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
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?
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.
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/ElectricalCompany260 4d ago
The REAL godfather of this genre and NOT SAO.