.hack//Unison

I enjoyed watching SIGN, and had wanted to watch this since I had first heard of it.

It was great to see Kite and BlackRose from the game appear and see them mingle with the characters from the anime.

It was a light-hearted OVA, because of SIGN being a rather dark series. But, because of its light-heartedness, it felt rather strange to see such humour in a setting which was always bleak during the series.

Nevertheless, it was an OVA that was as good as Intermezzo and was quite enjoyable.

I had seen this when I was around age 14, and now I'm 28 as I review this with a different perspective. At 14 (I never played the games) I really didn't understand what was going on at all in this. I just thought it was another episode to knock off my list of anime to watch. But now I'm back after playing the 4 games and refreshing my memory of SIGN.

You can't truly appreciate this without having played the 4 PS2 games games from Infection to Quarantine. Otherwise, the episode seems pretty pointless, and you wouldn't understand why for example Sora is walking around, ... or who Macha is and why they can't remember anything.

The purpose of this episode was to tie up the past-history of SIGN that was teased throughout the 4 games together with the characters from the PS2 games, while beautifully giving us closure on Macha's backstory.

So my positive bias comes from the fact I played all 4 games and Macha's backstory (from .hack Quarantine's Macha epilogue) makes this episode worth your time. I wouldn't watch this if you only watched .hack//SIGN. It's meant to be watched after SIGN and the 4 games.