Why is the anime story different from the movie story?

As mentioned by most users above, Progressive is an alternative take; a Remake of the Aincrad Arc, so it won't be completely coherent with what was shown in the Anime.



Yeah, definitely. It's basically confirmed that the producers are waiting for the Final Arc to be finished in the Light Novel to adapt it entirely, which is why they are focusing on Progressive and Gun Gale Online Alternative for now.

*a lot* happened btwn Progressive and floor 56. Something major happens with the end of the Elf War campaign; also a lot of ppl die on Floor 25; Kirito and Asuna split up, on painful terms... hence Kirito joins the black cats later on. We don't have a ton of info about what happens between, but even in the anime you can see Kirito gets pretty messed up for a while, while Asuna eventually becomes the vice commander of the most prominent guild in SAO - which is beyond stressful. She's clearly become a lot more hardened than she was back then. So it's not exactly surprising that her and Kirito are gonna butt heads on some stuff

that said, the Progressive movies are their own canon that didn't even try to match the anime canon (nevermind the original light novels)... so there will only be more continuity issues lmao

(no I'm not still salty about how they adapted/butchered much of Progressive in the movies, why do you ask?)

@Dhanamerdeka - no we don't. We only know where her hair comes from in the Progressive movies - which have no bearing on anything else. "Asuna's hair comes from someone who literally doesn't exist in this story" makes no sense.

Anyway I don't understand how "the Progressive movies have small filler details I like" is relevant to anything I said.

@Dhanamerdeka

Games having alternate routes is an entirely different thing, and I'm well familiar with it. I'm a huge fan of Fate/Stay Night for example - yes, all the routes are canon (even tho they have contradictory events), that is the nature of that story. On the other hand, Fate/Zero (the prelude to F/SN) is *not* canon (and Nasu himself has stated this), even if much of it is compatible with (and might even match) the canon. Does that all form part of a larger "Fate" in my head, and inform my perception of the characters and story? Yes. But that doesn't change the fact that Fate/Zero is not the official version of the events of Fate/Stay Night. In the same way manga anthologies can be really nice, bc they let you get into things the main story doesn't, explore things that contradict it, etc. And none of that has any effect on the main story.

On the other hand, SAO is not a non-linear work. It is a franchise with separate canons - the novels, the games (multiple canons within that), the main anime, and now the Progressive movies. Then there's also stuff like the side stories/doujinshi that Kawahara has written, etc. Except for the 2 novel canons needing to match each other, none of those has to match the other, or even match the official version - because they are in a different canon from each other. As far as the movies and anime are concerned, they don't need to care about Philia, Stream, Seven, Rain, Premier, etc. That's a beautiful thing, since it does allow for a fuller/more diverse portrayal of everyone and everything, and it would be really hard to create if everyone had to match. The version of Aincrad in SAOIF (which I also very much like) has some stuff that's wildly different than the official story as well.

There is a key difference between the Progressive movies and the games though. The Progressive movies are an *adaptation* of the canon material. Meaning they have some duty to properly reflect and represent that material. Obviously there's always going to be some changes in any adaptation - that's inevitable. Personally, my issue with the Progressive movies is with the scope and nature of the changes... but also it's completely irrelevant here.

The OP asked why don't the Progressive Movies and the anime match each other, and "different canons" is the answer.