(first it's really for .Hack series fans. If you are new to it, you don't have to read it if you don't plan on learn an AWESOME story of RPG anime+game series. it's going to be a very long post)
I really have some questions about the storyline/timeline of .Hack series need to be answered please
So far I know
there are at least 7 game series of .Hack and they are for PS2 if I am not mistaken.
And there are 4 anime series of .Hack
.Hack Sign
.Hack Liminality
.Hack Dusk - Legend of Twilight's Bracelet
.Hack Roots
I have 0 games of .Hack. Only watched some anime series.
For all this time since I watched .Hack Sign first about over 3 years ago, I always thought this awesome anime is the original. And I saw Dusk on TV due to the stupid wrong translation on Cartoon Network(or maybe because it was late and my ears were playing trick on me), I mistaken Dusk as a clone of Sign and it conflicts with the original of Sign...but now it is finally clear to me they are not conflict with each other at all but closely related. I thought for sure I heard the Knights of War called themselves Scarlet Knights...I thought why Scarlet knights reformed under a completely total stranger instead of the original leaderships who were among main characters of SIGN? Well now it is clear. They aren't even the same knights. I also saw .Hack Sign video game for PS2 on TV commerical a while ago.
Not too long ago I discovered there are A BUNCH of .Hack game series, not just a few. and also the other anime series. I did some research on the relationships of all of the games and anime series. Trying to fit them into one related storyline. Now I am a bit more confused since I don't have the game series.
So far what I know is, .Hack Sign is the first or original anime series. But I am really not sure if it is based on the games or the games are based on the anime.
So
***question #1 - Which one came out first? anime or games?
.Hack Sign anime seems to be standing alone well as the beginning of the storyline for anime series. It really caught my attention, and made me became a fan of MMORPG.
The storylines I know so far is, all started with .Hack Sign. -
- There is this one advanced MMORPG name The World. With players can use advanced user interface to play like they are actually inside the game world themselves. 3 years after the game launched. This player character name Tsukasa who plays a sorccer went to coma in the real world when play the game. And his conscious was trapped inside the server with no way to log out, and he lost pretty much all the memories. And the server system is an artificial intellegent being that was corrupted or maybe infected by some kind of virus(nobody was aware of it), and it is responsible for what happened to Tsukasa. The infected system tried to use Tsukasa and gave him some powers of outside of the game rules, include a summon creature that does not exist in the game and use a different set rules for fighting(cut through enemy weapons like butter, and the players who were killed by it will pass out irl for a few days and suffer mild memory loss), also Tsukasa can teleporting around the servers without using the portals which is guarded by Scarlet Knights(switching servers and log out all must be through the portals which is called Chaos Gate.). There are a group of players formed a legion called the Scarlet Knights. They acted like system moderators to punish cheaters/hackers and also random player killers. They thought Tsukasa was a cheating hacker and tried to capture his character in game. Even with 4 full squards of knights, they couldn't beat the "hacking" summon creature of Tsukusa, until a level 99 original knight who formed Scarlet Knights in the first place name Kurim showed up. He dodged all the attacks of the summon, and took down Tsukasa then let the other knights grabbed him teleported out of the area before the summon could react again. They captured Tsukasa and the "hacking" summon vanished. Soon a level 99 player killer name Sora who uses dual daggers broke into the jail and pked all the guarding Scarlet knights and released Tsukasa who he didn't even really know. Well after 26 episodes everything was clear and with the help of some other players they defeated the corrupted AI system and had Tsukasa finally logged out the server and woke up in the real world who is actually a girl irl. But at the end the legendary player killer Sora went to coma irl because of he backstabbed the AI system who he temporary allied with.
There are 3 bonus episodes came with the Sign. Episode 28 also stated some things that is also a part of the whole story but never showed in details in anime series. There they introduced 3 other "main" characters who did not show in Sign earlier. The legendary hackers(good ones) - Kite and Blackrose, and a normal player Orca. They were working with another legendary high level player name Barumunk together to search and destory the remaining viruses that infected the system. Though only Barumunk was mentioned a few times and showed up only once in all the first 26 episodes of .Hack Sign. From what I understand, the other 3 characters Kite, Blackrose, and Orca are also main characters from the game series around the same timeline if I am right.
========================================================================
Then for .Hack Liminality, it is the events that happened during real world during that Twilight Incident(the standard name for the incident took place when Tsuksaa was trapped in the game). I don't really know what happened since I don't have Liminality. From what I know, it seems they tried to find out the hackers and the source of the viruses, and the truth about the AI system that controls the servers which resaulted in the incident happened in the game. The whole show of Liminality took place in the real world.
