| | Alternate title : Hack Sign
Studio : Unknown
Also involved: Bee Train
Licenced by : Bandai Entertainment
Length : 26 Episodes
Year : 2002
Genre : Adventure - Fantasy - Science-Fiction - Drama
Synopsis :
A series based on the world of "Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplayer Games" MMORPGs ( I hope I got that right.. heh ). Slightly in the future, apparently they have games where you can just connect your conscience into the online world. A person playing in this online RPG finds him/herself stuck in the game unable to log out along with the mystery that he/she doesn't remember who he/she is or has any memories outside the game...
Added : 2005-10-30
Synopsis by : Kaiser
Last update : 2007-03-12
Last update details : Modify info
Score : 6.47
Number of reviews : 36
Song(s) :
Opening #1 : See-Saw - Obsession
Ending #1 : See-Saw - Yasashii Yoake
Release(s) :
2009-12-30 -- Episode(s) 135 by DigitalSubs. BT Link
Found 1 releases. Click here to [ Find them! ]
Hits : 23701
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Posted by : Lightningcount12 
Posted on : 2010-06-06  
Story (3/10): Watching paint dry on a wall certainly would not be more interesting, but it would move faster than this story line. Seriously, .Hack is slooooooooooooooooow. This is the original series, which presented a great premise. The mystery aspect kept me in my seat every week; the wanting of knowing what would happen next, plus the music, helped me suffer through the horrendous pacing. But the story drops the ball. Even when it is somewhat moving along (I felt the whole thing was slow from start to finish) the actual story did not create the drama it wanted. It is hard to care about people dying in a game, even the comatose character who could not wake up. Of course, if you are a character in a video game you can never really die, but I still believe any death or suspense can still be achieved in the action with proper execution. I do not know how this better execution can be achieved; however, I am not the creator or a member of the staff. I am a viewer who understood the meaning of the themes and the overall aim of the story, but I found myself not caring by the end. Good premise + Bad execution = Irritatingly disappointing story
Characters (4/10): As with the premise, I understood what they were doing with the cast. A bunch of people who used this world as an escape (a fact among MMORPA players), where a video store clerk could be the captain of an infamous group of knights. I did not hate these people, but most of this cast failed to make me care about them. I liked Sora and Crim because they were strong, but not enough to raise this cast; albeit, Sora pulled off being enough of an enigma to make his character the most interesting in a dull cast. The cat, Maho, was interesting because he/she was a mystery, not for anything the character did.
Animation (9/10): Great character designs and even better background. I really saw the characters inside a simulated world. The barren landscape of this world, and medieval towns, gave everything a proper fantasy world feeling. Unfortunately, the few action sequences were not that good.
Music (10/10): The highlight of this anime. The songs and sounds really did heighten an otherwise lame anime. I love listening to parts of this Celtic-centric soundtrack; especially, the great song “Key of the Twilight.” I am always glad to hear See-saw; their great techno OP, Obsession, is awesome. The show might be below average, but the music was epic.
Entertainment (1/10): It was such a good idea; people in an advanced MMORPG world; why did I not like this? The fact that I should have liked this aggravates me even more. There were good parts to this show. But nothing made up for the slow plot and lack of anything outside of the music from standing out. I would caution anyone who gets excited over the synopsis to not get your hopes too high; I can almost guarantee disappointment.
Posted by : gpooj
Posted on : 2007-08-24
.Hack//Sign was a decent concept for an anime, and I admit when I heard about it I was excited to watch it. It was quite a big disappointment, here's why:
Story:
(2/10) - The story takes place in a massive online multilayer RPG. The main character Tsukasa is a mage type character and spends his time wandering around doing mostly nothing. He meets a few people who attempt to befriend him but Tsukasa would rather run away and be alone all the time without actually doing anything. There is an organization of guards who keep order in the game, some player killers running amok, and some twisted in-game entity messing with things. While that would normally merit a 5/10 from me, it was incredibly boring to the point where I almost fell asleep at times. There are entire scenes where two characters have a ten minute conversation about: "ooh, what do you suppose is going on, what is your real identity, blah blah blah". Very slow, incredibly boring, and mediocre plot.
Style:
(8/10) - One of the best musical scores in an anime. The closing theme has been stuck in my head since I first saw it 5 years ago. The still art is fantastic with very good backdrops at times. The lack of animated action limits the score to 8.
Lasting Appeal:
(5/10) - The anime was quite bad I admit, but the music is still with me, so a 5 is in order.
Pros: Good musical score.
Cons: Incredibly boring.
Interesting: The concept.
