Ranked #1321

.hack//The Movie: Sekai no Mukou ni

This is my first review so I'll try to make it quick and easy

.hack//The Movie is a movie about a girl (Yuki Sora a.k.a. Kite) who joins a game (THE WORLD) and finds out she loves it and later has to save the entire internet from a virus that is spreading across the game and affecting the real world. I won't be saying anymore of the story because I'm afraid of spoiling too much

Story - 6 - I gave the story a 6 because it's kinda cliche but classic, person goes to a new world and has to save it, and also, girl gets stuck in a love triangle and can't decide who she likes more. If you're familiar with the .hack// series then I'm sure you'll know it's also slow-paced, though since it's a movie, it's obviously faster moving than the series. The ending was also kinda a let down.

Art - 9 - I thought the art was fantastic. In the real world, the art is a combination of 2D animation and 3D animation, it was like 2D characters in 3D form. In THE WORLD, the art is like cinematic cutscenes from a video game, which made me like it even more because I am video gamer. Though the art is great, I do think that it could've been even better because the scenes from THE WORLD reminded me more of cinematic scenes from PS2 games (it was nostalgic but I don't think that was the aim)

Sound - 10 - Loved the music, the voice acting was great (as expected), and the sounds weren't annoying in anyway, but the silence was. During the real world parts of the movie, it was kinda quiet for both the music and the voices but, that was what made it seem realistic. During the THE WORLD parts, the music was wonderful; I found the music to be very fitting and also to be near perfection as music.

Characters - 6 - I found the characters to be a tad boring, there's not much interaction between them and mostly focuses just on Yuki Sora being to herself. Even in THE WORLD, they're kinda bland since nothing really big is shown happening except for the parts with the virus. Though the characters are more exciting in THE WORLD, it's still kinda bland. In the end, I don't think Yuki ever even found out who it is who confessed to her in the game, and Aura is still a big mystery.

Enjoyment - 7 - Though I didn't really like the story and characters to a "Good" level, I still liked it enough to be a "Good" level. I mainly enjoyed it for the beautifully settings, epic music, and the "what's going to happen to them" feeling.

Overall - 8 - I gave it the overall of an 8 because it's the center of my grading to this movie: I would actually give it a 7.7 but that isn't in there. read more

I'm sorry for keeping this review short, but there's not just that much to be said about .hack//The Movie. It's just a pile of wasted potential, and if this combined with .hack//Link are really supposed to be a swan song for the .hack// franchise, it really makes me sad.
For some reason this movie has thus far received some surprisingly positive feedback at least in MAL, so I'll try and explain why I didn't like it as thoroughly as I can.

Story & Character

.hack//The Movie takes place after all the current movies, games and animes, and has a totally new cast of characters, but also a familiar face in the form of Aura, who changes her age constantly for no apparent reason. I have nothing against new characters, but they are not developed very well during the film. Most of them are just a bit reskinned versions of classic .hack// characters, or just flat out copies. Also there's not much conflict of any kind between any of the characters for like the first hour. I seriously thought it was just a slice of life movie at first.

When the story finally pics up, it is a tad uninspired and uninteresting. It is the .hack// story that's been used a million times by now. Someone gets stuck in the game and falls into a coma in real life, and the other characters have to help him. There's also a school romance subplot, but I thought the romance part was kinda shallow and cliche.

I quess they're trying to ride on nostalgia with this one, but I think it's kinda cheap to just flat out copy&paste plotpoints and characters from the past.

Art & Sound

This is where .hack// always gets to me. They always have some great character and enviroment designs, and absolutely fantastic musical score. The movie is no exception in this department. Probably the only point of the movie that I could call entertaining was the training montage where the main characters just killed monsters and there was awesome music playing on the background. Also seeing The World in full 3D looked amazing.

Enjoyment & Overall

So in the end what we have is a great looking and sounding movie, which is awfully lacking in story. I've seen all the animes and OVAs thus far and I read some .hack manga, so I could call myself a fanboy of this series. Thus I thought I'd cut the enjoyment aspect some slack, because although nothing happens in the movie for the most part, it's still decent fanservice, because of how gorgeous it looks. read more