.Hack anime series( Sign//Roots//Quantum)/Trilogy-Beyond the world

There is a heapin hell load of talk of Sword Art Online or .Hack series on the Naruto forums I go to so I thought I'd pay tribute to the OG of adventures in video game virtual series turned to an anime series (as far as I know of).

Tsukasa, Kite and Haseo for most awesome and impacting protagonists

Oh come on's. No one here likes the .Hack anime series? Y_Y

The fact that the series drifted from actually trying to mimic the MMO mechanics of its day to being a straight up pseudo-mystical Shounen series like the Big Three may have hurt it. A big part of SAO and its sequels is the fact that the rulesets in each game are consistent enough to spark debate and only get broken near the climax of each arc, if then.

Sorry, only played the game.

@Recon

Sword Art Online pales heavily in comparison to .Hack broski.

To quote a youtube commenter:

Well, the entire anime franchise is going to be rereleased soon by Funimation, so I'm going to be looking into it.

@ Zendervai

indeed.

While I like my unofficial DVD copy of .Hack//Sign I'm curious to see the new features they add for the.Hack//Sign collection.

Re: How well .hack reflects MM Os

The original series and its sequel to a lesser extent were spot-on in their representation of MM Os but I'd argue that the newer series are far too inconsistent in the way they treat MMO conventions.

Eh, .hack having more action s it went on didn't surprsie. It is an M Mo, after all.

I feel that the .hack series always had too much of a focus on tackling anomalies outside the regular structure of The World's gameplay and society. To be more faithful to real MM Os the series would have to increase its focus on mechanics (There's still so much we don't know about the actual gameplay experience in earlier versions of The World) and official end-game content.

As far as I know SAO does a slightly (YMMV) better job in portraying actual game mechanics and community foci. Characters tackle endgame content on-screen and there are somewhat detailed discussions about the point and ability systems and rankings. SAO feels more 'gamey' than .hack so I personally find it more convincing as a franchise about games.

.hack has been alternating between metaphysical fantasy and standard shounen action since the latter part of the first series with only a token nod to game conventions besides the ubiquitous teleports but that may be because it's more rooted in the RP side of things.

Eh, I don't mind.

Especially the cool Cg fights in the .hackGu trilogy movie:

like this one:

I watched that several times over when I first found it, too. Later on the thought came to me that MMO fights - including those scripted as climatic duels - just don't work that way.

Wasn't the WORLD created after some sort of global software crash with some form of virtual reality? Why wouldn't they work off a different framework?

They did. It's just that the original .hack series (Tsukasa's adventure) started with a huge pretense of following rules that were familiar to MMO players but those strictures were gradually dropped from anime to anime.

@Recon

SAO isn't even close to accurate portrayal of MMO's. This is also coming from someone who played an MMO for over a year (FFXI).Most people met were focused on talking and seldom saw people in battles more.

@demongodofchaos2

.Hack//Roots had more action than //Sign which was a prologue and it would be pretty nonsensical to have so much action without explaining things.

As I said before Tsukasa's case of being unable to log out is much more serious and better look at things than SAO. SAO's attempt at showing being unable to log out is too damn cut and paste and robs the mystique of the game by introducing the game ware of "Nerve gear". The MMO "The World" didn't have that but the Your Mind Makes It Real due to the mysterious elements of the game putting people into comas.

@Zendervai

No, you're confusing "The World" with Altimit. It's the computer software all computers use after the global network crisis called "Pluto's Kiss". "The World" is completely separate all itself. Description from dot hack wiki

"The World" was based off an epic poem by a woman named Emma Wielant whom Harold Hoerwick loved. It was translated into the prototype of the world (the version prior to .Hack//AI Buster and .Hack//Sign) and taken further by CC corp once they inquired on it after Harold's absence.

edited 11th Sep '13 3:58:57 AM by Couchpotato20

SAO gets more points for tension.

Tsukasa was annoying-as-hell. We get pastes from his life in the real world; that "he" is actually a "she" with an abusive father. I'm rewatching SIGN at the moment to remember how exactly Tsukasa gets out, and I remember why I hated his role in the series. "Selfish, you're so selfish, you're such a pest" - shut the hell up already. He always went on and on about how other people were interfering and being rude.

