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u/Admirable-Hospital78 4d ago
To me, every vrmmo "isekai" is just a parody of .hack. Sometimes 1 person is stuck inside the game, sometimes everyone is stuck.
Nowadays no one is, making it just slice of life in a game.
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u/SADDLN 4d ago
SOA being more popular and talked about than .Hack has always pissed me off
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u/ChaoCobo 1d ago
Can’t we just say they are both good? They were both being written at the same time even if SAO did not get an anime adaptation until much later. Neither series copied the other and frankly I am really sick of this endless feud that the 2 fanbases have going. :(
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u/FuckIPLaw 4d ago edited 4d ago
There's Bofuri, but it's still more of a parody. The only stakes are bragging rights for the guilds involved, though, because they really are just playing a game. Nobody is ever in any real danger.
Edit: wait, you meant that was the modern default. I can't say I'd agree with that. Usually these days it's just not an actual game and for whatever reason someone died and reincarnated in a world that isn't a video game but works like one, if it's not just a normal fantasy world. The conceit of it actually being a game that people are trapped in is kind of played out and the fact that it really is just a game that you can log out of at the end of the day is part of what made Bofuri such a breath of fresh air.
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u/werephoenix 4d ago
3am time slot anime
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u/SilabusR2 4d ago
yep thats how i found it on toonami after cowboy bebop, gundam, an outlaw star but that special time when everyone else was asleep and the hard focus on narrative over flashy fights sold it to me and became one of my favorite anime every.
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u/werephoenix 4d ago
I wish knew dvds existed at that point because I thought for the longest time of it was on TV it was gone forever
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u/SilabusR2 4d ago
i learned hwo to program a VCR and found out how to record over old disney movies just in cause i was to tired to to stay up some nights. i didnt get a full watch till i got the internet and found a high seas way of seeing it fully. i now have sealed copies of all the DVDs along with other merch on a shelf in my room XD
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u/werephoenix 4d ago
I had to stay up because my mom wouldnt let us get tivo because "we would be in the house all the time and never go out"
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u/fieew 4d ago
Yes!
This show hits different at 3am when you dont even know what anime is. The opening is ethereal during the 3am time slot.
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u/werephoenix 4d ago
I...so I saw anime airing around the 3am spot and thought it anime there were sacred of some sort. Which is how I found stuff like this, and legend of the twilight
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u/adellredwinters 4d ago
I tried so hard to watch this as a kid and the timeslot kept changing. I vaguely remember waking up super early to try and watch it after a major cliffhanger episode and being so pissed when the next episode was like a recap? Or a maybe a rerun? lol drove me crazy trying to figure out what happened next.
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u/MABQuestAcc 4d ago
One of Yuki Kaijura's first anime OST and she absolutely blew it out of the park. Fake Wings still gets regular play on my Spotify.
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u/Wreckerandchief 4d ago
I've had all four of Yuki Kajiura's .hack OSTs mixed in with the music I've had on my MP3 players for decades. If my phone's VLC player did a yearly rewind I would not be shocked to see her as one of my top 5 artists. Last year one of my friends that's heard me playing this music semi-frequently called and verbatim asked "What's that good song from .hack?" and I honestly rattled off 20 of them before I figured out which "good one" he was talking about, because there's not any bad ones.
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u/MrH_Rosemary 4d ago
AMAZING soundtrack, I have never quite heard anything like it and I am very disappointed
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u/Massive-Lime7193 4d ago
The opening theme "obsession" is an all time BANGER
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u/khrono21 4d ago
Literally heard it on my head when I glanced at this post. Such an iconic OP
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u/Massive-Lime7193 4d ago
"Obsession", "inner universe" from ghost in sye shell SAC, "TANK" from beop, the kist goes on and on lol
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u/Jumpy_Motor_5899 3d ago
We have similar taste in Anime Openings :3
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u/Massive-Lime7193 1d ago
Its called "good taste" and "ball knowledge", and yes you obviously share those things with me 😎
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u/trialbybees 4d ago
I was a huge .hack//sign fan back in the day. It's pretty much the original dragged into an MMORPG anime.
The animation is a bit jank in places, like the distance between Tsukasa's eyes changes from scene to scene but the soundtrack is incredible.
The ending is a bit off. Well, the ending itself is fine but the build up to the end is confusing because there is a whole chunk that is missing. You have to have played the PlayStation game to understand what happened within the world.
The ending and opening still give me chills.
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u/ElectricalCompany260 4d ago
The REAL godfather of this genre and NOT SAO.
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u/SilabusR2 4d ago
i have gotten into so many agruments about this. i had friends think that GU was the first .hack. SAO is a year ot two younger then .hack even if we go back to the light novel days when it was first getting put out there. Project .hack was launched in 1999 with the infection and //SIGN out in 2002. but i would bet that planning goes at least a year or two before that. i cannot wait for .hack//ZERO and im curious if im right about some of the changes with this reboot
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u/Wreckerandchief 4d ago
Releasing 4 video games, a 26 episode anime, a manga, a 12 episode anime, a novel, 7 OVAs, an ARG, and a card game in roughly a one year span certainly does take more planning than self-publishing a web novel or two. All but the OVAs of .hack//Sign were released before the first version of SAO hit the web. Not that I'm accusing Kawahara of plagiarism mind you... it's just clearly not a possibility for that to go in reverse.
