“.Hack//Sign” presents the interesting perspective of life within a mass multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Just about all of the events taking place in this anime series takes place within a popular MMORPG called “The World.” All of the characters in .Hack//Sign are players in The World as their names are basically their usernames. That is how the characters refer to each other throughout the course of .Hack//Sign.
Almost everybody across the world is logged into the world. I didn’t not what to expect when I had first saw this anime on Cartoon Network. It first debuted on Cartoon Network on Saturday afternoons around 2003 and eventually was brought into the Adult Swim block on late nights. I was very impressed with .Hack//Sign as it has become one of my favorite anime titles. It was because of this anime that I had found an interesting in the .Hack// series for the Playstation 2.
The setting of The World takes place on the various servers such is named after letters of the Greek alphabet such as: Alpha, Delta, Theta, and Omega. Characters are transported to various locations on the servers from “root towns” which are your hubs of all sorts of information. Think of the root towns as cities, towns, and villages where you can find all sorts of information. Anybody familiar with the various MMORPG titles should understand what these root towns are.
Characters are embarking on several quests as they raid dungeons to find the valuable treasures.
The character appearances of .Hack//Sign are not their actual appearances. They are more like a person’s avatar. The people behind those characters look very different from their avatars in The World. As most of the focus of .Hack//Sign takes place within the world, we barely get to see glimpses of the real life people behind them. It seems to be the point as the creators want to stick to what’s happening in The World.
.Hack//Sign is mainly life within an MMORPG. Characters can team up with other people to do all sorts of quests such as dungeon raiding. Where you go depends on the three keywords you mix together.
The main character is a boy named Tsukasa. He is apart of the Wavemaster class of players that mainly focuses on magic. Other classes in The World include: Blademaster, Heavy Sword, Long Arm, Twin Blade, and Heavy Axe. People in The World are usually one of these six classes.
Tsukasa is the focus of the story as he cannot log out for some reason. He becomes the subject of ostracism as players and the AI of The World are looking for him. Players tend to get killed looking for Tsukasa. While the characters are dead, the players behind them fall into mysterious comas.
The main plot is finding out the reasons that Tsukasa cannot log off from The World and finding out the cause of the mysterious comas. He is aided by: Mimiru a Heavy Sword, Bear a Blademaster, Kurim a Longarm, Suburu a Heavy Axe, and BT another Wavemaster.
.Hack//Sign also places the interesting perspective that the characters cannot investigate all the time as they have real life issues. It’s a mix of dealing with real life issues while investigate the mysteries of The World.
The series does a great job making us think about how more people play MMORPG titles. It also makes us think about the future of such titles because the possibility of something like The World isn’t that far from the future.
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