Ranked #712

.hack//G.U. Trilogy

First of all, I´m a german and this is my first english written preview, so please bear with me if I made some spelling-/grammar-mistakes^^

Just to have said it in advance, I finished all three .hack//G.U. games, so it´s not like I´m not familiar with the story itself. I had high expectations, but I sadly got dissappointed.

Story:
They tried to put the story of each game in 30 minute-parts. Since the games itself had a play-volume of 12-18 hours per game (don´t remember exactly and can´t check it because my PS2 is broken), you can guess how extremly it got cutted...

The arena battles that were essential in the games are only shown as flashbacks for around a minute. The story itself strays from the game after the last scene that belongs to "G.U. Rebirth". From here on, everything focuses at Atolis and Ovans story-parts; other characters that were involved with the story (like Sakaki) won´t appear.

Art:
They used the ingame-movie grafic for this movie. It looks cool and awesome in the action-scenes '(especially phase-battles), but terrible at the "chatting-scenes". And in the end, as a GC movie, it´s measured at Final Fantasy anyway, and here, .hack//G.U. trilogy can´t compare at all.


Sound:
After hearing the "Gentle Hands" remix of the trailer, I thought we get more cool remixes, but I hoped too much. Still, the music fits very well, esspecialy the fights.

Character:
My biggest part to complain about.
Most of the main-characters aren´t even shown, and the story focuses totally at Haseo, Atoli and Ovan.

Instead of the cool PKK style that Haseo had in the game, he only has that mad side shown in ".hack//roots", and seems like a little kid very often in the first half, Atoli isn´t even half as fun to watch since she has not much air-time in the first quarter, and Ovan´s calm attitude is nowhere to be found.

Enjoyment and Overall:
If you played through the games, even with that changes you´ll do nothing wrong with watching the movie at least once. If you never even played the game you may do better to ignore it, since they left so much out and made a speedrun through the story, so that it´s hardly understandable at times.

I only recommend this to fans of the ".hack//G.U." - Universe, the others will just ask "what the hell was that about?" read more

I had high hopes for GU trilogy. The games were loads of fun and the game story line was one of the best since SIGN and the first quartet. I was a tad skeptical that they would be able to capture the dynamic of the GU story in a one 90 minute film and boy was my skepticism right. In short .hack//GU Trilogy is made for those who have played the games and not for those who haven't. If you watched Roots but haven't played GU I would suggest not watching this movie.

The story is of course based on the GU trilogy of games for the PS2, the immediate sequel to .hack//Roots. And this film is supposed to be a film adaption, or so I thought. In reality GU trilogy is an expensive and choppy recap and abridgment of the GU Story, made entirely for those who have played the games. Unlike most, I understand the difficult task of adapting medium into film, so naturally I wasn't expecting a 100% loyal adaption, but I was expecting that this film would make sense to a person who has never played GU. It doesn't, it's like watching ".hack//GU abridged" only with out the humor and jokes of the Abridge series that litter YouTube today. It was appalling how quickly and pathetically this story jumps from one scene to another, no exposition is conveyed, no character development is conveyed, nothing, it's as I've said a million times by now, an over the top and over expensive recap of the GU. It was as bad as the writing in Blade of the Immortal.

The music score which was amazing in the games was all but dropped from the film. I barley heard any of the great themes from the games by Chikayo Fukuda. Tomoyo Mitani the vocalist did provide some nice vocal tracks of course, but they pale in comparison to her tracks in the games. The music is far and few between and silence is used way over the top.

The Japanese acting in this was beyond dreadful. Expressions and grunts were over emphasized and frankly the English dub track in the games is much more pleasing than in this. As this has no dub I had to rely on the fansubs and my own imagination to hear the voice cast I liked. The only plus to the Japanese acting in this case was that Endrance didn't sound like the tormented artist like he did in the English dub of the game. Most of the time you hear overly dramatic grunts and sighs and yells.

The 3D graphics are however rather good. They look much like the cut scenes in the game and the action is spectacular almost to the level of Advent Children. However there were several bad facial renderings and really silly expressions. The director did allow the camera to move, when I was fearing the action would static and uninteresting. The action scenes are great and they would be perfect for an AMV.

Overall GU is just plain horrible. It was made for those who have played the games, and one 90 minute film simply would not do it justice. CC had a great opportunity to make and interesting movie based on the games. Instead they made it into a long and expensive recap. They should have made three 2 1/2 hour movies to fully tell the story in depth, and to even make it remotely interesting. If you are thinking of watching this, don't waste your 90 minutes you'll be horribly lost and confused. Play the games instead.
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