In the first Sword Art Online opening (LiSA - Crossing Field), there is a scene right before the chorus that shows the hands of three different (I'm assuming they're different) individuals raising their hands toward the sky. The last appears to be Kazuto Kirigaya, aka. Kirito, and this is semi-confirmed when the scene directly afterwards shows him falling through the ground. Is this a correct assumption, and who are the other two hands before him?
1 Answer
I believe it's Kirito, Asuna and again Kirito
Starting with the 3rd hand
this looks to be Kirito's arm from the first episode. it would make sense as the next few frames show the sky becoming how it was when Kayaba appeared to announcxe the Death Game
Next 1st hand
This hand i also believe is Kirito's because it's the same style of sleeve and glove. the change of colour i'm going to say is because of lighting
Finally, the 2nd Hand
I believe this is Asuna. aside from my personal opinion that the hand looks more feminine we can see that before the timeskip where Kirito didn't have his Coat of Midnight and Asuna wasn't in the Knights of the Blood and thus wearing their uniform Asuna has a long sleeve of a similar style. the rim can be explained by lighting but i can't exactly explain the lines or color
the hands being Kirito and Asuna would make sense as they are the 2 main characters
also it is possible that one of Kirito's hands could be of when he was using his original Closed Beta Avatar that we see Kirito as before Kayaba forced all characters to have the appearance of their user. Kirito's Beta Avatar looked older than him and the 1st and 3rd hands look different in age
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.
Source: Kirigaya Kazuto > Appearance > Real World / Sword Art Online / Project Alicization (1st Paragraph)
and the older one being third would also fit into how that part is playing our similar to when Kayaba appeared which at that moment Kirito's appearance was his Beta Vatara
to dispel that any of the hands could be Sachi as that was my initial thought. while her coat in the OP is about the same color as the sleeve of the 1st hand and as the lines of the 2nd hand, as we can see bellow in the OP and Hollow Fragment (which didn't alter her appearance), Sachi wears a glove that extends down her arm. while it has lines in it like the 2nd hand, the 2nd hand clearly isn't wearing any glove while the 1st hand the glove and sleeve are separate, not to mention there is no band/ring on it as per all 3 hands
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1Just in case you might be interested, there's a non-credit version of the OP for cleaner screenshots.– Aki Tanaka ♦May 13, 2022 at 16:41