This .hack is definitely different but similar in it's own accord compared to the other .hack series. The story is very plain and boring when read on paper, but really think about it, if you try to imagine the events happening in the real world it would be pretty messed up and interesting, the one thing I really liked about this series is the fact that they put more emphasis on the players themselves rather than the characters inside the video game, the main character Tsukasa is "stuck" in the game, he can't seem to log out (although in the real world tsukasa is actually a female playing a male character in the video game).
The story gets more complicated as the number of episodes escalates but it mostly still revolves around the main character tsukasa, weird events start happening and the item called "Key of the twilight" is mentioned, which is I'm guessing the same item that they were looking for in .hack//roots, with that being said these events happened before roots, since in this one he obtained the key of the twilight while in roots it's considered to be a myth. Now the amount of episodes that Sign has is quite understandable, 26 isn't too much and too little either. Overall the story could use some more excitement considering there's almost no action in the whole series, the most you'll ever see is them wielding out their weapons and threatening each other to fight, but other than that it's usually just pure talking.
The art of the anime is pretty straightforward, nothing too fancy or too unique about it, this was made in 2002 so don't expect much about they way they look, for those that are really picky with the art and animation, all I can say is that for you guys, it's bearable to watch and I'm sure that's convincing enough for you guys to check the anime out.
Now the final thing I want to talk about are the characters, tsukasa's design is very very plain, and I'm completely comparing him/her to Haseo on this one because the way Tsukasa looks makes you want to go to sleep, I understand that his character in the video game isn't really for close combat or anything flashy like that but come on now... he's the main character can't you make him a bit cooler looking? The character that really intrigued me the most is Mimiru, the heavy blade character that befriends Tsukasa and Bear and is helping him/her trying to figure as to why Tsukasa can't log out of the game. What makes her so interesting is that she's the lead female character of the anime and yet she takes on the role as to what the male is supposed to be, which is the buffed up warrior role, and I think she plays her character quite well to a point where you know she has the ability to protect tsukasa and at the same time have that soft female side from her, (and plus I think I can relate to her because I've always liked warrior classes from mmorpgs)
Overall .hack//SIGN isn't such a bad anime, I've seen way worse ones out there and it's clearly safe to say that you really need to play the video games if you want to experience the true feeling of getting into this anime because clearly from my perspective as a person who hasn't played the video games you can really see from the scores I've given this.
cheers.
