Ranked #1700

.hack//Roots

.hack//Roots is a fine sequel that's kind of bashed because of the plug-in-nature relationship to the .hack//G.U. And it's sad it's kind of bashed, because Roots was a really good installment in the .hack// Series. My favorite has and probably will always be SIGN but I found roots to be very enjoyable at the least.

In terms of the story it struck a fine balance of keeping in the nature of .hack in general with out going over the SAME OLD STORY. While it re-introduced the story of the mystic "Key of the Twilight" as explored in .hack//SIGN and it's sequel quartet. Bringing in all new characters, giving the classic 'The World' a make over with all new classes was the change needed. Of course the story of the .hackers was great and so was the story and drama of Tsukasa in .hack//SIGN and that was good for those, but it was time for a change.

.hack//Roots goes back to the darker more somber story line after it's campy epilogue-like predecessor .hack//Legend of the Twilight (aka .hack//DUSK) which was refreshing change. I can't say I liked Legend straying so far from it's roots (heh no pun intended) of it's predecessor of SIGN, though it's certainly understandable why. But again I felt it was far better to keep on the darker side of the story line, which is why SIGN captivated me in the first place.

The story dwells much more into the dark human psyche of our personal demons, and can show every character has a purpose for playing "The World" that to me is the darker end of why people like to play games for hours on end. (namely me). Like with SIGN I felt captivated and relatable to every character. I was able to care about them on such personal levels. It's amazing to see the changes all the characters go through, as the series progresses, which made them much more dynamic foil characters. I recall in SIGN the only one who really changed was Tsukasa. So it was a new direction that worked.

You'll notice a big difference between Haseo and Tsukasa, which is something I found worked well. Again if you are going to do a sequel you have to make it original, otherwise you just get Pokemon all over again. I thought the idea of Haseo's power-binge to avenge the the PKing of Shino was a brilliant concept, and added to sympathy for his character or otherwise maybe more antagonizing concepts. Haseo's journey into the black abyss of PKKing actually really contributes to the GU storyline.

The overall storytelling didn't stay as strong as SIGN. It started off pretty typically, with the set up and the world-of-the-play but soon dissolved into a pretty weak middle, and picked up slightly at the end. The middle episodes that don't involve Haseo feel much like cheap fillers that simply aren't that needed. It could have stood to be a little shorter in length even though it stands at 26 episodes. That's not to say the entire middle is weak, there are some great episodes in the middle such as "The Forest of Pain" arc, and Haseo's ever growing into the "Terror of Death." Other than that, episodes that show attempts by Tabby and others to form a Medic Union or any episode that features Tabby alone, pretty much fall right away.

As I mentioned earlier Roots is a plug-in story to .hack//G.U. for the PS2, so in the end you will want to play the games to continue the story line. (or you can read the novels). Again it's kind of sad Roots takes a lot of flak for that, because I think it's a clever and very unique way to extend a story line. SIGN in some ways was like that as it all lead into .hack//Infection.

Music, was fair. I mean no disrespect to Ali Project I am coming to like their work quite a bit, but it was a strange direction and style compared to Kajiura's score for SIGN. I was taken aback by it, but it has grown on me enough that I find it okay but still not good as I've come to expect when Mashimo is the director. It's almost deceptive at first because one of the first after-theme piece you hear is very well composed and orchestrated, but after that it's pretty dull, inattentive, and flat. You will also hear a few pieces that sound eerily similar to works by Danny Elfman which doesn't help the case of the music get any better. It's also at times poorly place and orchestrated. Ali Project has provided a good original score, this I know with Avenger, but Roots is considerably dull in comparison to SIGN's musical score. On the otherhand Kajiura's opening theme with FictionJunction YUUKA is a really unique theme, much different than Obsession almost more like a melancholy and "searching for" or "yearning for" theme.

In the end ROOTS is good but not great. The introduction of more action and more tension helped the story but still I think SIGN will have the stronger storyline. I can't speak for all fans because some might hate it, others might love it, or some will find it in-between. Absolutely there are aspects about it that could have been better. Not likely Roots will go down as the greatest chapter of .hack especially with it's relationship to GU which by the way is a rather fun game for the story experience. read more

Okay so if you haven't seen any of the .Hack series or played the game you will be confused.....very confused. Yes the con you on buying the games to know more of the story...so it goes.... .Hack//Sign, .Hack//Dusk, The Games -> .Hack//Infection, .Hack//Mutation, .Hack//Outbreak, .Hack//Quarantine, .Hack//Fragment (Not released in the US), Then .Hack//Roots...then after .Hack//Roots comes the other GU games if you want to know more X3.

