King BrehonWing
Eric Brian Brewster:
I find that .Hack//Sign "The Legend Of The Twilight" and .Hack Sign "The World are both excellent series, since The Legend Of The Twilight is in game form and .Hack Sign "The World" is a TV series on Anime, I have been watching it for a while in NS, Canada and enjoy it alot.

(1) The story revolves around a period of about 30 years of an actual company in Japan (possibably internationally as well) that is called CC Corporation. It with a team of scientists and business people, created a gaming program called ".hack//sign". In the first developement of the game, users from all over the internet participated in competitions to get to be legendary status. (2) Unfortunately within the company there were a mother and father that had a daughter and was to be the heiress of the company, over time peoples in the company either got on the mother's side or the father's the company along with it's assets split in two parts.
(3) Later apparently the husband died and his wife had already divorced him for a greater share of the company. Within the game, the husband tells his story and his wife being possibably an computer programmer, tries to hide the details of the husband's story and the child, "Aura's" inheritance from her. "Morgana" in despairation, notes her estranged daughter is playing the game and sends a virus program to send her into a coma, there by she is in that coma for about 20 years untill a young teenager named "Tsukasa", introverted, his father working for CC Corporation as part of the business team for the gaming company, discovers his neglected son playing the game.

(4) His father is angry at him for playing the game, shortly after his mother has died, he brings a stray cat home and Tsukasa's father takes the stray of the house again, demanding Tsukasa pay more attention to his school work instead of trying to look for pets, shortly after this Tsukasa is so depressed he wishes to go into the game and never come out again. Aura in her coma through the game creates the "Play Cat Maha", whom contacts Tsukasa and enduces a coma in him. (5) His father comes home horrified and brings Tsukasa to a hospital.

There Tsukasa from about 10yrs old to about 15-16yrs stays in a bed in a coma, a war between Aura and "Morgana" is played out in the game, Aura hoping with her father that someone, one of the players of the game or the trapped boy Tsukasa will "reawaken" her and find out the secret of the Twilight Bracelet and bring them back into the realworld and to her inheritance that has been denied her so long ago.

Normally I try to watch an anime series right through before writing a review, but after 5 episodes, I'm giving up on this one. Many of the ideas and images seem cut and pasted from other series and films - a bit of 'Serial Experiments: lain', a bit of 'Escaflowne', a bit of 'Existenz', a bit of Ghibli, and who knows how many others I haven't seen. Then there are the English voice actors who manage to seem as wooden and bland as the voice actors in most other anime dubs, though they have mastered the art of going "Uh? Huh? Ah! Wha-? Err, and oh!" every five seconds.

It's not bad, and the animation is decent. The soundtrack is good, but to my ears anyway the music frequently doesn't fit the scenes.

After 5 eps I just found myself fairly uninterested and emotionally detatched. I would probably have stuck with it if I hadn't seen as much stuff that it reminded me of, which was better. I can't have disliked it that much, I guess, or I wouldn't have made it that far (I only made it through one episode of 'Excel Saga' for instance). I'm just tired of anime series which are mentally sophisticated but emotionally immature. I honestly find many modern Disney films more mature and adult than things like this. As I've said before, it's because western features often pitch simultaneously at a child and adult audience, whereas anime usually just pitches at fourteen year-olds who can wrap their heads around involved plots.

Inkwolf outlined the plot well below. I don't have anything to add to this, except that if you like anime, you'll like this, and if you're new to the field, though you'll probably enjoy it, there is better stuff around.

This is quite a good series. It takes place in an online roleplaying game called 'The World.' (Zero out of five points for imaginative naming.)

The moderators suspect someone's hacked into the game and is using a cheat of some sort: a mysterious, reclusive character named Tsukasa has been seen in the company with a cat character who definitely does not belong in the game: and seems to have powers beyond the parameters of the game.

A few characters get the chance to talk to Tsukasa, who claims to be stuck inside the game and unable to log off. The mystery continues to grow, as one of the players wonders whether Tsukasa is actually a young girl in a coma in a nearby hospital, the in-game assistant moderators have a falling out and power struggle, and strange clues gather about the Key of the Twilight, a mythical artifact supposedly created by a banned player who hacked into the system long ago.

The conclusion is satisfying, though a bit confusing. The series was apparently part of a 'multi-media event' meaning that part of the story was told in the related video game. Still, apart from one or two muddled bits, this is enjoyable watching for anyone who enjoys the occasional (or constant) RPG.