My Opinion:
(3/10) - A good musical score can't make up for all the shortcomings of this anime. The spin offs of this series are moderately more enjoyable, I don't recommend this series to anyone.
Posted by : Speedy778
Posted on : 2007-01-25 
This is one of the most well done anime ever. This would be in my top 10 definitely.
Those who gave this anime a review of 2 or less don't even understand what a real anime is. Minus the meaning of anime being foreign animation, anime in general should have storyline that involves all characters and builds to a dramatic point that unfolds to the undoing of the main character leaving them vulnerable to the villain of the story which includes the character her/himself. Also can be a storyline where a characters relationships become stronger, based on the actions of others. Anime can be any story aswell but that doesn't mean its traditional anime.
Actually this anime does have a story and deserves a 10/10, The story is about a girl whose in a comma and can't get out and is trapped in a game called The World, Where players of the game are free to do anything they wish, the main character is someone The World is trying to take advantage of because she can keep the AI named Aura asleep being a standard player.... You will have to watch it explaining to such stupid people makes me tired. Don't ever rate this anime below a 3 ever again PERIOD. I know my friend will not watch this anime because he doesnt like it, but he would give it a 8/10 because he knows its good... He just hates things like the matrix. Like how I won't watch certain anime, he won't watch this anime.
Art 9/10 - Series is old, accept the old animation style.
Build 9/10 - Series is slow, but that doesn't change its appeal to me.
Character Development 10/10 - May not explain all characters, but I don't expect it to tell me about some random person not even related to the story.
Length 10/10 - Animes' in general shouldn't be too long unless the have enough material to cover it. Sorry Inuyasha fans... I HATE INUYASHA!!! Don't mind its story though should have been shorter and less repetitious.
I wouldn't watch the last two episodes because they really have nothing to do with the anime, just a hooker for the game thats all. Now if your gonna review this anime like me first watch it, and look a the detail you most likely missed important pieces of information in the anime because you fail to read between the lines, now take care. Thank you for reading my review.
Posted by : xkrazydog
Posted on : 2006-04-22
I watched this anime... and I didn't like it... well not as much as I hoped, anyway. When I first heard of DotHack Sign I was hyped to see a cool anime that compliments the DotHack Game. And Unlike most, the game I actually liked. Sorry but I can't say the same about this anime. Let me explain why.
Graphics/Animation:
It's ok, decent for Animes in this time. But sometimes it can just look plain ugly. Like the character designs look ugly compared to the nice backgrounds and effects. If only their designs looked as decent as in the game.
Story:
The Plot is BORING. I'm sorry, but I have to be perfectly honest with that. The basic gist is that a character, Tsukasa plays the game and gets stuck. His little pals either want to delete him, or help him out, OR annoy him to death. One or the other. The Story is very empty... and I don't quite understand why anyone cares so much anyway. For the entire show they talk, flashback, talk, threaten, talk, flashback and then log out. Done!
Characters:
Tsukasa is a weak main character, he's a wuss. Plain and simple. He's supposed to be a wavemaster (mage/wizard class) but you don't see him cast a single spell. He's emo and acts like a brat.
Lady Subaru is a pacifist that makes Relena Peacecraft actually look interesting... Why she's considered a royalty is beyond me.
The only characters that are good and actually kept me slightly intrested was Crim, Bear and Mimiru. Everyone else either played no important role, or was just plain annoying.
Action:
For an anime based on a MMORPG, there is NO action. I think there was only 2 incidents where they actually fought... and LO it was Crim doing it. Tsukasa does nothing, plain and simple. Subaru is a pacifist, nuff said.
In the game, your supposed to fight monsters, make friends and get stronger... well... we only see someone fight a monster ONCE. Huzzah!
Pace:
You see no humor and the story moves like a snail. Constantly like maybe every other episode there's a flash back. Mostly about tsukasa... or Subaru. I think it got slightly interesting near the end, but the ending dropped like a rock. Like they got tired explaining everything so they made a huge monster appear outta nowhere to reak havoc, it was invincible but Tsukasa is free! Hurrah! The End.
My final thoughts: Even for Dothack fans, this anime is terrible. Maybe if you like the talking and the maintaining peace stuff you may like it. Other than that, don't buy it, keep it on the store shelf where it belongs.
Posted by : animetayl
Posted on : 2006-03-20
.Hack//Sign isn't a bad anime, but it isn't a good one either. The plot throws little tidbits of intrigue every now and again, but in the end, it never really wraps up a lot of what you're expecting it to. I realize that to get the true insight into .hack, you have to play through the games too. And in that sense, this series is flawed because people may not want to play perhaps 80 hours worth of game just so that they can make sense of an anime. This anime cannot stand by itself. And that's a serious problem.
