Sometimes we need to rewatch them as adults to understand more about these underrated series because it discussed serious topics like depression, isolation, and suicide. We really need to see more Dot Hack content like anime based on AI Buster, Epitaph of Twilight, Fragment, and Another Birth. If they're successful, hopefully we'll see remakes or remaster of the original IMOQ series or .hack//versus soon.
I’m a millennial that grew up seeing .Hack on TV but for the life of me could not understand it and did not find it very entertaining. At 30 years old, I find it a fascinating and more intellectual piece with important themes for the world we live in. Trying to understand .Hack is no easy feat and would love to see one, comprehensive and understandable, series that covers everything from beginning to finish.
Pay me enough and I will explain every second of every part of the series and how it relates specifically to your life in particular and on a day by day basis. dot hack was a prophecy and a lesson, more than it was entertainment.
Funny I found this after finishing all GU games. I used to play Rebirth and Reminisce when I was a kid and just finished all three a few days ago. Now I'm gonna watch all the anime and play the other 4 PS2 games. Thanks for making this video
Valkneer if you have all 4 ps2 games of the original .Hack// quadrilogy, you're super lucky or were willing to dish out $100 < for the last game. If you don't have them already, I recommend viewing the prologue they spliced together in the last recode, it covers everything relevant to the first four games, even including cutscenes. If that doesn't satisfy you read the books, they're told from the perspective of Black Rose and even include some irl backstory.
All of the anime is pretty good, I didn't dislike any of them but I have to say that Hack//Sign is definitely the best of all of the animated shows. The story/plot, the characters, the background music, the everything from Hack//Sign is no doubt 'the best' of .Hack, in my opinion. I'm actually very disappointed that Hack//Sign never saw a video game release itself like we got with the events that take place after Hack//Sign (the events of the IMOQ video games for the PS2 where you play as Kite). Atleast we got the anime, I'd be bummed if it didn't exist (the anime of Sign, because it is so damn great!) but at the same time, it doesn't excuse the fact that they should make a video game of the events of //Sign. I'd like one similar to how Rahxephon was on the PS2, basically playing through the events of the anime series, maybe with a few possible endings or something. Or however they'd do it. It could be awesome, but who knows what 'the creators' will do. I think it'd be a great decision, and a money making one. But that is just me. xD
There are a number of them, Sora (Haseo) was turned into Skaith by Morganna going comatose at the end of //sign. Sieg (Kuhn) was data drained by Skaith, going comatose. Elk (Endrance) had a connection to Mia, which was Mecha (also seen in //sign). Wiseman (Yata) and so on.
Other than that, I gotta say, Sign and Roots were two immensely good animes, full of subtle cues, refined atmosphere and realistic characters you could very much relate to. Especially if you're ever played an old-school 2D MMO like Ragnarok, Dofus or Wakfu.
@@AzureKite191 The unwashed masses can't handle this much quality, and the like. Also if it was made, it would most likely end up being pretty Sword Artsy, instead of carrying the introspective legacy of its prior works.
AHHHHHHHHHHH (FUDGE SAO!!!) SAO IS JUST A CRAPY KNOCK OFF. .HACK WILL FOR EVER BE MY CHILDHOOD. I remember sitting down and playing the games with my best friend. I'd give up whatever afterlife there is just to go back to one day to play these games with her again. I have never been more happy then when I was playing .HACK with her.
I've been following this series, from the first Anime to the light novels and games, since I was a kid. I hope Bandai Namco makes a new game and the series is revived with SAO's popularity. I loved everything about the .Hack universe.
You know as much of a fan of the series as I am, I'm not so sure I'd want it to continue. Even though I really liked Quantum I kind of could see an underlying problem the franchise was running into, having to rely on the same comatose plots over and over again. But hey if they could find a new way to innovate it and put a fresh take on it, then I'm all for it.
"and for newcomers it can be confusing" Played both the game series' ages ago and a lot of things still confuse me. Replaying them to see if I can figure this shit out lol. My biggest gripe right now is with the wiki and how limited it is.
I first fell in love with .Hack as soon as the first game was released here in the US. I had never played an RPG so it was a slow start, but the game play was easy enough to follow. I had no idea how in depth and immersive the story would be. I have done my best to follow the story up to this point. I can't fault this guy, since this video was made about 3 years ago, but the latest from .hack is the re-release of .hack//G.U. also known as Last Recode. It is a remastered version of the 3 .Hack//G.U.games for the PS4. It also has a 4th part to the game series which loosely ties up the story for R:2. It also has a few other features such as a parody mode and a desktop that can really catch you up to speed on the whole story of .hack if you have the time to put into it.
I like how Haseo can actually be really easily explained as "A blue covenant character" with modern gaming. The Extent to which the Souls games pivoted the concept of the best of games while having this loose online element really makes me feel like a modernized Dot Hack game would have to have Souls-like multiplayer.
