.Hack//Sign Explained in 10 Minutes 

.Hack//Sign walked so SWORD ART ONLINE could RUN!!!

At 30 this is still such a cherished fucking anime, and franchise, to me. Seeing this show as a child really was an *experience* and I hope more people continue to discover it.

ALSO THAT THEME SONG WAS CRAZY AS HELL. 😆

One of the greatest animes ever made. So ahead of its time. I'm 33 now, been a fan since i was like 11-12

Well, the SAO books came out in 2009 and the original .hack series came out well before then, like 7 years prior? .hack series started developing around 1998-99, so .hack was technically the first of the two.

The nostalgia this channel brings back is unreal 😂

.hack is the thinking man's SAO. Obviously .hack came first but it's still a fair analysis.

This show is a Toonami classic, bro! Thank you for making this video to spread more awareness about it and bringing my nostalgia for this series back to life! You're the one, man! Also this has some serious SAO vibes going on for it looking back today, now that I think about it and a little bit of Code Lyoko if you think about it, too! Which was also on CN back in the day! Anyway, what a legendary series, now time for me to go back and rewatch the show and get drunk on my nostalgia! Yes, I'm an old man if you were going to say that! Nah jk, I'm only 20, I was just playin' with y'all! Anyways, thanks again, Kasper!

Thanks for this, I forgot about this series and didn’t realize how much of it I could remember. I loved it as a child and look back I can see how much it has shaped my entertainment preferences through the last twenty years.

SIGN is basically part 1 of the story and the .hack IMOQ games are part 2 to the story. If you like SIGN you'll probably like the game's continuation of that story with a new cast of characters. Though I wouldn't blame you for pirating and emulating them as Quarantine goes for $250 these days, hoping in vain that Bandai Namco gives the go ahead for a remaster or remake of those games at some point. After you beat each of the games there's a episode of the Liminality OVA that corresponds to them. The same studio and composer behind SIGN did this OVA as well, if you think SIGN's opening song is a banger every opening song for Liminality is just as good, and the ending song for the OVA is amazing as well. They add quite a bit more lore to the story and give some context to what's going on in the real world during the events of the games. If you plan on reviewing the other two anime I'm going to warn you that they are no where near as good as SIGN is. Legend of the Twilight's anime is pure cancer, especially after it deviates from the Manga. The Manga is significantly better and made even better if you read the first AI Buster novel beforehand. Roots is a very poorly paced explanation of what happens in the 8 month time skip at the beginning of G.U. with most of the characters not mattering to G.U. much at all. It's mostly just a big waste of time. I highly recommend checking out .hack G.U. Last Recode. It frequently goes on sale for around $10 on Playstation and Steam, and you do not need to watch Roots to enjoy it. I'm a bit miffed on how dumbed down the difficulty is with this remaster, but the story is still great regardless. Watch G.U. Trilogy afterwards to see the cutscenes really polished up and turned into some pretty cool fight scenes. Lastly if you're going to check out the 3rd series of .hack I recommend Quantum, a 3 episode OVA, and the Movie/Beyond the World which was only released in Japan. Both are very good entries to the series, but the rest of the 3rd series is pretty messy. There's a butt ton of Manga and Novel retellings of the game's story, but I think the only one that is really worth it is Another Birth as it goes more in depth with the events that happen in the IMOQ games from Blackrose's perspective. I think the only other Novel I really liked was Cell and that was about a random character that showed up in one of the later episodes of Roots. it was a pretty compelling story about a character infected with AIDA. Also comparing .hack to SAO is blasphemy and I won't stand for it lol.

awesome timing on this, just starting the old ps2 games and couldnt recall the hack//sign story all that well. great video!

This is a video I didn't expect to see in my subscriptions, what a nostalgic throwback

We need a remake of the Hack//Sign anime so bad. Still the best "trapped in a game" anime to this day. Seeing it with upgraded artstyle and animations would be a treat.

I never gave that show the time of day when I was a high schooler but went back years later and man did I miss out on an amazing introspective story!

Thank you for making this content for us og fans

Thanks so much for this well thought-out synopsis. I was in my late teens still playing EQ and watching this back in the day. I loved the music and the show was so captivating. I think I even played a .hack// video game that came out later. I've never watched sword Art online, maybe I need to check it? 😅 I just stumbled here as I was jumping from Spotify to RU-vid to try and find music videos about dot hack and I appreciate the nostalgia you've wrapped up for me.

Lol I'm glad you said something about the dot hack song cause that shits fire. 😂❤

I loved this anime growing up, for over a decade i wanted a game just like The World R:1.