Story

The story is what you could call a continuation when i first saw .Hack//roots i was a bit confused on what was going on until i ran into spoilers then it kind of all made sense. So yeah reading the manga's and playing the games can help you understand the story. What i love about the .Hack series is it all connects together as a whole so .Hack//roots is just another chapter added to the story. The plot is seireus and interesting it just makes you want to know more on the Twilight about Haseo and everything. It has a mysterious feel you just want more but with all .Hack series there all have that feel.

Art

I love the art in .Hack//Roots its very detailed in the backgrounds and the structure of the characters. I didn't really feel anything unique about it just that it was structured and the animation was very nice. Just in love with the overly created character design and the overall flow of it is very nice.


Sound

I have to say that this is one of the rare anime's that has a great dub i really loved the English and the Japanese both i think there both great. The music~ Its not as great as the .Hack//Sign OST but it still has great music. See-Saw does the ending song and Ali Project does the beginning~ they do most the songs in .Hack//Roots i love them all <3. If your a fan of See-Saw or Ali Project you'll deafently love the OST to .Hack//Roots.


Character's

I love love love the characters in .Hack//roots it makes you of course want to know more about them outside there character they play in the game. They have this mysterious feel about all of them that makes you want to know more about them which i love! And of course you don't get to know much about them in .Hack//Roots since it continues off in GU. But just the overall feel of the characters i love. Tabby and Felo is probably the most you'll know about a character in .Hack//roots which is interesting still overall the characters are great once you know more about them in the manga's and games. Overall i like the uniqueness of the characters personality's, Haseo is probably the first iv seen of a character like him.

Enjoyment

I personally really enjoyed watching this series i really had allot of fun watching to see what would happen next you kind of get suck in with the relationships which there are a few and the mysterious of the anime that never gets solved...unless like iv said you play the games or read the continuation of the manga.

Overall

Overall i gave this anime a 10~ I think you have to be a real .Hack fan to enjoy this series and understand what its all about. Everything overall is a great feel to it but i wish there was more of a completion to it but of course as all .Hack series they don't like completing the anime fully.
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.hack//Roots is a 26-episode anime created by. It is based on the worldwide hit game, .hack. That said, though, the anime falls flat on its face, because of far too many factors that should been taken care of.

The storyline is so weak, the viewer often feels as if he's watching a documentary of something. There's no connectivity in the episodes, and the fractal appearance of the whole series will put everyone (except the most devoted .hack otaku) off. The story doesn't have heads or tails; it just plods on, like an excrutiating torture session.

The character design's very weak as well. Though the lead character, Haseo, is created well, flaws in his conceptualization leave him with a schizophrenic character set. Shino and O-van, the other two lead characters, are far better in their conception. O-van, particularly, is a great character, sort of like Hatake Kakashi in Naruto or like Urahara Kisuke in Bleach. Besides these two exceptions, everyone else is useless as characters. Tabby is too smarmy, Sakisaka too vacillatory, Ender too non-violent, and Filo too plodding.

The one high point of the show is the music, produced by Ali Project. The OP (Silly-go-Round by FictionJunction YUUKA) and ED (Boukoku Kakusei Catharsis by Ali Project) are awesome, to say the least, and the INs never fail to enthrall either. IMO, do look out for God Diva; it's a superlative track. Silly-Go-Round, thanks to its catchy tune structure and fine alterations between the violin and modern instruments such as the guitar or drums, makes for a great listen.

Sadly, the music is the only thing we reviewer otaku can rave about. The idea behind the characters is good, and as in the case of Tryedge, almost exquisite. But there is no clarity, no Ichigo-esque madness, no Naruto-style idealism in this story. One misses the clear objective reality of Bleach or Ghost in the Shell (or maybe even the earlier .hack iterations?). There is virtually no action, no drama, no flesh and blood; in short, there's no juice to this baby.

Who do I recommend it to? No one. This anime (as much as it pains me to say it) is simply unwatchable. Don't watch it at all, except maybe the first episode and towards the end. The rest will simply bore you, and make you regret the time you spent downloading the episode. .hack//Roots is a total failure for me.
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I'll first say, do not waste your time watching this anime, especially if you were a fan of .hack//SIGN.

The story starts off alright. You meet the characters, the mysterious Ovan, who saves Haseo and thus makes him the root of gossip. The first ten episodes are actually fairly enjoyable. They are all looking for the virus cores, and the mysterious key of the twilight. Meanwhile they are being watched and attacked by the group TaN. So at the climax of this small arc, they discover a trap lying for them, and Ovan vanishes.
And thus ends any and all enjoyment of the series. After this point, the next couple episodes are slow, everyone quits and leaves, and it starts getting boring. So boring, in fact, that when a character is killed off, I hardly cared.
They introduce Tri-Edge a little late, when hope for the story has already been lost. The episodes following this are very slow, and it doesn't even really pick up at all at the end of the story.

