Reviewed on May 29th, 2006

Visually

.Hack//SIGN....probably one of the most unpopular anime to some people but in the U.S. it is increasingly getting popular. With its high definition looks and character design it is probably one of my most favorable animes. Even though .Hack//SIGN lacked fighting scenes heavily it still had great battle scenes when they had them..Hack//SIGN is well-realized and intriguing from the start: The animation is nice and easy but attractive, and 'The World's' hugely various settings provide always changing backgrounds. The creepy haunting background music is really effective.

Audio

The audio is most easiest thing to talk about in my opinion. The music on .Hack//SIGN is very great and goes along with whatever the setting is at the time. The music is also very addictive and out of no where you got one of the songs stuck in your head. Though the only downside is that they play most of the songs over and over and over again which gets very old and annoying. I ended up having to mute the sound sometimes cause of the music got really annoying.

Storyline

In a popular online virtual-reality RPG (Role Playing Game) called 'The World', a character named Tsukasa wakes up in a chamber that looks like the stomach of a some sort of beast. He does not know how he got there or what he was doing before he lost consciousness. Though clearly that he is confused he spurns attempts to help him when another player, a sword warrior girl named Mimiru, shows concern over him, he teleports away to avoid dealing with her. When he is approached by a member of the Scarlet Knights or in the U.S. known as the Crimson Knights, an organization of grim, slightly bullying players who enforce "The World's" rules. The member asks Tsukasa questions about things he doesn't even remember he ends up fleeing that encounter too. As the series progresses, Tsukasa continues dodging meetings and conversation with as many people as much as he can, and in the process Tsukasa makes a ton of enemies who might be good friends if he only took some time to explain his troubles to them. One of the unique things about Tsukasa is that he has special powers no one else has. One of the problems we find out that is very mysterious is that as all the other people in 'The World' are able to leave Tsukasa is unable to log-out and no one knows what he looks like and what his human self is doing. Some other unusual thing is he recieves a some type of 'monster' in the game from a mute-looking cat. He plainly calls this monster his 'somewhat' ally his "guardian". He is also has the power of logging into places anywhere with out using a gateway and can log into places no other players can; the main place he goes to is a place where a sleeping girl hovers over a bed.

DVD

I personally do not know how good the DVD's are for I watched the episodes that are aired on Cartoon Network Saturdays at 11:00 P.M. Central Standard Time. Though I do know the DVD of .Hack//SIGN Volume 1 contains episodes 1-5 which are able to be seen on Cartoon Network.

Overall

I find .Hack//SIGN Volume 1 rather boring for I do give it a break for being the beginning of the dothack series. The problem with .Hack//SIGN Volume 1 is that it starts of so slow as well as the story slowly progress through-out the volumes which can get quite bothersome for some people. Though I do give it credit for being so eye-catching that it makes people want to see more episodes after volume 1 of the series.

by Aidan