came to the forest near their home to be close to the two to experience their emotions. After being comforted by Kirito and Asuna, she regained her joy. Even though she was about to be deleted by the Cardinal System, Yui showed no sign of repentance, but tears of happiness, for she was able to be with her in-game parents.
Upon being reactivated in ALfheim Online (ALO), Yui still displayed a deep attachment to Kirito and Asuna, continuing to act as a surrogate daughter. She also scolded Kirito when he received affection from other women aside from Asuna, stating her "papa" was "cheating", but she did, however, accept Leafa and later Sinon into Kirito's life.
Chronology
Aincrad Arc
Morning Dew Girl
Yui's Heart.
After hearing about a rumored "ghost" that had appeared on the forests around the 22nd Floor, Kirito and Asuna decided to check it out themselves. There they met a young girl who suddenly fell unconscious. Initially, Asuna thought that the girl was the ghost and was scared, but Kirito rushed to Yui without hesitation. They immediately took her back to their Log House with them and were faced with several concerns about her. They deduced that she was not an NPC, as she did not have a quest flag, and that picking her up did not result in an NPC harassment warning. She also lacked a player cursor, which every player had, and was far too young to be a normal player as setting up the NerveGear signup forbade children below thirteen years old. Later, during a quest to find «The Army's» leader, Thinker, in the dungeon of the «Black Iron Palace», Yui touched a stone cube at the center of the safe zone at the deepest part of the dungeon and immediately regained all her memories. She proceeded to defeat The Fatal Scythe using the GM console's «Object Eraser» function that materialized as a giant flaming sword.
Afterwards, Yui, now knowing her purpose as an AI who was going be erased since the system recognized her as an "alien" due to having disobeyed the system's orders, expressed her gratitude to Kirito and Asuna for taking care of her. Just as she disappeared, Kirito used the still active admin access and his computer skills to retrieve and save her as environmental data on his NerveGear and store her core programming as an in-game tear crystal-shaped item named «Yui's Heart».
Fairy Dance Arc
Kirito finds Yui's heart in his inventory.
Yui was revived in ALfheim Online as a Navigation Pixie after Kirito found Yui's data imported from Sword Art Online. Yui led Kirito to the proper locations throughout the land. Yui also provided information, mainly through the provision of maps stored in the game's database, along as a player-detector and giving advice when needed to help Kirito find Asuna.
Yui and Kirito were eventually able to rescue Asuna from Oberon (Sugou Nobuyuki). During their reunion, Yui returned to her regular body, and they shared a hug. However, their reunion was interrupted by Oberon. As Yui was in danger of being deleted, she fled the scene. Yui attempted to reunite with Asuna and Kirito afterwards, but she was only able to after Oberon was defeated and Asuna was logged out.
While Yui was sad that Asuna had already left, she understood why Asuna had to return to the real world. Before Kirito left to meet Asuna in the real world, Yui informed Kirito that a rather a large file had been transferred to his NerveGear's storage. Yui also informed Kirito that regardless of what happened to ALO, she would be fine because she existed in Kirito's NerveGear.
Some time later, Yui joined Kirito, Asuna, and their friends on a new adventure in ALO.
Celeste Fairy
When summoned by Kazuto during his ride on his Bianchi road bicycle, Yui appeared to him via a display in his sunglasses. After enjoying the sight of cherry blossoms through a camera, Yui was requested to help Kazuto with the navigation and data logging. After twenty minutes of Kazuto's cycling, Yui noticed a transmission coming from his bicycle. At his request, Yui paired with the device emitting the signal and visualized a girl, named Cel, residing in it. As Cel only reacted to input from a monitor, Yui offered to convey his voice commands to her. Before Cel was returned to her creator, Yui conversed with her and receive some information during their time together.
Extra Edition
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Rainbow Bridge
At the end of the «Deep Sea Plunderers» quest, the seven-member party of Agil, Asuna, Klein, Kirito, Leafa, Lisbeth, and Silica, along with Yui and Pina were brought back to Alfheim by a whale. After the group disembarked the whale at a beach in Sylph territory, Yui thanked the whale for letting the group ride on its back. Due to the group's concern about the conversation between Leviathan and Kraken, as well as the lack of a way to review the dialogue of NPCs, Yui reproduced their conversation for the group.
Later, Yui was also present during the group's attempt to reach the other side of the «Lightning Dragon's Nest».
Phantom Bullet Arc
Prior to Kirito entering Gun Gale Online (GGO), Yui was mentioned in a conversation between Asuna and Kirito about the possibility of her having a "younger sister" in the future and how great it would be if Yui could cross over into the real world.
Later, during Kirito's final battle with Sterben (Death Gun), Yui connected the Bullet of Bullets tournament broadcast to the heart beat monitor via Asuna's cell phone, which allowed Asuna and Nurse Aki see what was currently happening. After seeing that Kirito was losing the fight with his opponent, Yui told Asuna to hold his hand, which helped Kirito remember the gun that was still in the holster at his left side.
