.hack//SIGN

One of the best animes I have ever had the gift of watching. Character design is superb,great musical score, and the voice acting is up in line with Cowboy Bebop, Alexander(Reign the Conquerer), etc. The games are great. Hopefully it will become a long running series like the Mobile Suit Gundam series.

Willam, the copies of the game you found were probably the American versions released legally.

.hack//Sign is not boring or confusing. If you have seen Evangelion, which is created by some of the same people, you can see how the "confusion" is actually an important story device called Mystery.

As the other comments eluded to, this series is one in a multi-format anime/manga/game series. Hack sign is only the second part in the series. So the claim that the ending resolves nothing, first realize that this series was never intended to "stand alone", but to complement the other parts. Second, please refer to the other animes done by these people: Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell, both have inconclusive endings, like it or not. If you can't stand a complex plot; you prefer simple, predictable plots; then this show is not for you.

As to the boring part. The show may be slow moving, especially the episode where Mimiru waits for Tsukasa in Dun Lorielag, but if you are paying attention fully, you notice how well written the show is. It is portraying the sometimes tediousness of online gaming, but more importantly, showing how Tsukasa is living on a completely different timeframe from other players. This serves to give the viewers some insight into how Tsukasa must be feeling, and how the other "normal" players must be exerting themselves trying to befriend him. .Hack//Sign is a beautiful story. With well drawn characters and backgrounds, and well written music. The characters and dialogue are complex, as well as the story. I recommend everybody buy/watch this anime, as well as .hack//liminality and also play the games. They are all fun and each are a part in a larger puzzle. This whole series has quite an original concept. It certainly is not boring or confusing.

Well after you get past the slightly depressing scheme of things and the fact it takes awhile for anything of real excitement to happen it does turn out to be pretty good once everything kinda falls together....so all in all I would give it an 8/10 because of the usual good quality animation and voice acting ( unlike those crappy dim a dozen American cartoons).... In addition to that they had a good cast of well developed characters (Sora was my favorite)....

Anyways a little info on the actual series can simply be put as follows: it starts out when a kid is playing and basically had his conscious severed from his physical body thus being stuck in the game called the "world" and unable to logout. Then he eventually find and befriends some random people, he gets special administrative privileges from some omni-present being, they find out this omni-present being is bad and end up fighting and predictably defeating it in battle....they throw a party ...and the end

While this anime was never highly rated, I love it for some reason. Call it nostalgia maybe, but I feel like I watch this every few years.

.hack//SIGN cannot be judged alone. This show was meant to be connected with many other forms of multimedia and many other shows. There is.hack//Liminality 4 episode series, .hack//DUSK manga and anime (a.k.a. Legend of the Twilight Bracelet), and the gaming series. Each seperate show/game/manga fills in those questions that are left by the others and you must even do some investigating yourself to fill in some of the blanks.

Standing alone, .hack//SIGN is a work of art. The scenery is amazing, the character designs are very original, and the soundtrack is mindblowing. Because the entire series takes place witin a digital world, the artists had a lot of freedom in the design of the enviroment; yet they also had the guidelines of keeping the same feeling of the enviroment in the games (.hack//Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, and Quarintine). This provided a challenge because the graphics in the games aren't exactly wonderful. But the artists pull through keeping true to the game and making an unforgetable world for us to enjoy. Anoter big challenge was to create a way to make the main characters recognizable while keeping them within design of the "extras" because the series is a game where there are skins for the players. The characters that stick out in my mind are Chrim and Mimiru. Finally, during the course of the whole series, there are very few moments where there is no music playing and whenever this happens, it is for dramatic effect. They even have a feature on the DVD to take out the dialogue and just watch the beautiful art and listen to the amazing muisc.

I don't want to talk much about the story because it is something you need to discover for yourself. All you need to know is that at times the story can drag and seem slow but all you need to do is stick with it and make sure you don't get lost in the many intellegent conversations that take place.

I HIGHLY reccomend this series espicially with taking part in the many other offered .hack media.