***Question #2 - What did they find out irl in .Hack Liminality? And what really happened?
====================================================================
Then .Hack Dusk(DUSK is really a fan name, the standard name should be Twilight's Bracelet) suppose to take place 4 years after the incident of .Hack Sign. Where it seems almost all the old main characters were no longer playing, execpt the famous Barumunk who now became a system moderator. Orca also is still around(though he changed his hair a bit lol). But you can safely say that the .Hack Sign Main characters do not exist in DUSK, which is a down side imo. Well that squard leader of Scarlet Knights Ginkan showed up for 5 min. and he was gone for good...stupid moderators deleted him for his action of helping one of the DUSK main characters. And there came 2 new characters of a twin brother and sister, who won a contest and they were given the character appearence of the legendary hackers of Kite and Blackrose. Which is a shame in my opinion lol, since the real Kite and Blackrose who suppose to be main characters never showed in the anime series aside the episode 28 of .Hack Sign which is already after the incident ended. Dusk also have a more childish looks on Kite and Blackrose's characters. In Sign their in game characters looked like 14~16 years old teenagers, in Dusk they looked like 10-year-old little kids which I don't like lol.
Anyway, the storyline of DUSK,
in Dusk the incident of .Hack Sign repeated, but this time it is much worse. Random data corrupted mobs appeared randomly anywhere and they can't be stopped, they would keep regenerating after being suppose to be killed. And the worst part is, any players being killed by these data corrupted mobs will go to coma in the real world, while also disappeared in the game with no trace of log out being found in the logs. So there were A LOT of players went to coma. Include the moderator force of Knights of War. They tried to trace the hackers who caused this, just when one of the hackers summoned another data corrupted monster in front of 4 players, a million knights from Knights of War teleported in and surronded them, the hacker was so surprised and teleported out of the area immediately. The knights used moderator logs tracer tried to follow the hacker, but then the entire area was wiped out and an entire army of Knights of War went to coma in the real world.
In the end the problem was solved, the whole incident in DUSK was caused by another corrupted AI system and some stupid viruses with 4 hackers irl who worked together. The kid with Kite and Blackrose's appearences of course became the key to saved the "world". All the players who went to coma had woken up irl.
(obivously I would have liked the Dusk better if they have the original animation style for Kite and Blackrose instead of the 10-year-old childish looks. Also would be nice if there are more of the old main characters from .hack sign. I really also perfer the real original Kite and Blackrose instead of some kids newbie lvl 1 players who got their appearence from a contest. And Scarlet Knights > Knights of War imo just because stupid Knights of War were so ruthless and started to delete the characters of the players who just broken a little bit rules include one of the original leaders of Scarlet Knights...poor Ginkan...too bad Scarlet Knights was disbanded 4 years before DUSK, or they could have put up a fight...after all they used to control everything include the log in/out portals. Scarlet knights in .Hack Sign never went this far, they only temporary capture the pkers and cheaters in the worst cases.
I also know as a fact, during the Twilight incident which is the story in SIGN, the true bigger picture of the incident was not taking place in the anime of SIGN, the key to solve the incident was actually done by the team of Kite, Blackrose, Barumunk, Orca, and maybe Helba too. But these parts of stories are actually from the game series, which I don't have. From what I know so far there are at least 7 PS2 game series for .Hack
Correct me if I said any storyline/timeline wrong above.
I also enjoy the cool effect of the owntage style of Sora the level 99 player killer from .Hack Sign which was a direct reason caused me wanted to level level level in RPG lol...want to be cool. In "The World", it seems even 3 years after the game was launched, only very few players such as Sora the pker, Kurim of Red Lighting the original Scarlet Knight, Barumunk of Azure Sky, and a few others who reached top level among 20 million players. With entire rest of the population couldn't stand a 0.1 sec. conflict with any of them. I like the idea only very very few players can reach a high state of power with rest players don't stand a chance. It would be boring if everyone can just max out without much of thinking but simply spend more time on mindless grinding which is actually easy.
As for .Hack Roots, so far I only read a bit background of it. It took place 2 years after DUSK incident. And it sux imo, since the story started with "a fire took place in CC Corporation, and server data were mostly lost." The game was shut down for 1 year and launched again as a fresh new game with a changed world, and all the player data were lost, so everyone had to start over after 10 years! So of course they said 40% players did not return because they couldn't play their old characters. