.hack//Tasogare no Udewa Densetsu

Story

Legend of the Twilight is the next anime following on from .Hack/Sign. I had expected that this series would fill in some of the plot holes from .Hack/Sign but they were only half fulfilled. As someone who has not played the game I have no idea why Kite and Blackrose are famous ... However, Twilight is a tolerable standalone.

Characters

In contrast to .Hack/Sign, the plot moves along at a much swifter pace while the characters develop quickly. There are Shugo and Rena, twin brother/sister who win characters based on Kite and Blackrose. As they're around 14 in real life they act like teenagers. Twilight isn't ... full of too much philosophical talking since both protagonists are young. This could be a good or bad thing depending on each viewer.

Shugo is brash and caring. I disliked Rena, because of the fact that she spends (I swear!) 80% of the series crying out "Onii-Channnnn!". After 5 episodes of being tortured by her crying out pretty much nothing but that "Onii-Channnnn!" I was about to beat someone with a hammer.

The secondary characters are fun. Ouka (the Werewolf), Sanjuro (the teacher), Mirielle (the rare hunter) - now that, I could understand. Greed and MMORG, they seem to go hand in hand :) Best of all we got to see a lot of Balmumg of the Azure Sky, what a stud! My absolute favorite character from .Hack/Sign gets some serious airtime and ends up even cooler than before. The only one I found annoying was Mr. "Tres Bien".

Art/Animation and sound

The animation was great. If possible, EVEN CUTER than in .Hack/Sign. Cuteness overload. Kawaiiiii! Some frames I had to stop and look again just to appreciate how adorable everything was, even the little widdle Grunty. A lot of the sound/music was copied from the first series so this was nothing remarkable, just average compared to how this anime looked.

Enjoyment

Twilight was short and satisfying. There didn't seem to be much time wasting and the plot moved along at a brisk pace leaving the viewer engaged instead of bored. For this reason alone it deserves a solid 6, enough to prompt me to look for the Offline Meeting Special.

First off I would like to point out that I haven't played the .hack video games so already I really had no idea what was going on, although I do know that these .hack series did revolve around an MMORPG video game, so right off the bat I knew they were just players inside a video game.

Forgive me if I made some errors towards this review considering I saw this anime around a year ago so my memories might have been sort of disarrayed throughout those months but nevertheless I'll try to make this review ... as good as I can.

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Story

Unlike numerous animes that I've watched the story for this series never really caught on to me, and what I mean by that is that it never really got me to want to watch the next episode after watching one. I mean sure it was interesting enough that they were in a video game and not many other animes have that concept but the fact that they are in a video game kind of gave me an idea that yes there should be action considering everything in their world is fiction so anything might be possible, and that includes ridiculous laws of physics and whatnot, sadly that didn't really happen. It has the typical good guy and bad guy scene going on, it's fair but at the same time it leaves so much more improvement for a better more complicated storyline, instead they just chose to go linear with it. It might have been aimed towards more for the kids since the characters themselves are children compared to the other .hack series but can't really do much there.Bottom line for the storyline, considering it's a video game I expected a more complicated and action packed story rathen than a very linear and predictable tale.

Art

I didn't complain much about the Art, with the library of anime that I've watched it's safe to say that art isn't such a big factor for me to like it, it's more for the storyline and character development. This anime was made in 2003 and it certainly looked like it with the art, nothing too fancy, a few 3D edits here and there but nothing that'll really blow your mind. The very different and bright colours they chose really gave that fictional look on them which is perfect for the kind of concept this anime held. Overall, there was nothing wrong with the art, fair.

Character

Now the characters are the ones that I have the problem with, being myself I don't really like children that much, and with this anime having the protagonists being children made me clench my teeth already, BUT that doesn't mean that this part of the review is focusing on negative personal things, it means that they are just not my kind of characters (being children).
They have shown really good character growth from the start of the series to the end of the series, I guess that's what they called "leveling up"? If they didn't show signs of growing then they must've been playing the game wrong for sure haha. Overall, there was a good variety of characters, almost every kind of personality could relate to at least one of them and they showed tremendous growth (protagonist)

Overall

Honestly, this .hack series had the most action out of all the other ones and just for that I'd like to make this series the best one out of all, you might tell me "Oh, you haven't played the games that's why you think it's okay", well it's true that my opinions might change about it if I decide to play the game, but I'm giving you guys the perspective from a person that hasn't played the games and I'm sure there are tons of other people out there that want to start watching this anime but decide to get a view from a person that hasn't played the video games.

cheers.

Almsot any anime watcher who stumbles upon .hack//Legend of the Twilight will have very likely already seen .hack//Sign, the original story of the .hack// series. The major differences that seperate these two sereis are the seriousness factor and the character design (full design, not just art). You'll notice a much heavier influence of comedy in this series as well as a bit of more childish behavior from the characters (mainly due to the characters not being very old themselves).

The story mainly takes place in a place called The World, a virtual reality based for a video game controlled by players using a keyboard and a ... virtual reality headset. The two main characters are brother and sister in real life, but who now live apart from each other and it focuses on their introduction to The World, the people they meet, and the major dilema they run into that threatens the game world.

For anyone who watches this series, you'll notice major similarities between the original series (Sign) and this one; As well as an episode plot repeat, just update with the current environment(story/age/characters) (but still plays out just as nicely).

The character design is done well enough, yet different enough (from each other and other series) that it keeps you attracted to them and somewhat wishing them the best.

Overall, it's not a bad anime, just rather lacks the certain elements that made .hack//Sign such a ground-breaking story and anime.

Key Notes:
*This IS NOT as serious as .hack//Sign. It is more of a comedy than the previous series.
*This DOES look/feel very similar to .hack//Sign
*This IS much shorter than .hack//Sign
*This IS still worth watching if you are into the series.