I had a lot of hope going for this show, but it’s become quite obvious that the ones who once animated .hack//SIGN have actually gotten worse than they are now. Do they plan on selling any DVDs of this crap?

Let’s start with the basic fundamentals leading up to why this series sucked:

• very little fighting
• too much focus on character dialogue, not character interaction
• terrible animation, despite attempting 1280×720
• very little fighting
• sound effects for Data Drain and other more important stuff do not borrow from the games, instead making failed attempts
• actual designs for things like the Data Drain were not correct either; they had a similar shape but not the actual shape (why no 3D you asshats)
• very little fighting
• these guys had been animating Tsubasa Chronicle at the same time (which actually looks better than this despite its slow pace and predictable storyline)
• uh, did I mention very little fighting?

Hell, .hack//SIGN certainly had a bit of slow pacing and not very much in the way of fighting, but at the same time they were able to tell a story that kept people interested. We wanted to know more about Tsukasa, why he was stuck in The World, and what’ll happen to him in the end.

Haseo on the other hand, we already know what’s going to happen to him. It’s already shown in Volume 1 of .hack//GU; he’s going to have his ass handed to him by Tri-Edge and gets Data Drained. Pure and simple.

.hack//Roots, at its core, is merely a sequence of events that start from when Haseo first joined The World R:2, leading up to some point midway through Volume 1. Part of this content also attempts to retcon stuff in Volume 1 but considering I’m still looking through Volume 2, I’ll have to consider the anime as utter bullshit and pretend most of it never happened.

Mind you there were some important details that were interesting that actually are relevant to the games, but even then there’s not so much of it and the anime shouldn’t even really be doing stuff like this. It should be more like .hack//SIGN, telling a story about a character that’s completely independent of the games, so that we’ll be more interested in finding out what happens to this character, albeit a few cameos from .hack//GU members along the way.

This series sucks, don’t watch it. [/gamespotstyle]

Instead, read the .hack//CELL short story novel if you can find a translation of that, play the more superior .hack//GU games, and you’ll have a great .hack time. Trust me.

P.S. .hack//GU+ is not really canon despite me scanlating it. .hack//GnU… another story.