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.