No fault to the guy who made this video, since it was made three years ago, but there has been a re-release of .Hack//G.U. for the the PS4 called Last Recode. It features all three G.U. games and a fourth installment that loosely ties up the story of R:2, and a few other features for the fans.There a few things that I have gripes with, but seeing as the story is pretty big, even some of die hard fans can get the facts wrong sometimes, but otherwise it was a good video.
@@animeguy10000000 so it makes two timelines originally after G.U we got the anime called Returners where it was some time after Haseo and co. saved the network from CUBIA and they meet up again in THE WORLD to celebrate their get-together party, skipping ahead Haseo and Atoli were walking together where they suddenly saw an AIDA that survived Ovan/Corbenix's Rebirth, this AIDA became AIKA in //Link In G.U Vol 4, the AIDA that was originally within Ovan became a rogue NPC called Kusabira and by the end of the game she merged again with Ovan's player data.
Thanks for putting this together. I fell off as the G.U. games came out as they were NEVER released in the EU, so never got to play them. I didn't even know about LINK until I saw a random opening video in 'relevant videos' on youtube and hadn't heard of the CGI movie until I saw this video, blurgh, I'm so behind on this :'c
ShadowBlazer3000 I might one day just emulate it...or bother to buy a power converter, an NA console and the NA games, but yeah, I was surprised that they felt the original .Hack games didn't do well in the EU :'c
Kyle Parks Ah yeah thanks, was aware of the emulator, but really wanted to play it on actual console, I might end up getting a NA PS2 and buy the games one day.
I remember being like 12 and catching a random episode of .hack//sign and was INSTANTLY captivated! The music! The music!! But yeah...I tried looking into it online and was so fkn lost... I just....gave up... after watching this I would've REALLY gotten into it or would've been overwhelmed and give up. Wow crazy!
I liked Log Horizon more than SAO. Overlord is also pretty great, though with some unique spin that makes it different from all the other VR based anime.
I've just read .hack AI busters and it was very good, there isn't any important conflict but it works very well as a prequel to .hack franchise. I liked more the 2nd volume than 1st.
Love the manga. Love the games. Love the anime. Now if only someone hadn't stolen my copies of the original quartet of games and my box set of SIGN... Still so much rage.... Only one's I've managed to replace are Infection and Mutation....still looking for Outbreak and Quarantine...and its been 10 year since the theft....and I *still* haven't managed to replace the anime.... Grrrr.....
UPS recently lost my entire set. The only installment I was missing was Mutation and it's Liminality disc. My fiance's already buying me new copies of the games, but he can only afford to do one each month. And he's a stickler for perfect copies, which makes it that much harder and more expensive to collect.
I read the Legend of the Twilight manga when I was a kid and occasionally watched Sign on YTV back on Friday nights when they showed a bunch of anime. Now I'm revisiting Sign and hoping to play all of the games one day.
Pretty good summation (you really should get a hold of the //Legend of the Twilight manga though, it has a more connective plot tone to it.) I am always glad to see a fan! Also //Epitaph of Twilight as you mentioned is early, Very early. It's about Lara Hoerwick, Harald's niece who stumbles upon his early beta of //Fragment. Unfortunately it's never been released in English. I can't help to mention that with G.U.//Rebirth there was something called the //Terminal Disk which came with it which recapped the first four games and explained why "The World" became the "The World R:2" Finally, there is one very important piece of media which was released after the movie. It's called .hack//Thanatos Report which follows after the events of the movie on the trail of the agents and has large implications for the series.
Haha, I've been following since .hack//SIGN on Cartoon Network so many years ago... There's nothing quite like it. Even though imitators have come and gone.
I have only seen the .Hack.Sign series. It was very interesting, if not a little strange. The ending to it was quite baffling to me. I found out not long after that there were heaps of other series and stories connected to it, some before and some after, some canon and some not, this helped me to understand what goes where. Many thanks. Quite the puzzle.
I think the video left out the fragment multiplayer game as well, that was before infection in the timeline. Though it was technically a alternate world. However i don't see them making anymore entries to the series anytime soon. CC2 pretty much abandoned the IP after Link bombed. They figured out they could make far more off rehashing the same fighter title over and over. I think the recode release was just to test the waters to see if sales were viable, which had kinda low numbers of like 300k copies sold on release month.
i think you should've mentioned that the player for Sora in the original series would create Haseo in G.U. heh... that kid just cannot catch a break. at least he doesn't go comatose in G.U.