I remember as a young kid they started up an anime channel on TV, until then my only real experience had been DBZ at the time. I watched one or two anime and I dont really remember which ones they were, but I remember vividily when .Hack//Sign came on and it was like nothing i'd ever seen before, then it got kinda freaky as after I watched it the same episode kept repeating over and over again throughout the rest of that day. I guess they didn't have enough series to fill the time slots, but for some reason chose to just repeat .Hack//Sign and man did it make this already unique show stand out more.

100%, this is my favorite anime, game, and probably comic if I ever had the chance to read them… I remember playing this with my two best friends in early childhood before being separated from them by my parents’ divorce. We spent so many hours playing the series, attempting to reach higher levels than the other two, and it led to some wonderful times. Friendly competition is so influential in a positive way when it’s done right. The nostalgia that comes from the anime and games sends me spiraling to this day… this comment isn’t relative to the series in itself, but the fact that we spent that time together on the .Hack//SIGN games specifically is what makes it so nostalgic for me to this day. I have yet to complete both .HACK//SIGN and .HACK//G.U… Part of me craves the completion, but I still hold dearly those memories of back then and I feel like the completion would lead to me forgetting those times. Hands down, this is my favorite series, again. In realistic fashion, The Matrix is my favorite live action series. I guess it’s foretelling infatuation with technology, while still understanding the implications of withholding that which we as a species cannot control, and are not ready for… only time will tell.

God, I feel SO vindicated someone else pointed out the Sword Art Online basically being a copy of .Hack cause I ALWAYS felt that way the day I even heard about SAO. Only reason I can imagine it got more popularity is purely because it had more action in it.

The funny thing about dot hack sign is the fact that I used to appear on Cartoon Network's Friday night's anime block next to Cyborg Soldier 009 before the Adult Swim block was even a thing. That's right I have a really good memory. Trust me I hate it. Two different shows were aired before the creation Adult Swim. .Hack//Sign and .Hack//Legend of the Twilight.

I kept waiting for the fights to happen and they never happened! I don't think it really helps that most of these hack anime are prequels where most the series plot happens in the video games, so when u watch this by itself it's extra confusing.

I was 14 when it came out, and it was one of those series, and there are SO VERY FEW, that I watched, didn't understand, but knew I liked but also couldn't understand why.

Watching this video of .hack// Sign makes me wanna break out all of my .hack// DVD and Blu-Ray copies. And go on a bing watch. Thanks for bringing back childhood nostalgia. And memories for me.

Being half asleep when it aired didn't help my childhood self understand wtf was happening

I remember watching this before I even had a concept of what an mmo even was and I couldn't wait to try one myself but was too young to secure a sub to everquest. Then wow came and blew my mind

.hack//SIGN is special, it present the intention to play a MMORPG very well, not merely forced into a world. The later Anime series like G.U. just doesn't capture the same spirit.

Great video my friend

😢best anime ever

i Just finished watching it Masterpiece

❤ Nice anime

Absolute classic. How about this... I rented the discs of the anime from Netflix so I could watch it all in order in full! Old school Netflix was great for getting anime in the mail.

Underatted Channel

I loved this anime

Hey thanks for the video ,great job. I was going to ask if you have time could you continue doing videos for the dot hack series I know that there were several other dot hack animes, I would love to see what ultimately ended up happening with the whole story of dot hack. Thank you very much.

I would catch this show at random times as a kid and could not for the life of me understand wtf was going on

SAO did, indeed, steal .hack//SIGN's drip. It even stole its soundtrack composer, Yuki Kajiura.

this show was SO FORMATIVE for me, as both an MMO junkie and a queer person. It was slow and eerie, and i loved it. Id stay up all night to watch it. I have the sholw show on DVD with the collectors edition DVD holders. i LOVEd the games. I was and am obsessed with this show. I cant believe i was todays years old when i found out this show PREDATES FINAL FANTASY 11 AND WORLD OF WARCRAFT.....like what were they drawing inspiration from?! EverQuest alone? Surely not! I am sad to find out that they list the source code for the original .hack// ps2 games; so well NEVER get a remaster and the few copies that do survive are hella expensive. I still have mine but im worried about them deteriorating eventually. And I hold out hope for one day getting a .hack/// MMO some day .... T-T thanks for this video lol

🔥🔥🔥

It’s insane how you managed to condense soooooo much dialogue into this. I could barely follow anything after the first few episodes

.hack sign: aka tsukasa mopes about until Subaru gets thirsty

Trippin balls and watching dot hack is a bit anxiety inducing id imagine but also mysterious enough to keep me watching i bet

Sword art online could never be this cool tbh.

