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So the returning characters are memory constructs, obv.
Not only is Geist an AI copy of Jyotaro, but the rest of Schiksal are personality splits that don't realize it. Parts of himself he cast off so he can be UBAR VILLAINU (compare/contrast Naraku of Inuyasha and Father of FMA).
Tokio is a trojan horse AI with false memories. Truth is he always had the virus in him, but he needed a few years to develop in a private server before he could be dispatched.
AIKA is exactly what she claims she is, but Saika is not Jyotaro's sister. She is, in actuality, a split personality of AIKA that believes she is, constructed in order to give her reason to enter Tokio's world and unlock him. AIKA's motive is love, but Geist only allowed her to get close to Tokio if she followed his plans, so Saika was created as a sort of "sleeper agent" not realizing her own motives are made up. AIKA is also an AIDA that knows love in all it's forms, like Tri-Edge's hate and anger. She created Saika for the above reasons, but also out of jealousy for all the sibling bonds the AIDA have seen, such as Jun and Pi, Saku and Bo, etc.
Now, the events of the game happened merely because Tokio entered the game. The virus took hold and began doing these time travel shit. That's because it's not time travel, but the virus already working at hacking into Aura, and so we manifest her memories (see the memory-viewing aspect of Avatar Space in GU+ and the GU Novels).
The whole game was in Aura's core the whole time, but was a metaphorical, allegoral journey to the center of her heart. We saw her good times and bad times, and there were even attempts to twist and confuse them in order to break her down. Aura expresses her disdain for being a deity very early on in the game, and the virus is showing this in all it's myriad paths. Eventually the virus gets through, but hold on: Aspects of Cubia? That's not even congruous. But you know what is? ...remember what Cubia actually IS?
Right. He's the barrier of her heart, right? His job is to make sure people keep away from her. In short, he's everything Aura hates about her job. He keeps people from truly knowing her, he's the danger that makes people want to persecute and control her due to her risk, and he's the personification of the fact that things go to hell whenever she tries to help, even though she is very kind....
(You could even see some sexual symbolism in this, but that's for another time)
Anyway, on to the "Death Queen Aura." It's not Aura at all, or rather, it's not her true self. Remember the Shadow from Persona 4? The Shadow is that which the human mind represses, denies, or ignores about itself. We all have one, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's the part of us that wants to tell our boss to go f*ck himself, but we pretend we don't feel that way so as not to get fired.
This being is actually symbolic of Aura's inner despair and nihilism. Her rage at herself and the world outside for her lot in life and the shit she's been dealt, created by the destructive barrier around her. She's kind, so she would never do anything evil, but she's also a human with good and bad emotions, so in her low points, she may have these sorts of fantasies. The virus, then, wants her to embrace this side of her and give in to it.
But Tokio and his companions don't want this for Aura, and since they are effectively her dreams, they represent her hopes and the flickering light of her inner resolve. They begin to win over the nihilism, but it will never be defeated. Not really. And so AIKA makes her decision; Aura's given so much to everyone. She's been forced to live as a god with an infalliable spirit despite having a human heart, prone to weakness. She was forced to give, and give, and give, and no one ever gave back to her. Not in a way that was truly meaningful or selfless. But AIKA knows love. And she has hopes, and dreams, and fantasies she wants to pursue. and she'll give that all up for Aura, so that someone can say they've returned the favor.
She remains in Aura's heart, as a shining light of encouragement that there's great things about being alive, even if no one is on her side, and things seem dark as night. The Nihilism is defeated, and Aura returns to her rest, allowing all the A.I.s that fought for her to become real and exist, continuing the dream as a reward for defeating the virus.
...As for Kite-Sora, I'll get to her now.
She is a memory of something that has yet to come to pass. That is, she is a daydream.
A daydream of what? She's a dream of what Aura wants to be, if not forced to be a Goddess. The next story will have Sora innocently go on a quest to "revive" Aura, reliving Kite's adventure in a sense. But then she'll learn the truth: She is Aura, deliberately reincarnated so she can be like everyone else and live her own life. In that case, at the end of her story, she will reject the revival, defeat the Big Bad or whatever, and decide to continue living herself. Aura's suffered enough...let her rest in peace. And let us celebrate the splendor of the life of a human being, and the dignity of a mortal.