I personally found the best experience was playing all the games first, and then investigate everything else from there. The games felt like the main root of the story, and, as we can see, most later installments, be it manga, anime or novels, always are either spin offs, or single stories with no relation to the games (albeit some of them portray the same PC of the original protagonists over and over). Which is nice, and adds certain depth to the franchise, but I still feel like the games are the most important, and everything else is more or less secondary or a little addition to the bigger plane. I know Roots is an exception to that, but its also nice to see it after playing G.U and tie everything in. It feels really natural too, after playing the first four games, you go to G.U, and the second you see the avatars and what they are, you're like "Ooooohhhhh". Just my humble opinion. Not to be misunderstood, I know you can watch and read everything BUT the games, and say the games are an addition to that, but I just feel most of the investment for the franchise went to the games.
I think that's a good point to make with the games being the primary focus of the story. Liminality was mostly conceived to take advantage of the PS2's DVD player and SIGN was kind of an afterthought to flesh things out some more.
Yeah, the franchise is still amazing though and I didn't mean to discourage anyone from reading or watching all the other available material, some of which are really good and interesting. I didn't mention it but the video is really good and it explains and shows most .hack media some people might not be able to come around by normal means and puts it together into the timeline, great job.
I'm not sure if you're aware of both .hack//bullet *light novel* and .hack//thanatos report *OVA* since none of these were shown in the timeline. Both of them refer to characters, events and terms in .hack//LINK, namely the Immortal Dusk incident that almost happened, the NAB (Network Analysis Bureau), the organization Mama, and Real Digitalization. Central characters include: Tokio (LINK, bullet, Versus), Ryuuji (LINK, bullet, Thanatos), David (Bullet, Thanatos), Tanaka (Thanatos, Beyond the World ->as Gondo) dothacktranslate.wordpress.com/projects/hackbullet/
I just finished .hack//sign just wanting to watch an anime while occupying myself with other things and... had no idea what was going on for most of it lol. I might just be slow but I had more questions with each episode while the last 3 seemed to piece the story together a bit but in the end, ill never fully understand what I just saw. Like why introduce characters towards the end that are apparently involved with other parts of the series? I'm glad you all enjoyed this anime, but I think ill end my journey here because I probably would just be more confused watching the other installments.
As I understand Epitath OF twilight takes place before AI Buster, do haven't read Epitath of Twilight as it had just released by the time I was reading dot hack and sadly don't think an English version was released
this was s great video, I learned a thing or 2 lol I've played all the games and seen there respective anime along with //dusk but I didn't know about the other stuff
I really like the .hack//g.u. series... btw i hear cc2 is planning on 3 new games. well, one of them is final fantasy 7 remake. and the 2 still remain unknown. I really hope it's a new .hack game and i hope it's a sequel of G.U. What do you think bout it?
I have heard the off and on rumors of a next-gen .hack game but nothing has ever seemed to come of it. I'm not so sure CC2 will go back to it after so many years since a major release.
ShadowBlazer3000 it's kinda sad u know. cuz, .hack series is been one of the game that filled my childhood and i'm still playing it now over and over again.. i think i'm gonna cry HAHAHAH
Just to add some context on why legend of twilight manga is considered by most to be the canon one, it's because the manga, spoiler alert though, included aura's daughter, zefie, in which she was supposedly mentioned in G.U. in the bbs or something, based on some forum answer about why aura didn't do anything after the original tetralogy game, mentioned that the last person to saw her was Pi's brother in the old the world server. Which you can read here anime.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/what-happened-to-aura-between-the-events-of-g-u-and-the-movie
Right off the bat, there are a few entries left out. Up to you guys to determine if they're important. I would say yes, imo. 1) Fragment (PS2 game): The beta game on which The World is based on/would eventually become. Call it a game that 'broke' the fourth wall. It's the 'PC game' that the players in the game played before playing 'The World'. When this game came out, there were actual internet servers that hosted this game. Players could even customize their avatars to look like the .hackers or create original characters of their own! 2) Rena Special(a yellow mini manga): There was a Japanese-only figure of Rena-in-Blackrose-skin that came with a manga. In it there was some story in which Rena, after the events of LotT(Legend of the Twilight), interacts with Hokuto, the witch character from AI Buster. (I have it myself.) 3) .hack//ENEMY (Trading Card Game): Five series of card expansions. Includes characters from the first series of anime and games. Does not include anybody from LotT or Roots/G.U. 4) Guilty Dragon(s?)(Trading Card Game): I don't know if this is canon nor do I know the manufacturer, but I have seen .hack characters on some of the cards. Although I've just watched this video, I forgot if the criteria for these entries were that they included any bit of story to the franchise OR that they just needed to be .hack-related? If the former, sorry for bringing this up. As an aside, I had totally forgotten about Epitaph of Twilight. I need to hunt that down now.