The characters were okay, but really only Ovan, Shino and Phyllo are worth mentioning. Haseo is somewhat of a dick, Tabby is cute but can get on the annoying side.
The art and music were fine, but I was not amazed by them.

As for enjoyment, like I said, the first 10 episodes were quite enjoyable (it might actually be 9). But after that, I couldn't care less. I would skip through parts of episodes because they were so boring. This series is utterly unwatchable, it only received a 3 because of the first few episodes.
.hack//SIGN was great, but they lost their edge when it came to roots. read more

I finished the series and I really loved the plot but the producers didn't really carry is out right.

Okay, good animation does not include focusing on someone's face for over 5 minutes. Shino and Haseo were hugging at the waterfall for like 10 minutes. =.= Seriously, someone's gonna get bored sooner or later. The producers should of at least show them in different angles of something. If the producers were trying to burn off some time in the episodes, this is probably the worst way of doing it.
The art was pretty horrendous. At every scene there's something wrong with a character's face. At the begining it wasn't that bad but toward the middle, the art went down another level.
The sound was one of the higher points in this anime. Most of it was made by Ali Project which fit the story pretty well.
I rather liked Haseo's personality in the begining of the series but when they changed him to be a nice guy, I started to hate him. There was barely any development in the characters, okay besides Haseo's personality doing a complete U turn and that was it. read more

OH EM GEE! This has to be one of the most BORING animes ever created EVER! The story moves at -200 miles per hour and their is no ending to it! The problem was NEVER solved! Maybe 3 episodes were interesting but other than that its pretty much staring at still images of boringness.

Story:
A crippled turtle would move faster than this story did. 26 episodes of boringness. It wouldn't have been as bad if it were cut down to about 12 episodes (which could have been easily done) and if there had been an ENDING!

Art:
The art for the most part was pretty good. After a while though the colors get too old and not very interesting.

Sound:
ALI Project did a great job with this and the opening theme was outstanding but all of the background music sounded the same. :

Character:
Most of the characters aren't developed (if developed at all) besides the main character, Haseo. And he's not even developed that much.

Enjoyment:
I forced myself to finish tihs seriesbut never again will I watch this anime. I hated watching it and couldn't wait for it to be over with.

Overall:
Don't waste your time with this. read more

To start off, .hack is well-known by fans as a game within a game. With the online game, "The World" as your setting, you play as a character who interacts with other characters who are all aware that this is all but a game they're facing, from beginning to end. Twists and turns soon crash on the protagonist and his allies as they encounter different obstacles that usually do not play by the game's rules. Most of these rule-breakers are usually rendered as bugs, viruses, glitches, hacked entities and more anomalies that can be defined within the branch of computer ethics.

As a fan of the series(more on the games), I appreciated .hack for being a story that most people today can relate. The series also inspired me to play online games which in time, I grew tired to continue due to the fact that it wastes my wallet, time and ego.

The first series, //SIGN made an impact on me by being emotional, mysterious and sharing a piece of action overall but mostly, it was just fantasy with suspense. The second, "The legend of the Twilight", a.k.a. //Dusk, was mediocre for me though, it was good for the series to have a livelier side for a change but the sad fact was that they didn't complete the anime series or at least portrayed it completely from the manga which had a touching(yet surprising) ending.
Here, //Roots now has it's changes for its own respect to the series.

Now, on to the review:

Story:
For the sake of the part of the audience who didn't really seem to get why "The World" has began its new revision, the company of the game, CC(Cyber Connect) Corp. had its main building, set on fire by an unknown cause, thus, deleting most of the original online game. The developers then made an idea to make a new "The World" where more people could enjoy. The ratings soon grew rapidly after debut with the help of interested new players though old members seemed to grow tired and quit the game.

The story begins with a player named, "Haseo" who was back stabbed by his party members during his first try on the game. These players are branded as "Player-Killers" or "PK" for short. Another player, Ovan took care of them and revived the crushed Haseo, thus begins their friendship.

Now, the story more so revolves around Haseo as he copes through his life, in-game. Regularly, you would see him in dilemmas as every decision he makes can affect his friends and enemies. Sometimes, both. The story's pace is rather slow and describes Haseo's life before the events of //G.U., the main plot and climax of Haseo's story.