The music was beautiful, true to Yuki Kajiura's talents, and I guess that's the only place this anime really shined. The ambiguous ending was a real letdown. It only confused me more. There were a few interesting segments of the anime, but overall the filler just served to slow things down to a crawl at times. There just wasn't enough action. I don't need hefty amounts of action to enjoy my anime, but it would be nice in a anime with an RPG setting. I mean, characters don't really stand around and talk all the time. Maybe they'd be a little more interested in actually playing the game?
Posted by : goathens
Posted on : 2006-02-22
This is one of those anime that made half of my anime club lose interest and leave, and those who stayed fell asleep.
The plot centers around a wet-towel protagonist (think Shinji in Evangelion, only more of a wuss) who is playing in an MMORPG and discovers that he cannot log out. The story progresses and we discover that there is some deeper force hiding in the shadows of the game's codebase, and meanwhile the main characters interact.
The music is one the program's strong points, and the opening theme is particularly catchy. None of it counts as ambience, and the show suffers for it when the music almost drowns out the characters.
The artwork on this program is very high quality. The animation is smooth, character designs are unique amongst all characters.
This program's writing, however, is very poor. The main plot is uninteresting, and the side-plots leave much to be desired. The show pulls the audience in two directions- in one way, the game is becoming more and more "real" to the users, while at the same time, the users' out-of-game personalities/lives come into play throughout. The overall effect is that the writers refuse to commit to either course of action, and two weak plots do not make one strong plot.
The dialogue is also weak. In this MMORPG world, much of the dialogue can be found at your local "emo" infested chatroom, myspace, livejournal, or other bbs. While the voice actors come out clear, most of them come out as apathetic as well. This is spot on with the character's personalities though- most of the characters don't really seem to care about much of anything. The overall disinterest of the characters carries over into a sleepy, disinterested audience.
So why do I give the bottom-barrel rating? True, there are some strong points- there are pretty pictures and nice music. However, the writing of the program makes watching Hack sign qualify as "several hours of my life that I can never get back." You can find spiffy screenshots and desktop backgrounds to satisfy the need for pretty pictures, and you can just obtain the Soundtrack to get the nice music. The rest is chaff.
Posted by : Chaps
Posted on : 2006-02-21
.Hack//Sign is probably the most famous show out of all the anime series in the .Hack franchise. With its great popularity, it's probably just just as many fans as foes - with good reason.
The visuals in Sign are fantastic. The art is beautifully drawn, and the colors are extremely vivid. The backdrops provide fantastic sights, almost like professional photography of breathtaking landscapes. The animation is good as well, although since much of the series is simply standing around and talking, it's hard to find anything standing out as exceptional.
While the art is excellent, it's not the most renowned part of the series. .Hack's OST is simply stunning. Yoko Kanno's compositions are breath taking; each track suits the environment beautifully. I knew right away that I'd get both soundtracks after hearing such quality music.
The character designs, combined with the eye candy art, are a pleasant sight. Each character is suited nicely to fit the online fantasy world theme. The seiyee cast (voice actors) also do exceptionally to fit their roles very well.
Unfortunately, even achilles had his heel. Dot hack is most hated, and often criticized, for having little or no action, and poor pacing. While admitedly this series DOES lack action- this necessarily isn't a bad thing. This makes dot hack more of a DRAMA anime than an ACTION genre - unfortunately, some people have false assumptions after hearing a synopsis about an online game, along with characters weilding staffs and swords. The lack of action wasn't a hindering factor for me, however - there just sadly are some people who believe anime equates to action, action, and action. This is not the case, and dot hack is an example of these.
The story, unfortunately moves slowly for a while. The first half of the series drags on a bit more than it should, which is another reason it's taken so much criticism. However, once the story picks up you'll be holding on to their every word, attention captured.
Overall, .Hack//sign is a quality anime that one shouldn't miss. Although it's not for everyone, it really is a good series - if you would only give it a chance.
Posted by : Onery
Posted on : 2006-02-18
I've heard quite a lot about this anime, both good and bad. Personally though, I would say this deserves a 5 star rating, no holds barred.
Why you would ask? Yes, the story initially progresses at a snail's pace. Yes, the story seems to ignore giving the viewer much background information on what the hell's happening leaving you to try and piece together what in the World's happening. Yes, there is TONS of dialogue (and I mean TONNES!).
Despite all this, it manages to grasp hold of the characteristics of an action genre. The character development may seem non-existent at first, but stick with it and you will see beautiful relationships and odd affiliations being formed. The graphics used is your usual good fare, no complaints there. The music, oddly enough, suits this anime extreamly well. In fact, I've kinda got used to hearing the ending song and ended up liking it...
