Art Style:
While the art style is a bit old given when it was aired it is mostly a clean viewing experience. There is the odd frame where the animation quality is noticeably lower but fortunately my attention was captivated enough for the odd error to be easily ignored.
Sound:
There is a few points to be covered here. Overall the sound was pleasant to listen to, no errors, nothing 'too' out of pace. But. I found myself asking why on earth some sections played specific music. A few separate scenes with a 'murderous' character had the suspense killed by a jaunty tune that you would expect from a comical scene. Not one with high tension and at key story points, this irritated me as a more serious tone would have been far more gripping. However, the use of no sound or edited sound during specific scenes allowed a clear sense of separation between reality, The World and the characters memories.
Story:
I will be honest. I had no grasp of what was supposed to be happening story wise for a good portion of the start of this anime. Asides from a lot of conjecture and a few ideas nothing solid is presented until a ways into the series which I feel may cause a lot of people to give up on this anime early. Once the story dropped a few plot points and explained a couple of things (sometimes too conveniently) having an understanding allowed me to enjoy the anime more rather than questioning everything with no bite.
Character Progression:
Having finished the anime I am happy with how the main characters were in terms of story. There was a lack of character development all around with some training montages that seem to yield no results except to build the characters confidence. Given that the intro is supposed to show the main characters you would expect them to 'feel' like main characters once being introduced. But some of the characters took a ridiculous amount of time to be included in the main story and become involved with the other characters.
A major character flaw that was painfully in my face was that if a group of people in a video game knew someone was in there for real, they would act in a completely different manner. I'm not talking about "oh god lets get you out of here" but using their intelligence as real people to help someone. There is talk of the real world and logging off so the fact reality isn't used to their advantage confuses me. If breaking character, meeting in the real world and logging off is common talk why not go the distance and log off at ideal times such as before death etc. Not to mention a character knowingly making things difficult for the person stuck inside the video game with the knowledge they can come to harm goes against the morals of the normal person playing the character.
Subbed Version:
Now... I understand not all subbed versions will be the same, but the two versions I viewed had, at times, horrible translation. Hearing common phrases that were translated so wrong in responses to characters made me feel like I was missing a lot of context and some conversations made little sense apart from just agreeing with each other. The intro... I understand some things don't translate well into English but an introduction about "A headache" and other nonsensical lines made no sense to any part of the series. While the intro didn't look too shabby, the dialogue looses appeal.
Personal Views:
I'm not quite sure why I decided to write this review, possibly just to share my odd experience of this anime or to express my thoughts to come to some understanding. I only rated this anime a 6 due to the slow pace, late story and odd music choices. Now I understand people might expect a lower score from all the negatives I have listed but for some reason I quite liked it overall. I guess I enjoyed how different the anime was. A lot of Animes focus on epic battles, fan service or some kind of niche but there is more to this anime than the surface shows. Hack.Sign is not for everyone, I was unsure if it was for me until part way through. It was a nice change from the norm.