It's portrayed in a grimmer light because SIGN provides a few dramatic glimpses into what the players are doing in real life. It's hard to sympathize with him until you catch up with his backstory later on.

SAO, however, was a totally new game that imprisoned thousands, if not a million people IIRC. You saw what went wrong the moment that everybody lost their character avatars. People were forced to rely on each other, and they failed horribly at that. Player-Killers showed up; people unintentionally killed other people because they thought SAO's "Killed Off for Real" premise was utter bullshit. Kirito and others raced to gather resources before everyone else. I haven't finished SAO due to disinterest around the 4th or 5th subbed episode, but I imagine that there were kids playing the game who got stuck in their as well, and I mean little kids, like that girl Kirito rescued in the 4th or 5th episode.

Imagine the horror when parents and relatives tried to remove the NERVEGEAR and ended up killing their loved ones before the news reported what was happening to SAO players. It's even scarier, from what I've watched, because we don't see what's happening in the real world, we only hear about it from what the Game's Creator tells the players. And at the end of the first episode at least, we start seeing names getting crossed off a list of SAO players. That shit still gives me chills.

Kirito was a much more sympathetic protagonist then Tsukasa. He was just a beta tester, and as a result, that put him at odds with the other players. There was one episode, the 3rd I think, that showed his grief over not being able to save a female player that really got to me. That was a pretty tragic episode, watching his futile attempts to find an item to bring her back. Tsukasa rarely had moments that made him feel like a person stuck in a terrible situation. Perhaps that was even the point of his character, he/she used the World as an escape, so when he got stuck in it, all she wanted to do was hang around and loiter. Makes me wonder what kind of player Tsukasa was like before the events of SIGN.

Of course, SAO is downright sillier. I've seen a GIF involving one character being attacked by a tentacle monster, and I've heard things about SAO turning into a romantic comedy. And with its focus on completing a 100-level game, I question how 26 episodes worth of philosophical upheaval and character development can stay interesting in a digital world where everything pretty much stays the same without any hackers.

dotHack was sort of my first love and I've stuck with it. It was strange, I used to read all the chatter about "how amazing and unique SAO was" and feeling the need to point out that dotHack already existed.

edited 29th Nov '13 3:55:39 AM by FOFD

Well, if you want to go towards MMO Mechanics, the games, where you'd think those mechanics would lie, doesn't conform very well to MMO conventions. The games are made to be games for the story, the details outside of that are missing. How people get rare items besides hacking them into existance with Data Drain for instance. The only examples are data drain and story events. The games are good games, just not good single player portrayals of MMORP Gs.

Quantum on the other hand, was really good at showing some MMO themes.

@FOFD

Tsukasa's mood made sense considering he could FEEL everything he experienced in the game. That is no joke. Whenever hit by a monster, whenever in a cold ass climate. Also there's the fact that if he's killed it does a number on his psyche. SAO coasts too much on action to get where it needs to go.

.Hack//Roots should be redubbed. Shit is simply horrendous.

I'm thinking maybe I should watch this before watching Sword Art Online since this is kinda the classic 'trapped in a fantasy RPG' anime. But there are a whole lot of shows and OVAs and whatnot under the 'Hack' franchise title. Hack//Sign seems to be the original, but which of the others (if any) are part of the same story and which are just spinoffs? (No spoilers, please!)

edited 23rd Feb '16 3:17:07 PM by Meklar

They're all set in the same story, it's just that they're set in different versions/iterations of "the World". Yes, there were different updates, literal server meltdowns, and recreations of game architecture, and the game itself is, in-world, more than 20 years old, and spans 3 generations and more of players — the universe is VERY hard to get into.

Well, okay, but I mean in the sense that something like Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Zero or Please Teacher and Please Twins aren't really part of the same story despite being tied to the same universe and made by the same studio.

The main character of roots was actually a side character in SIGN (using a different character), so they aren't completely unrelated...

Okay, that was...kind of a spoiler? But it didn't really do anything plot-wise and I didn't name any names so...

edited 23rd Feb '16 3:31:30 PM by HanabiraKage