The sparse action scenes spices up things a bit, but generally you'll be watching this for its story. A few fillers in between help break up the serious tone of the anime and even present a bit more character development. The ending seems ambiguous and may take several rewatchings to fully (more or less) grasp it.
To put it simply, a complex yet stunning anime. Recommended? Certainly in my case. See you in the World!
Posted by : sgwc
Posted on : 2006-02-13
I've just watched this anime 4 days ago and as I expected from a Bee Train product, the storyline is quite confusing but nontheless the plot keeps on twisting but secrets revealed gradually until the end.
The characters in this anime are drawn nicely and each character are suited with their job like Tsukasa as a wavemaster and Mimiru as a heavy swordswoman. Their character stats are detailed as I recalled when Mimiru said to a girl (a thief), "You're more agile than me so you should easily can attack him from behind." or something like that. This also means that they are in a game.
Other than that, this anime shows us the reality of MMORPG when all characters in the game are not necessarily show their real self. Prove is that Tsukasa use her wavemaster's sprite as a boy and yet she is a girl in the real life. When I watch this anime, I keep on saying, "oh, that's right!" whenever the anime points out something logic in the real life.
Backgrounds are also nicely drawn. There is no 'lazily' drawn background and all are drawn in detail just like the game itself. Plus, the gates of chaos in this anime are in 3d! Very good indeed.
As expected of Kajiura's work. The insert soundtracks in the anime are realy suits the scene. I don't have any of its soundtrack on my pc but I will buy it later as I'm one of her fans! Just like Noir, I tend to not to like the anime's OP and ED. It's just me. Over all rating for the soundtrack would be 8/10.
My overall impression on this anime is just 6/10. I like the soundtrack but the storyline is slow although the plot is good. I wouldn't suggest this anime to anyone who is looking for action and comedy as this anime lack of it. This anime is not interesting enough to watch in marathon method. Watch it episode by episode and slowly, do not rush as it will only make you confuse! I give it 6 out of 10 because of it's plot twist and logic also its soundtrack.
Posted by : bryan
Posted on : 2006-02-10
I just can't understand people saying that this anime is great, full of charisma which it does'nt even have any..First of all, what pulls me right to the direction of this anime in the anime shop is... the stunning cover of the box. It looks damn great and full of mystery...and what i read about the synopsis in Anime-source makes me really wanna try out this anime. Here's my review.
Anime Graphics : 7/10
.Hack//sign has great anime effects, stylled smoothly and It is considered OK, not that great, but it's average.
Anime Songs and sounds : 5/10
First of all, i dont understand what the opening song stands for, it's boring and the songs does'nt match with the story line.
Anime Designs : 6/10
The designs of premises, characters and equipments are not that bad. But still, it does need some more improvement.
Anime STORYline : 0/10
i wanted to give it a ONE. But it seems that i can't. This anime has the WORST storyline of all Other animes i'd watched.
I dont even know what in the world is going on with this .hack//sign world. The storyline does'nt even let people understand what's going on. but still many of those below my reviews gave it a 9/10??? or maybe a 10/10?? currently, after watching the first episode, i felt that the main character is a complete coward that only knows how to teleport. Moreover, the battles in this anime is really horrible. THere's no action in this anime, it's all ONE-hit-KO. Besides that, what's a Magician with NO MAGICal spells at ALL, aughh..... this anime is just horrible, bet i could make out a better storyline...
1/10
Posted by : blackroseXP
Posted on : 2006-01-23
When I first saw .hack//dusk I thought it was absolutely cute and very exciting, and when I heard about .hack//sign appearing on cartoonnetwork I couldn't wait to watch it. When it appeared on the show I thought it was quite good at first, but turns out it wasn't.
The animation was pretty good very detailed, but the anime is just to slow. It gets quite boring and you just want it to hurry up and see what actaully happens next.
The character of .hack//sign is ok. My favorite character is Blackrose. I like how their customs are made and the design. Like for example Blackrose is heavyblade, the clothes is pretty unique nd the design on the skin or should I say "tattoos is quite cool.
The sound effect was sort of like Tsubasa, it had some exciting sounds & effect but it's just too quiet, it makes me falls asleep, which I try not to though. One thing I like about the sound effects are the songs. The theme song is really good, but I am not sure about the ending theme I usually fall asleep and miss it alot of times. Falling asleep in a middle of show or movie says it's boring, which is why I rate it 7/10
7/10 for bad sound effects and slow anime. The rest is all good
Posted by : ArekuKawaii
Posted on : 2005-12-16
.Hack//sign has a really good story... but only if you are willing to wait it out and watch it. It is a very slow anime.