Calibur
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Mother's Rosario
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Ceramic Heart
While wandering a field in ALfheim Online, Yui wondered about the meaning of love, an emotion she could not understand. At the same location ten days before, she had met a boy who confessed to her. Thinking that he wanted to monopolize her, she had told him that she refused to belong to him. However, to her surprise, she learnt that this was not what the boy was seeking with his confession, as he claimed his intention was just to finally speak to her before resigning from the game. When Yui came to Asuna to share her anxiety due to not understanding the boy's words, she received a suggestion ask the boy in person.
However, the boy had already deleted his account, thus Yui hacked the game's server, discovering the boy's place of residence. Yui was taken to the house by Asuna through an Audiovisual Bidirectional Communication Probe. There, she learnt that the boy was actually a recently deceased elderly man who had a hobby of going into VRMMO games in his last years. She also discovered that before the elderly man passed away, he had told his adult daughter that he had seemingly met his deceased wife in ALO.
In the present, based on her experience, Yui assessed that the feeling of loss was what it truly meant "to love".
Alicization Arc
Alicization Running
After Kirigaya Kazuto was critically injured by a former Laughing Coffin member, Kanamoto Atsushi (Johnny Black), and subsequently kidnapped by Kikuoka Seijirou, Yuuki Asuna and her friends began to think there was no hope in locating Kirito. However, Yui convinced her mother not to give up, just like when Asuna was trapped by Sugou, Kirito refused to give up on finding and rescuing Asuna. It was enough to restore Asuna's resolve and with Yui's help, along with Koujiro Rinko (the deceased Kayaba Akihiko's love interest), Asuna was eventually successful in finding Kirito.
Alicization Exploding
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Alicization Awakening
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Alicization Lasting
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Non-Canon Chronology
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Non Canon: Some or all events and details given in this section, may be considered non-canon to the main story. |
Infinity Moment/Hollow Fragment
After the 75th Floor boss battle, Kirito and Asuna noticed that Yui's Heart was glowing upon reaching the 76th Floor. Upon opening the item, Yui was restored and became a partner character for Kirito[† 1].
During the events of the Hollow Fragment storyline, she helped Kirito understand the error that befell Philia upon arriving in the Hollow Area and she managed to recover some of her admin credentials during an event on the 76th Floor.
In the game, she has a younger sister known as Strea, another Mental Health Counselling Program like her, except that Strea has the power to play the game and fight the boss monsters alongside the Clearing group. When Strea was overtaken by the 100th Floor boss, Yui did all that she could to save her. In one ending, she managed to save Strea's life by absorbing her into herself, telling Kirito afterwards that she was alive. In the other ending, only accessible by completing a side quest in the Hollow Area, Yui and Kirito created an "Advance Difficulty Test" in hopes of freeing Strea. While it did not go as first hoped, they managed to free Strea from her prison, and Strea later had the option of becoming a game item, allowing both girls to go to ALfheim Online with Kirito.
Hardware
Yui is the first version of the «Mental Health - Counseling Program» of «Sword Art Online». She is a «Top-down AI» made to monitor the mental health of the players of SAO. She was made to be able to mimic emotions and be able to interact with the players of SAO. During the events of SAO she becomes self-aware and a fully realized artificial intelligence built from a program atop an existing computer architecture, which is why she usually appears in programs based on SAO. Top-down AIs can be considered as a cluster of binary.
VR probe
She later gains access to the real world through a VR probe (Audiovisual Bidirectional Communication Probe) designed and created by Kirigaya Kazuto.
Her core program runs and is stored on Kazuto's NerveGear local memory, and is about 3TB large.[8]
Image Gallery
Trivia
- The original way Yui was supposed to monitor players can be deduced from the opening animation.[9]
- Yui is also capable of accessing search engines and computer networks. Her thought processes are extremely effective, having an extraction rate of 95% of useful data.[8]
- Yui thinks that Kirito's most annoying habit is him napping anywhere and everywhere, as she gets sleepy from them too.[8]
- Yui enjoys communicating with Pina, as the familiar's intelligence is of a complex structure.[8]
- Although Yui would like a younger brother or sister, so that she would have someone to talk to, she also wishes to monopolise her Papa and Mama.[8]
- Yui is able to reproduce her original body in ALO, but only uses it when sleeping together with Kirito and Asuna, as her pixie body is more comfortable in many ways.[8]
- Yui is able to hear other player's alarms.[4]
- Yui's interest is breaking through firewalls.[8]
- Yui disliked Kirito's spiky hair in ALO, as it was hard to sit on[10], thus on June 23, 2025, she had him change his hairstyle to his usual one.[11]
- In the non-canon game adaptation, Hollow Fragment, Yui displays her sewing skills by making swimwear for herself, Asuna and Kirito.[citation needed]
- Yui appears in one of Asuna's win poses in Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax where she runs up to Asuna and hugs her.
Notes
- ↑ Only within the grounds of Arc Sophia or necessary story plots
References
- ↑ Episode 11 credits.
- ↑ http://www.swordart-onlineusa.com/staff/index.html
- ↑ Announced on the official US Twitter for Sword Art Online
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Volume 2, Morning Dew Girl, Part 2
- ↑ Episode 11
- ↑ Volume 3, Chapter 2
- ↑ Episode 16
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 Web version, EX00 Face to Face
- ↑ https://twitter.com/kunori/status/246992804151181313
- ↑ Volume 8, Calibur, Part 1
- ↑ The Day After Part 4
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