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REVIEW: .hack//SIGN DVD

I remember this anime being part of a trend of anime where everything is obscured--not just the central mystery and character motivations, but what their environments are like, why anyone behaves the way they do, the villains' actions, and sometimes even what goes on onscreen, often lacking logical progression. The Sci-Fi Channel's "Anime Unleashed" block was absolutely full of this sort of show. I remember it beginning with Banner of the Stars, Serial Experiments Lain, and Betterman, all of which were huge bores to me because I had zero investment in any of the characters, who spent all their time chatting with each other on topics without context. And I believe D.Gray-Man premiered as a manga around this time too--I read the beginning of that and felt much the same way: All of these series, .hack//SIGN included, try to draw in audiences not through compelling or sympathetic characters, but making everything ambiguous and hoping people would be curious enough to keep watching. It works for some people (it wouldn't have become a trend if it didn't), but not for me.

By the way, .hack//SIGN was initially released in both regular individual DVDs (6 total) and Limited Edition versions(6 total) where L.E. #1-5 came with a DVD sleeve and a CD soundtrack(vol 5, I think, also came with a box to hold all CDs released), while vol 6 didn't come with an extra CD, but it did come with the Intermezzo & Unison episodes. Realizing Bandai was doing this early on, I purposely waited for and only bought the L.E.s. And I'm so glad I did, because I didn't know those episodes weren't going to be included in the complete collection. (But I soo wanted those special pins that came with it!) I say all this just to say that that this latest .hack//SIGN release isn't the first time these (rare?) episodes were domestically released. I didn't see any other post say anything similar. Sorry if I missed it.

I found Crest of the Stars to be pretty dull.

So that's two people you know of now who don't care for it!

The worst part of the show isn't that it's boring (though that's very true, it's put people in comas), but that it inspired other terrible "trapped in a MMORPG" anime like Log Horizon and Sword Art Online. This might be the worst subgenre of anime ever conceived.

Zac wrote:

So that's two people you know of now who don't care for it!

I wasn't talking about not liking it. I was talking about the complaint that it's a show where everything is obscured. You can certainly legitimately complain that it's dull or unengaging; some long stretches loaded with banal dialogue are the franchise's well-recognized major flaw, after all. However, even if you don't like the franchise, I don't see how one can justify complaints that it doesn't explain its setting quite thoroughly, doesn't delve into everyone's motivations (to the point of tedium in cases), or doesn't have a logical progression. Claiming any of those about Crest/Banner would be like trying to claim that Ikuhara series aren't loaded with symbolism.

If it's not meant to be ambiguous or esoteric, then perhaps it's due to the Sci-Fi Channel's editing of the episodes so there'd be 4 commercial breaks per half hour. I don't know much about opinions on the franchise and had never looked into it past that (besides that I heard about how a language was created specifically for the series), so this is the first I heard about Crest and Banner being straightforward in its storytelling. I remember having to pay VERY close attention to what everyone said and had to take notes, and look stuff up online on things I didn't understand, to figure out what was going on. The whole time, I felt like I stumbled onto the middle of things and had to desperately grasp for any context.

After anxious deliberation Martine's president Rock Lin, Jinto's father, surrenders the planet without firing a shot. In exchange for their surrender Rock Lin is accepted into Abh society as a noble and his son is sent off to an Abh integration academy to learn the ways of the Abh.

Chiibi wrote:

Oh does anyone remember what that animal thing was Tsukasa rode on and it slammed into the wall? I thought that was funny as hell as a kid.

Grunty! Bandai sold plushies of those for a while in the mid 2000s. The ones in the video game were hilarious; one was French!

So Unison now has an official release? Did .hack//GIFT ever make it onto any of the releases?

In the Sci-Fi Channel cut, Jinto's father surrenders, and the episode immediately cut to what looked like a promotion. That is, it looked like the Abh had come by to attack the planet in order to promote its leader (which was also strange in that a leader should already be at the top of the chain).

I'm guessing that Sci-Fi had a habit of cutting out character motivations, as I remember the series having an "X happens, then Y happens, then Z happens" style without ever explaining how X led to Y and then to Z.