Animation:
I think it is very well done. They are all well drawn and it is really pretty. I really like the characters they are drawn nicely... and the side characters acctually look like something...
Music:
I think the music tends to get annoying... Not alot of change in it... it tends to be the same through the whole thing. Although, the theme song is good. (Unless you are going to watch the whole series at once... it'd skip the theme song a few times).
Plot:
It is a very good story. You have to be able to watch every episode though, otherwise it gets somewhat confusing. It is a very slow moving show too...
Characters:
The characters are well built. You get to see them learn and grow (no matter what age they are) throughout this. I think the characters are the best thing (other then the animation) in this. You can get really attached to them. I really like how much you get to know about the characters.
This is a really good story! I love Mimiru! Watch it, it is really good!
Posted by : Himitsu
Posted on : 2005-11-05
.hack//sign was just about average. I liked the voice work, the soundtrack, and the somewhat abstract background art. The whole theme setting around an RPG game is always fun too. However, things were really, really slllloooooooowwwwww.
What things?
The story itself. I didn't feel the drama until much, much later. Actually, I could say I didn't feel it at all. It seems that they made events too big of a deal. And then for events that I felt were more powerful (the girl's pet), they just disposed and forgot about it. Things were only centralized around Tsukasa, nothing wrong with that, but they made efforts to dwell into other characters, but didn't do very well and it seems as if they gave up.
The dialoge. Okay, maybe not slow. But it too looooooong, and there was too much. The scenes that were decided to play during these scenes weren't very entertaining either. They'd just fix one background and move the "camera" horizontally across the screen, yay! If not that, they'd just show the character's mouth mumbling away.
What I did like was the character design. The character personalities is a different story. The most interesting character is by far Sora, just the way he talks and behaves. Least interesting would be what's-his-face, the guy from "the Knights". The music is also noted: Yuki Kajiura = AWESOME, I really, really liked it. It helped in many frames and just brought life to the animation. The preview of the next episode was cool, it didn't spoil things, you can choose to glaze your eyes or watch attentively. I also like the opening/ending songs, more so the ending, the engrish is kind of a turn off...
The background story of Tsukasa was interesting, it raised a few questions about existence. I actually see a lot of these instances in a few anime series such as: Kanon, Midori no Hibi, and Mizuiro. I actually wanted to know more about the characters in "real life" (RL). Although there is .hack//liminality to look to, .hack//sign merely kept to my standards with the short clips of occurances in RL.
I actually liked the ending. It was sweet. The feeling and presentation was similar to Jinki: Extend's ending. The ending had a "good feel", but how they got to that end was weird and didn't connect well.
Although I did like the whole philosophical aspect, animation, music, and character-costume design. I wouldn't recommend .hack//sign. It's slow, confusing, and not action-packed at all, even when the setting is an RPG game.
Posted by : Fyresoul
Posted on : 2005-10-09
The .Hack//Sign series is a series for people that like interesting character dialogue/storylines with brief yet intense action. Personally I loved the series the music is captivating and yet doesn
Posted by : vietbabeboi
Posted on : 2005-10-02
I have to admit, even though I'm not really an expert on anime ( I watch a select few ) .hack//SIGN pretty much comes out on top for me.
The people who want action, are not going to enjoy this. Since the anime is focused around a role-playing game, there can't really be too much action because it wouldn't seem right. I mean think of an anime based around YOU playing Final Fantasy 7. Cheesy, isn't it.
The animation has to be some of the best I have seen. The backgrounds are drawn beautifully, and the actual animation itself is well-nigh flawless.
The characters have many different levels to them, but BT is the only one that really exposes them, making so many plans all the time and such. The way they interact is interesting to say the least, but the dialogue is really absorbing. They don't beat around the bush, yet they cover each and every outcome no matter how unlikely it may seem.
When I watched the first episode, I thought that it wasn't worth keeping, but I watched the next few, and it started getting more and more interesting. The use of a person prominent in the game's world, as a data fragment was especially engrossing. The storyline itself doesn't really develop for a few episodes, but in a game where there is no set goal ( somewhat like RuneScape if any of you play that ) there won't be a storyline until a goal is set, but in the anime, this storyline changes every few episodes, keeping things interesting as they untangle the web of Morgana.
All in all, I have to say that if you want action, you will be disappointed. This is only for people that don't get put off easily, but the rewards are worth it. A great anime, one that I like so much, I have bought the DVD set. Now to watch it all over again without the computer spazzing out.
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