.hack//SIGN

6 reviews - 17.0 total score (Explanation of the rating system)
avg. score: (2.8)

6. Kyosuke

Well folks, here is a perfect example of a "Boolean" anime! .hack//SIGN is the type of anime that you will either love or hate to death.

Let me start by saying that if you want action in your anime, you should skip this one...there is almost no action at all and the episodes are all composed mostly of dialogue between characters. Surprisingly, it wasn't boring and I found myself asking for more after each episode. The things that really kept me interested in Hack//SIGN are the music and the artwork. Yuki Kajiura (who did the music for Noir) has surpassed all her previous works by creating quite possibly the best soundtrack ever for any anime to date. As for the artwork, the environment and character designs are both original and beautiful

In the end, I found Hack//SIGN really good. I'm afraid though that many people will be disappointed by its lack of action and rather slowly developing plot. But if you stick with it, you may be nicely rewarded and introduced to the growing Hack universe.

5. Bugmaster

This show has a great premise: a kid gets stuck in the virtual world of... well, The World, a massively-multiplayer online RPG. However, as any Everquest player knows, those type of games tend to consist mostly of two things: a) people walking around, and b) people chatting. For some inexplicable reason, .hack//SIGN chose to focus on those two aspects of online gaming. Most of the series (and I really mean about 80%) consists of still shots of two characters talking to each other; their lips move a little but that's about it. To make matters worse, they are not actually saying anything interesting. The characters, such as they are, alternate between making speeches at the viewer, and reciting the game manual from memory.

So, since the animation and the story are a failure, the only redeeming point of the series is the soundtrack, right ? Wrong. While the music itself IS very good, it almost never matches the events that happen on the screen. You would get serene or upbeat music during dramatic scenes (well... such as they are), and dark and brooding music during happy scenes (again... such as they are). Not to mention the fact that the lyrics get in the way of dialogue at times.

To be quite fair, the series does improve about halfway through. There is some character development; the music becomes better attuned to the scenery, and we even see some actual animation now and then (as opposed to still shots of talking heads). However, all this just builds up to a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion. Thus, there are simply not enough redeeming features to save the series. The barely-coherent fansubs hammer the last nail into the coffin.

In other words, while I would highly recommend getting the soundtrack, the anime itself is probably not worth your time. Unless, of course, you happen to suffer from insomnia and are allergic to sedatives.

4. Olmanek

Oh come on! You call that an ending? Once you've watched the series, sit there for just a few seconds, and ponder the ignominious stupidity of the ending. Now, try to remember the last 26 episodes, and what they managed to accomplish in those 26 episodes, don't feel bad if you can't think of anything, there wasn't anything to remember. As problems occur one must come up with solutions, and so our well intentioned band of idiots and techno weirdos and weird peculiar people who wish the days of knights still existed but only so long as it is the perfect romanticized ideas of them, with pride and courage and honour and a code of morals, try to reach helpful conclusions to solve the problems, this was the only impressive thing in the entire series, as I can't for the life of me figure out how they reached solutions they did, totally unrelated incomprehensible ideas which everyone agrees on as the best method. Then you have all the things left unexplained, countless things, and they're not interesting things. This is a wretched series, and it just seems to get worse and worse as time goes on. Our main character Tsukasa is weaker and more annoying than Shinji, at least Shinji occasionally went berserk, Tsukasa just sits around moping and being totally unsocial able and entirely incomprehensible, that's all, he has one fight scene at the beginning on the series, ONE! More importantly why anyone would want to befriend this defect eludes me, no reason is ever given, or why they continue to try and help, or why they don't appear to have anywhere else to be. Now another thing you have to keep in mind is that it is set in a game, so, it makes it real hard to worry about a character dying, it also makes it hard to appreciate any of the tacked on suspense. The animation was pleasant, very reminiscent of Noir in style, you know, that severely depressed feeling the whole thing has, and in peculiar contrast for the dysfunctional characters, it's so very boring. I'm not going to bother getting any real coherence out of this review, it's not worth it. Terrible series, should never have been made, if seen destroy it.

3. Yogi

This title is interesting in that all of it happens in a "virtual game" The characters are only characters in a game, and you are at times reminded as such. However, their struggles and interactions seem as real as anything in "real life" Of course, it isn’t JUST a game, as the events in have some effect on the Real World as well. While being interesting, the pacing is SLOW. It almost seemed as if the director pulled every trick to make this one 26 episodes. It’s pacing is comparable to Aquarian Age and, believe it or not, DBZ. Characters wait five episodes to do something they could (and should) have done immediately. Oh well.

2. 3rdEyeVision

Tsukasa is one one of millions of players in a game called " The World". The World is a huge online RPG that reminds me a lot of a real game called " Ragnarok Online". The story begins with Tsukasa finding a treasure of some sort that causes him to become stuck in the game. Why can't Tsukasa log out of the World? Who has given him this awesome power? What is REALLY going on in The World? Other players join Tsukasa to try and help this painfully shy player piece together the puzzle. Sounds awesome , right? Well, it starts out that way too. I was hooked on this show until around the middle when things get a bit slower and the plot takes a turn for the worst. Sometimes a show like this comes along and just makes me say " damn it, this started off great but ended up in the gutter." Is it some part of Japanese culture to leave the viewer completly confused at the end of a series? NGE did it, and so does .Hack//SIGN. It starts off strong , like nothing could de-rail this train , yet somehow , it manages to leave me in the wreckage. The animation is great, can't complain there, but that can be a pretty minor factor when you try and remember the show. I recall it looked good, but what ended up happening in the end again? Maybe this show could be suggested to those who like to partake in multiple viewings of a 26 episode series, but once is enough for me , or too much in this case, but it is worth something just because of the original story and characters.

1. Iodine

Though .hack//SIGN has a good premise and plenty of interesting ideas, somewhere, somehow, things went terribly, terribly wrong. Despite the involvement of several big industry names, the series comes off as a sloppy, hamhanded mess. Each episode is driven almost totally by dialogue, which is for the most part obtuse and annoyingly vague. Though characters say ominous things and theorize endlessly about everything under the sun, very little ever seems to get done. The action, despite the fantasy game setting and weapon-wielding characters, is sparse and uninteresting. The story itself often seems to be stalling for time, unsure of what it's trying to accomplish. Plot developments come slow and are very easy to miss or misinterpret. By the infuriatingly incomplete ending, it's hard to figure how a plot so thin managed to take up twenty-six whole episodes.

The technical elements are also disappointing. With an artistic sensibility very close to Noir, the
series is much more concerned with atmosphere than movement. The lovely character designs have nothing to do but stand around and talk for most of their screentime. Yuji Kaijura's music is once again heavily leaned on to fill in the aesthetic gaps, but the obnoxious choral themes with their nonsense English lyrics are tedious at best and get worse with overuse. Finally we have the characters: Tsukasa, Subaru, Mimiru, Bear, BT, Sora, Kinkan, and Kurim, who are sadly empty and muddled, much like the show the World they inhabit. In short, .hack//SIGN's only real triumph is in being one of the most severely disappointing anime ever produced.