And as Kite!Sora walks to join her friends, she will be stepping into the dawn after her darkest hour, and she'll secure the unwritten ending of her Epitaph; of her story. The end of Aura's story, the beginning of her own. And thus the end of .hack.
Characters
- More likely Subaru was raped by her.
- Video games, even Virtual Reality games, likely lack necessary equipment on the ingame models for that.
- This is "The World" we're talking about. It's supposed to be very realistic.
- Or could it be we were in Tsukasa's POV and what he saw was a battered broken up Subaru when her avatar was really just fine in the normal sense.
- When in doubt, the simple explanation is usually preferred: No one ever said Kaochin actually finished off Subaru.
- Video games, even Virtual Reality games, likely lack necessary equipment on the ingame models for that.
- Macha, incidentally, is now inside the Dumbbell Monster that Tokkio has absorbed from Tsukasa - the same place it was in the bonus dungeon of .hack//Quarantine.
- Considering that in GU era, Morganna Factor for Innis is going to attach to Shino but changed to Atoli because Shino was comatosed, this theory does have merit. Especially since in both cases the PC model between two "candidates" (as it were) are very similar to one another.
- This is an extreme possibility. The Epitaphs do have some sentience to them. Example, the player behind Sora in R:1 became Haseo in R:2. In R:1 (around the end of the SIGN anime), Sora was Data Drained and his character data was re-written as Skeith's red staff. Even after Skeith was defeated, the 1st Phase still had a link to Sora. Come R:2 and Haseo logs in, Skeith immediately knew it was the same person even if he didn't remember, and chose his User. Of course, because Skeith in R:1 was hijacked by Cubia...
- Jossed rather early on in Roots. As far as he remembers, Haseo has never played The World before, and decided to try it because some friends from school mentioned it. He starts his PKK career to hunt Tri-Edge after he kills Shino.
- Hilarious in Hindsight, as Sora clearly remembers his account after he logs back in during Unison.
- The character that appears in Unison is the AI Sora that was created in Quarantine.
- Ah, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome— The bane of all truly hardcore gamers!
- Azure Kite Data Drained Haseo, when it was only supposed to to be defending The World. Haseo couldn't lay a finger on Azure Kite, so why bother to Data Drain him?
- After the Data Drain, Haseo becomes much more mentally stable, just like (most) people who are infected with AIDA and the D Ded by Haseo himself. Even though he was defeated by the 'person' he blamed for Shino's coma.
- Jossed by Word of God saying that Azure Kite was aiming for Ovan, who was standing behind Haseo.
- Ovan's Theme, "The Epitaph is Told" can be heard after Azure Kite Data Drains Haseo.
Both are imature kids with lots of power in their hands. Unlike Sora, Sakaki is not likeable at all.
Judging by the Online Jack OVA, he forgot ever playing as Sakaki. His parents won't tell anything about what happened and Online Jack will be forgotten eventualy. Then he'll create another character and become one of the good guys. At some point, he'll have to research about Puppet Syndrome and learn he caused it.
Just like Haseo was a PK and became a PKK, Sakakiwill become either a PK or a PKK, suffer in the hands of Knight Templars and be horribly manipulated and betrayed. That's what you get for crossing a bunch of Moral Event Horizons.
- At some point, a "Not So Different" Remark may come up.
- Actually, you can write code that does something you don't know how to do; it's called emergent programming, and it happens in real life. Hell, Harald himself did it creating Aura, and she's constantly getting samples of human data through the game's natural processes; it's how she was created.
- Still, though, is it really that far-fetched an idea that Aura might have used Shugo as a template or something?
- Aura wanted to give the old Genetic Algorithm a spin.
- Still, though, is it really that far-fetched an idea that Aura might have used Shugo as a template or something?
It could be used for an in-universe explanation for why he chose that player name.
- This actually makes sense, as he refers to Orca by his real-life name, and seems surprised when Orca tells him not to use real names in "The World."
- The name "Kaito" is can be either surname and a first name (different kanji readings). Also taking into account Japanese usernames in a Japanese server, you can also take into account different abbreviated permutations of surnames and last names. That is to say, "Kaito" can be an abbreviation of someone named Kai Tousaka (first syllables of first name, surname, making this a Western order) or someone named Toshifumi Kaiba (first syllables of surname then first name, making this a Japanese order). In any case, considering someone *did* enter their full, real name as a username (poor Terajima), this does have merit.
