.hack//Liminality

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Hack OVA

Japanese: .hack//LIMINALITY

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Information

Type: OVA

Episodes: 4

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Jun 20, 2002 to Apr 10, 2003

Producers: Bandai Visual, Bandai, CyberConnect2

Licensors: Bandai Entertainment

Studios: Bee Train

Source: Original

Genre: Mystery

Theme: Video Game

Duration: 33 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 6.62¹ (scored by 16,711 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #6606²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #3826

Members: 33,906

Favorites: 34

Available At

Official Site

Resources

AniDB

ANN

Synopsis

While playing the newly released MMORPG "The World," Minase Mai and Tomonari Kasumi collapse in the real world and are sent to the hospital after hearing a mysterious sound. Only Mai recovers, while her friend Kasumi slips into a mysterious coma. Mai is later approached by the creator of "The World," Tokuoka Junichiro, who unveils to her that, just like her friend, six other players across the country also collapsed while playing "The World" and are now in mysterious comas. What exactly is "The World," what is this mysterious sound Mai keeps on hearing, and why are people slipping into comas from this game? Minase, Junichiro, and their acquaintances set off to get to the bottom of this problem before any further harm happens.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

A four-part DVD series included with the .hack// PlayStation 2 games.

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Related Anime

Alternative setting:

.hack//Sign

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Minase, Mai

Main

Kobayashi, Sanae
Japanese

Tokuoka, Junichiro

Main

Ebara, Masashi
Japanese

Aihara, Yuki

Main

Chiba, Saeko
Japanese

Toono, Kyouko

Main

Hisakawa, Aya
Japanese

Skeith

Supporting

Hoerwick, Harald

Supporting

Yamazaki, Takumi
Japanese

Kasumi, Tomonari

Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro
Japanese

Sato, Ichiro

Supporting

Seki, Toshihiko
Japanese

Makino, Masaya

Supporting

Hoshi, Souichirou
Japanese

Asaba, Kaoru

Supporting

Touma, Yumi
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Maseba, Yutaka

Producer

Nozaki, Keiichi

Producer

Uchiyama, Daisuke

Producer

Egawa, Kuninori

Producer

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Opening Theme

	1: "Edge" by See-Saw
	2: "Senyaichiya" by See-Saw
	3: "Kimi ga Ita Monogatari" by See-Saw
	4: "Kioku" by See-Saw

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Ending Theme

"Tasogare no Umi (Twilight Sea)" by See-Saw

Reviews

Nov 3, 2008

Stormy_77

Recommended

Story

The .hack series isn't an easy one to get into for those of us who haven't played the game as there is plenty of background information that is left out in the anime. The strength of Liminality is it addresses some of these questions in a very intriguing manner. Liminality spans more than one .Hack anime, several of the manga and some games but the genius in this anime is it does so from the Real Life point of view (vs. gameplay). It manages to tie many loose ends together and in an entertaining fashion.

Characters

The characters are well fleshed out and developed. There is ...

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Jun 16, 2011

HangJarrel

Mixed Feelings

All right before we get started, just want to make sure that you all know that I haven't played any of the hack games, although a lot of my friends have been telling me to go and get the games because they are really good (from what they said)

Unfortunately the anime series are a completely different form of media so yeah this is my take on it.

Story

Honestly though, it's hard to watch an anime that where you're already supposed to know things and with the lack of background information it's really difficult to get into the story line especially when ... there's still so much to explain. Although it's quite fairly simple and almost identical to the other .hack stories, it focuses on the mysterious comas that's been happening to the players all over the world, and how they're trying to solve it and yadda yadda yadda it goes on. One thing that really surprised me about this is the fact that the settings is completely in the real world, I expected it to be placed in the video game because it's .hack and all but that caught me off guard when the whole thing was set in the real world. Overall, it's getting old hearing almost the same thing over and over again from other series, but the upside is there's always new information that they present about the whole .hack series as a whole which kind of answers a lot of questions from the other series.

Art

The fact that it's an OVA, the art is already given as better than worse. I do have to point out that the style of art is quite different from all the other ones though, maybe because it's an OVA or maybe because it's actually placed in the real world rather than the colourful places of "The World", either way I really have no complaints about the art.

Character

I never really saw any character growth mainly because the time spent in the whole OVA weren't really that long, it didn't take them years or months to get to the end but I would say just days, so the amount of character growth from the beginning to the end I would say was "just right" not too much but not to the point where you wouldn't notice anything. They give you a good variety of characters, but the protagonists weren't very persuasive about their beliefs or goals, they never really showed that much passion about the whole ordeal. I found them too laid back with the situations that were happening and wished they'd react in a more believable manner. There was that guy that always had a cigarette in his mouth, I've always liked characters that are like that, shows them that they too can relieve stress the deathly way.

Overall

Honestly though, with my full opinion on this, the .hack series were probably the ones that I dreaded through watching the most, but then again I think back they were probably one of the first animes I've ever really watched seriously, so it was hard form to get into it and try to analyze as much crap as I can to make a good review.

Liminality was different because they weren't in the video game for once, and that already, gives this anime a point of uniqueness compared to the rest of the .hacks!

cheers

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Feb 6, 2015

brynolf

Not Recommended

Overall
I might have got the chronology wrong, but I started out with this OVA, and have yet to see "Sign" and "Twilight". That's probably why I didn't understand a thing.

Animation
Not bad, not great. It looks kind of like most TV animes out there. I guess you expect more from an OVA, though. I like the attention to detail in the animation, though (throw a frying pan down a hatch, and it's still there when you get down there).

Sound
Voice acting is solid but nothing special. Background music is a bit repetative and there are few different songs considering this being a rather short OVA.

The ending theme ...

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