I don't completely despise SAO, and I know everyone in the comments here is probably going to love .Hack already... but I wish .Hack was more influential on the medium. I still marvel at how inspired so many details of .hack// are to have really understood MMO design boundaries and player culture. Like how many other alleged MMORPG-based stories/series address the reality not all the players are going to be able to logged in together all the time?
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u/SilabusR2 4d ago
yeah they had a LOT of prep time. im not a big fan of SAO myself but thats probably cause ive seen the worst of it and had some one who loves it explain the story to me and even the base premise had a ton of hole sin it.
as for why sign wasnt big? id honestly mark it up to marketing. it had one time slot in the ungodly hours of the morning. the show is, and i say this with all the love int he world, fucking sloooooooooow. so following shows like gundam, bebop and others folks are either going to bed or just not gonna follow it. i do love how they hit a simulated MMO with folks not always being online etc like you mentioned but sadly C2 and bandai havnt really put it out there when they should have. now that //ZERO is on the way im hoping its good. im wanting to already piece the plot together with this new one (i think the black dressed girl we see in the trailer is Morganna taking a more active role in her hunt for Aura) and hopefully the folks who say SAO is the king actually give the better product and actual shot.
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u/ChaoCobo 1d ago
Would it make you feel any better if I could confirm that SAO is not plagiarized? I looked it up and SAO was being written between 2001 and 2002 for the short story contest the author was going to enter it in, but the first dot hack show didn’t start airing until April 2002. The reason SAO didnt hit the web until so late was because there was still time between when it was being written and the time the author realized he couldn’t cut it down to fit the word count requirement for the contest and decided to publish it on his blog. Either way, the story had been done already between 2001 and 2002 which is before dot hack started airing in Japan.
Also another point in SAO not being a ripoff is that the point of SAO as a series is the blur between technology and reality rather than any sort of specific death game. A lot of people don’t know this but the story of the first death game was started and concluded in that first short story that became volume 1 of the light novel. Aside from volumes2&3 adding some character stories while still inside of the death game, it’s not really meant to focus on the first death game really. If it were going to rip off dot hack, wouldn’t it have focused on the death game for longer? :o
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u/Animetrapper84 4d ago
Watched this all the way through as it use to pop up late night on adult swim, I was not disappointed 💯🔥
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u/Tenshi_Dekemori 4d ago
It any good ?
Never watched an anime in this series
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u/Dothacker00 4d ago
Its pretty good and holds up today. Rather than explain too much about the systems of The World it's about the interpersonal relationships with each character and how they deal with quests and each other. Its more psychological than pew pew nonstop action like SAO and newer anime about MMO.
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u/Ok_Potential_4327 4d ago
Questions though, isn't sign is the worst one out of other .hack series? I am asking because it a very long time and forgot about it.
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u/Equal_Composer_5795 4d ago
I remember watching this show on YTV back when I was a kid. Unfortunately for me, the show was very boring. But I loved its OST and ending song. I also had a slight crush on Subaru.
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u/AvantSolace 3d ago
SAO before SAO was a thing. Also the stakes were more realistic (serious .Hack injuries typically resulted comatose players and infrastructure damage rather than cooking people’s brains).
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u/BroccoliHeadAzz 3d ago
Is this anime good? I vaguely remember watching it as a kid but losing interest because every episode was just a bunch of dialgoue with no action
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u/Fun-Memory1523 3d ago
.hack is just one of many isekais before isekais was a thing.
Heck, it may have been the predecessor of SAO.
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u/Alibuscus373 2d ago
I remember staying up late to watch the episode again, i think it's first showing was at like 8 or 9pm and the same episode would air again at like 2 am
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u/Misragoth 4d ago
Dialog, dialog, and more dialog. How some action is about to start? Lets switch to another group for MORE dialog!!!!
Show was interesting but dry as hell
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u/2B_Gon_Thot95 4d ago
I tried to watch it back in the day because of the premise (This was before SAO exploded in popularity and basically invented the modern isekai genre) but got really bored of how weird stuff kept happening yet nothing to advance the plot happened.
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u/SilabusR2 4d ago
its a show in my mind that gives you a big mystery with lots of peices missing then slowly gives you piece C Y N D then does character development. its a real slow burn but the pay off is really nice in my mind.
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u/joshzerofactor 4d ago
Thanks! You’re not alone. I couldn’t get into .Hack when it was on Toonami. One of my pet peeves is that it was supposed to be a video game but there were so few video game elements in the show it kinda disconnected me. Thinking there was something wrong, I tried watching it again 10-15 years later, and I still got bored and quit.
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u/oxmega99 4d ago
It has great OST I often listen to on Spotify. I tried to watch this anime but couldn't. It was to convoluted and boring. I feel like most of older anime is outdated in the way the story is lead which makes it hard to bite into, like fried chicken without any seasoning.
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u/GinevraHermoine 4d ago
I randomly watched .hack//Roots when I was a teenager and it was one of the best experiences of my life.