Setting
- Characters' minds can be trapped within The World without any equipment connected to their bodies.
- It's an offhand, easily missed comment in the original games, but one NPC comments on how he dreamed he had played the game one night and then found that his character had leveled up and that his friends who were awake said that he had played with them that night.
- In .hack//LINK, the MacGuffin located within all of the major characters prior are called Chrono Cores. They link to the Akashic Record. The Akashic Record is an old, old theory - one of the definitions of being the Universal Unconsciousness that connects everyone's minds. Not all major characters have them; Subaru, for instance, is playing via handheld.
- The power of this plane seems to be increasing. It appears that the latest hero in .hack//LINK has been physically pulled into The World.
- This "increased" power has been present from the very earliest version. .hack//Epitaph of the Twilight tells the story of the first player of Fragment, Harald Hoerwick's niece. She was also physically pulled into the game, and only got out through her uncle's intervention. In the epilogue, Harald himself has similarly vanished.
- In .hack//Liminality, we learn Emma's poem - the foundation of The World (and predictor of the Cursed Wave) - was inspired by a "supernatural experience" of some sort. Immediately after, she became deeply interested in liminality, the metaphysical barrier between mind and matter, which also led to her meeting Harald. Emma could have unwittingly been used by a higher power to usher in this new state of being.
Plot
- This is possible. Morganna attempted to do this during the R:1 games but was stopped by Kite.
- The "asleep in the sea of data" concept was just to cover their tracks.
- Possibly supported by the Chrono Cores in .Hack//Link, they connect the player to the 'Akashic Record', and when removed, the players revert to an earlier mentality. They're literally using their own memories as save files.
- And you thought Microsoft was bad...
- Maybe Microsoft wrote ALTIMIT?
No, what it is a simulation with A.I.s and AI evolution. All the characters are advanced A.I.s interacting with more basic ones. They don't know it, though.
Impossible crossovers
There are too many similarities between these worlds for it to be just a coincidence, and Haseo himself (who is 30-something) could be in the com.net invention project. Considering that Adaptation Decay is common nowadays, why not in such a near future?
Incidentally, the mods and admins of the game are either the Adepts themselves, in a number of puppets, or advanced AI of the type Adepts are capable of creating. The 'Sea of Data' is the fringe between the pocket-dimension of The World and the rest of the Web. Morganna was an Adept who went rogue; everything else, with Emma and all, was programmed or reality-hacks to add depth to the simulation. Some of the characters Awaken and became Adepts; an example is Balmung, who Awakens during his adventures with Kite and joins the staff/cabal. The Adepts themselves appear in the game as the Phases from R:2, having built up so much Paradox that they were verging on Quiet; battling Haseo eventually gets them back in touch with their mortal sides, pushing back the Quiet for the moment.
- You know, this one actually makes sense. Some things in the game (like performing a psychic attack through a digital interface) blatantly violate the known laws of physics. This would make it possible that various events resulted from a Paradox Backlash when a mundane with computer science training noticed.
- Should be noted the character designs are based off of the designs created by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto who also designed for the Evangelion series. Plus we needed at least one of the Instrumentality / Time Lord / Haruhi WMGs in this section. TV Tropes tradition, after all.
- Instrumentality as a concept isn't much of a stretch here, considering all the inexplicable mind screwery that just keeps piling up through the series. The only real question is whether anybody will have to stay behind to keep the computers running, or if they're just a passage to The World and won't be needed once we all cross over.
- Someone will have to stay behind, in a manner of speaking, and it will be the then-latest incarnation of the Aura/Zefie AI chain, keeping the servers running from the inside. The World has already shown the capability to affect the real world directly (for example, rendering players' actual bodies comatose), and this ability will continue to grow until said custodian AI will be able to maintain The World indefinitely. This will also have the effect of giving said AI a mythical aspect for being able to exist outside of the digital world, as the material world will be completely emptied (since everyone has entered The World) and crossing the barrier between the two realms is a one-way trip. Of course, by that point Instrumentality might just take the form of The World physically and metaphysically meshing with the Real World, granting the "reality" of the Real World combined with the malleability and universal connectivity of The World.