.hack//XXXX

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First thing I need to say; I have not played all of the original games, in fact I only played the first one, but I do understand the gist of the full story from the games. With that out of the way, here's my review.

STORY: .Hack//XXXX, I'll start with the title. Honnestly I thought this was a hentai when I read the title. But each X represents one of the games, with four in total and I heard its pronounced .Hack//4X. But whatever.
.Hack//XXXX condenses the story of the 4 games of the PS2 series into... 10 chapters? Whoa, the result ending up skipping and speeding ... through the story with keeping only imporant events highlighted, or alot of it redone. But this story is trying to create it's place with the inclusion of manga only character (Not really), Cubia.
While Cubia is an important character in the manga, many who had played the games first will feel that his presense is unnecessary (As a NC character). And really this manga is truthfully for people who have played the games, and is basicly another way to revisit the story and the characters.
But it is still somewhat enjoyable for those who have not played the games. And the characters feel a bit more livelier than what they were in the game and the relationship between Kite (The main protagionst) and Cubia is very interesting.

ARTWORK: Actually the artwork is pretty good and has alot of style. The battles are draw well, some characters (Like Black Rose) looks better than what they looked like in the game, and the color art looks very good. However, there is alot of simple drawings and sometimes they look like doodles.

OVERALL: It's a quick read, and alot of fans will be disappointed, but the art looks nice and the story isn't just a straight up copy from the games, but fans of the games are the ones will enjoy it the most.

Alright, I'd LOVE to say this was a good series, but personally I'm glad it's only two volumes, because I got sick of some of the alterations. I know it's "based" off the games, but I see very little similarities left after one character was altered. I've been apart of the .hack fandom since it began in the States with //SIGN and the first four games.

Moving along, there will be some spoilers, but it's a two-book series and probably anyone who is reading this has already played the games anyways. The manga began with one major changed that sort of ticked me off, ... Cubia's not a monster you fight, he's your party member! LOLWUT? So he can Data drain too, and Kite and him go off to destroy the phases to save the Lost Ones. Because of this change, portions of the plot where screwed with royally, including the Mia/Macha fight, Corbenik, amongst various other moments. Not only was the four-game and insanely-long series squished into two books, but it was altered to fit into said two books.

I honestly don't get why they even made Cubia a PC in X-Fourth. It didn't even make sense. His character was a pain and to any .hack fan it's obvious that Cubia working with Kite is just going to end badly for the party. Cubia ends up kidnapping Kite and wants to suck him up and use is power to make sure he never dies. Hey, at least BlackRose still destroyed the bracelet. Roll in the final battle, which isn't against Corbenik, it's again Morganna! Excuse me? She's never made an appearance save for voice, why would she suddenly appear to fight them, skipping Phase 8? Oh and Azure Flame God? Trying to turn it GU on us? But then again, at that point that was probably the only way to end it properly.

With this series, it's obvious that CC2 and Square-Ennix are having some competition to see who can milk their golden series for more money. They know the old .hack fans will still buy it because it is what it is, and because it's .hack they'll say they like it no matter how screwy they make the plot. Though I have to hand it to CC2, they've made the most alternative realities for their cash cow.

It’s not like I ever expected a video game to manga adaptation to be good but…this is pretty bad. I genuinely think that if this had been an art book it would have been soooo much better. The art in these two volumes is excellent. As I’ve said before, the R1 games’ graphics are super dated and so there are some aspects of the character design that come off kind of clunky and hard to look at. Manga artist Megane Kikuya really improved on the designs in her style and her art is what made reading this spin-off worthwhile.

The writing? Not so much…

Notes:

-Honestly, the writing ... in XXXX is practically gibberish, especially if you’re not familiar with the games. The story from the games is sped through at a breakneck pace and random new elements come out of no where. We get no time to care about the characters and it is strictly written for people already familiar with the games.

-I just finished reading volume 2 and the final fight is so “make it up as you go along.” Orca is brought back by Cubia out of nowhere (it’s not explained how), Balmung’s wings are ripped off randomly, and Kite turns into Azure Kite all of the sudden (which was kind of cool tbh) and then instantly reverts to normal Kite when the battle is over. It just feels like zero thought was put into writing a logical story for this manga.

-So much is out of context, Helba suddenly says “The world has been saved by the strength of the hero, Saya” after the final battle who was not once mentioned before in the manga or in…anything! I had to google who the heck Saya was (she’s in the Epitaph of Twilight) and I shouldn’t have to do that.

-Some visuals that made the manga worth it: we get to see Helba’s face, we get to see Morganna (kinda), Orca gets more screentime and looks great, the bosses look great, bonus art from other artists in the final pages

-Cubia’s entire character is very bad-fanfic-OC. His design is cute but he’s so poorly shoehorned into a story that’s already been hyper-condensed. He takes away a lot of Black Rose and Mistral’s roles and is kind of just Kite’s weird yandere boyfriend. I don’t really care about getting an accurate adaptation of IMOQ but if I did I’d be pissed.

It’s sad, I checked Megane Kikuya’s MAL entry and apparently she’s only worked on this and the .Hack//Link manga. She’s a great artist, she just needs to collab with a good writer and she’d be fine :/

I give volumes 1 and 2 of .Hack//XXXX a 4 out of 10