But there's more to the show than just the life of a misguided player. There are other more things where the online game seems to have trouble with. Soon, Haseo these problems will soon make a drastic impact on the protagonist, changing his shy and dependent attitude into a fierce vengeful vigilante.

The story overall is absolutely more than decent as it combines mystery and drama with fantasy and gaming though the main plot slows down as different characters have their own story, pausing the plot's pace which is sometimes a drag to some part of the audiences who have little interest with those specific characters.

The story ends with a cliffhanger wherein we have to buy the game, .hack//G.U.(all 3 volumes) in order to finalize its story. Now, most people would call this some kind of marketing trickery although the story is appreciable to its own extent, making it a good experience for those audience members who would want a taste of a story about online games which are click in today's society.

Art:
Animation isn't that much different with //SIGN's though you'd have to agree that it has improved in different aspects. The only problems are usually that they are frequently recycled, making it a less remarkable as the show continues on. Clips often repeat here and there though at different times throughout the story which is like budget-saving in terms of business so there's nothing much to say when it comes to the show's art though the digital effects when the characters draw their weapons never become much of a yawn.

Costume and weapon designing can be pleasing to look at, especially when you compare Ovan's look to Haseo's which is an important interpretation to their background. Almost all characters wear the usual part-ethnic, part-medieval attire with a good touch of designing that greatly expresses their form of character. Another not to add is that there are now anthropomorphic characters which are a fresh idea to the franchise since there were limited of those kind in the earlier series.

Guns and swords have their fair share of love and war. You would just really want to hold them..... well, most of them.... at times...

Sound:
The sound effects are good to hear though aren't all that fresh in the world of special effects. The intense blade-bashing and the flickering sounds of weapons drawn are used less than needed which is a real downer although there are some cuteness effects like tail-wags to boot which can really be a reliever at times before and after the action.

Soundtracks are frequently used to fill-in the usual silence and some same tracks are played in every episode. Some people might call it a drag though the ethnic genre can really give a good feel in "The World". It just so happens, that you might get annoyed, hearing the same song over and over again within a span of 26 episodes.

Character:
This is probably one of the most interesting aspects of the story; the characters' personalities vary a lot and you can't exactly tell which character can be like the other. Earlier, Haseo has this introverted persona and later events convert him into a cruel beast which is an amazing change with a little psychology in there while Ovan is the cool-headed and mysterious character. We see a cute, tiny, fuzzy character named Phyllo who is actually a wise old man behind the mask. Shino, the usual kindhearted, nature-loving damsel, Tabby, your cute cheerful catgirl and others more with some returning characters for fanservice.

Overall, they're not too dull to look upon and they can be interesting from time to time.

Enjoyment:
Honestly, you'd love the game more than the anime itself. Delays are usually bound to happen at times. You'd frequently see a long pause after a short conversation/fight where there will come a time where you just want to fast-forward to the juicy parts. This was where I was really disappointed about the show - only a handful of action is present. If you were less of an action-person and more of a talker and in for the soap opera-like drama, this is more for you but if your in it for the sword-fights and the usual "Saving the world while kicking some ass" thing, don't set your hopes too high or you might just end up pulling your hair or glancing through the window rather than the TV screen.

Overall:
This show was merely born for the sake of //G.U. If you played the game but you wanted to know the "why"? You better watch the series. If you haven't played the game yet but you still finished the series, better grab the //G.U. Trilogy movie instead. Saves a lot of money for those who only want to watch rather than play.

The show didn't really swept me off my feet but it was fair enough to be engaging so a forgivable lucky 7 should do nicely. read more

The .hack//Series was always one of my favorites. It has astoundish storytelling, great soundtracks and likeable charakters. I have to warn you though: If you are not a fan of long dialogs and little action, or didn't like SIGN, you should stay away from roots.

Story 9:
Like its predecessor, roots has a well written story. While it is nothing completly unique, it still manages to draw the viewer in and makes them want to unravel the mysteries behind it. It has a lot more action than SIGN, which was one of weak points of the series. Who loved SIGN will like ROOTS as well.

Art 8:
ROOTS shows you many well drawn panoramas of the different areas. The character drawings are fair average. Some of them will look similar, which is intended, because of the online game setting.

Sound 10:
ALI Project had follow in big footsteps and did well. While it still can't be compaired to Yuki Kajiuras masterpiece, it fits the scenes and has some awesome songs.

Characters 9:
I liked Haseos change as the story processed. You can fell with him, as he despairs over the loss of Shino, which he hold very dear to himself and the absence of his mentor Ovan, when he would need him the most.
Ovan himself is a charismatic leader, but remains mysterious, as he reveals little of his ambition. The rest of the guildmembers are typical characters. read more