Sick

Truly amazing series and franchise. I love .Hack. sure I enjoyed SAOs first show. But it never hit like .HACK

Dot hack is one of my most favorite series. on the same level as berserk with me

I felt the same way! I was pretty confused on what the show was about when I watched as a kid but I decided to rewatch again a few years ago on my mid 20s and I had such a changed perspective of the series. the psychological aspect really moved me 🥹 wish I could rewatch dot hack roots the same way but ugh I'm already in love with current Haseo that it was hard to revisit him when he was still his selfish and cocky self 😩

That’s right. It was a yuri all along!

Its weird how nostalgic this absolutely dry (as the pavement on a hot day in Texas) anime is.

Zaaaa wordooo😂😂😂

"I rewatched it in college" high A F lmao

I’m playing IMOQ (I rn) after watching Sign a few months ago and I gotta say sign put me to sleep, I know it’s essentially a lore dump but holy hell they could have made it you know have some action, or hell even had the characters break their monotone talking up. I’ve played G.U. And it feels like the polar opposite, Haseo can’t stop screaming and everyone in sign just woke up. Infection feels like a solid middle ground so far, and I’m enjoying it 1000x more than sign lol

Ah .hack this anime influenced all my teenage years, i still don't want an mmorpg like sword art i want one like .hack, and the soundtrack, oh the soundtrack i still blast it nowadays ahahah. .Hack sign was actually very in advance in its time because it's also LGBT as fuck, a girl who is transformed as a male and have a relationship with a girl and then when they get back in the real world they are more than friend as we can see in .hack zero, they have date.

Yeah not “confined” to a wheel chair, just a chair user. But yeah the music was the shit. This was a solid vid

this is one of my favorite shows of all time. i watched it when i was 13 or 14 and i find it funny that at the end it turns out tsukasa and subaru were lesbian the whole time, and later in life (18) i realized im lesbian lol. i haven’t ever done drugs but this show made me feel weird and tripped out. also it’s probably yuki kajiura’s best soundtrack, which is saying something considering she did the noir and madoka magica soundtracks. this show is just so underrated.

If dothack sign had a bigger budget, it could have been a masterpeice. Great story but animation quality can be shotty, and more action scenes would have been lit.

I swore this had more episodes 😂

I've watched this very recently actually,Tsukasa's plot twist was interesting but other than that things in the anime were proceeding extremely slowly and only like the last 5-6 episodes made sense in terms of completing the plot.Also please make a video about it's sequels as well(legend of the twilight,roots/gu trilogy)

Dot hack root and other related to dot hack please

Remember Piros killed Mia/Macha

An Shoji is my anime waifu.

Wierd Theory, Main Character is Lain from Serial Experiments Lain in the videogame world

I saved you video to programming lessons

This is why I don't like sword art. It was just a cooy of dot hack.

I love that Tsukasa is trans and lesbian at the same time, SAO could never

Don't make them like that anymore! Nowdays it's greed and no care for relationships.

Nice video bro,I like the opening for the anime but man this show was boring as fuck.

.hack began production in 1999 and launched anime (//sign) and game (//infection) in 2002.. while SAO started webnovel in 2002.. your vid is good (minus the long intro) but calling .hack a blatant plagiarism is kind of a blasphemy lol the inserts making it worse.. am i wrong about that? and it's kajiura not kajiuri

if only the dialogue and pacing weren't terrible it'd be a good show.

The amount of people who call this series SAO makes me cripplingly depressed. SAO's writing is trash by comparison. It's like when I dressed up as Dante from DMC 4 for Halloween and everyone called me Starlord. THEY. ARE. NOT. THE. SAME.

.Hack// series is the real one instead of SAO

//

.Hack crawled so that sword art online could run js I watched this at 12 years old lol thats why S.O.A is a copy 😂😂😂

Thanks for saving me 26 episodes of this damn boring excuse of an anime. I hate susaka and how boring everything in this anime is. You know how bad it is?, neo genesis evangelion reuses scenes, but this anime does that like 10 times worse (such as like what toei does with one piece but insanely worse).

The worst anime I have ever watched. I rate it Trash-Tier.

SAO>.hack

Nope. You completely messed up and butchered it. Sigh...

.hack is boring

Eww - SAO was running in a wheelchair

Referencing SAO over explaining the story REALLY ruined the like count. Its borderline clickbait. I'm halfway through and know nothing of Dot.Hack//Sign