In general an amazing video, great job. I wish to make two comments though. One: Perhaps it would have been a spoiler to mention this, but the events that would have supposedly continued to take place in .hack//ZERO would eventually motivate Tokuoka in Liminality, as the main character of Zero was his daughter. Two: You didn't mention the Terminal Disc and that kind of upsets me :(
+mrmiffmiff Interesting, I did my best to do some research when making this video but likely I still forgot a few things, missed some details. Ah well.
I never understood the constant balking at the term "PKK" that CCs always have when reviewing this franchise. It's not that hard of a concept. Hell, Eve has Countermeasures, Counter-Countermeasures, Counter-Support, Counter-Countersupport, Anti-Counter-Countersupport, etc. Dark Souls has Blue Phantoms/Sentinels and Darkmoon, which are PKK and PK hunters for vengeance (more of an after the fact thing), respectively.
I was only exposed to two .hack entries and was confused because they were so different. Now I know that it was because one was .hack AI buster and the other was .hack Quantum. No wonder I was confused.
Thanks for the video, I haven't touch the series since going part way through outbreak when it came out and watching Roots some time after. From what I can tell there isn't that much extra to see if I want to get back into it and get a "full" experience.
There are two other novels with sidestory in the second season .Hack//CELL and .HACK//Alcor There is also an anime called Thanatos report,you can watch it when you clearde .Hack//Versus.And I think it was the real end of the third season Sorry about my shit english
those 4 .hack PS2 games were/are still some of the best games I have ever played. I would say FFXI (for those that know pre Abyssea) is the only other game that I can say I liked as much. I remember showing a friend I think the 2nd game, where you fight that dragon near the end of the game. I walked up to it and it did its area of attack stomp and wiped us all out. Needless to say my friend was not impressed. Is there a way to play those 4 PS2 games again legit way through some store of not?
I'm sad to say there's still no way to play the originals beyond finding original copies or emulation. Bandai Namco doesn't seem interested in re-releasing or remastering.
You forgot doc hack cell the 2 novels by the way and hack Alcor manga. Very long winded stories but worth it when you understand the timeline and completed them all.
20th anniv of the franchise and no further news for the original quadrology series being remade/remastered. I hope that Last Collection trademark become reality
Do you have any active links you can share? Thing is they don't appear to be publicly available. There is the Iridium-Based project for an The World MMORPG game but they never passed the demos being finished, and they also never made the demos fully available to the public, if they did they made it unavailable as of now from the looks of it. I found a copy very old 2D games of .Hack, but they won't run for some reason. So, I get that some exist but as far as finding a functional copy of one, or one that has a publicly available link, it seems very rare. If you can post some links to the ones you're referring to I'll definitely check them out, I'd love to. I've been researching this for a few weeks now, with little luck finding anything much except the project by Iridium Based that they gave up on, and also the two 2D Rpg maker type ones but the 2D ones I cannot even get to run, as mentioned. I will continue to try to get them to run in the future and post videos if I get results. I also found a mod for Minecraft, that is what it looked like, where it is basically 'The World' from . Hack but you play in Minecraft style graphics, blocky 2D stuff and such. It's cool. But that is a mod for Minecraft if I'm not mistaken. While I'm always open to romhacks of video games (that would be cool to see for the PS2 ones!) and mods, and such - I'd much rather see fan games. So if you mean you know of fan games of .Hack, not just mods of already existing games (like the fan created.Hack mod for Minecraft and such), I'm definitely interested. I just can't find much of anything in regard to fan games, so I'm open to see what links you can show if you know of any that exist.
i'll be honest... .hack//sign is probably the only thing one that was good in my opinion. the music, the anime, the story, it was awesome and probably ahead of it's time. honestly it's probably what got me so into RPGS.
At this point, I might as well just watch stick with Roots and the GU games. Not a big fan of this whole interconnected universe where you got to do homework to understand what is happening. I liked Sign a lot but that was mainly due to the characters and music.
zero takes place inbetween sign and the first game.. as in the first game carl the heroine from that novel is found to be in a coma.. and the epitaph novels take place before ai buster.. *continues to watch*
oh forgot the end of the world ova that tied part 1 and part 2... also forgot guilty dragon an Android game that takes place after the dothack movie... there is some other stuff around that time frame like manga, an online novel and an ova that was about a cyborg investigating Mama.. but anyway awesome video
okay so this game was effected by the deception and what i can remember is the main character was that guy with the one eye but he has 2 eyes and he was the first character and they locked him away in this coffin prision and they released him in the beginning of the game "last recode" and he was the first hero and become the villain in the last recode version and the guy that has the girl cloths on with the short white hair is the hero and the guy with the round red hat was the hero but turned villain. he was so powerful that they locked him up in that coffin and was kinda being controlled and could turn back to being Good but had superpowers and the real villains decided to take advantage of his power and turned him evil. the story was Perfect and now its NOT f me bro wtf kinda of alternate deceptive bs is this? xD
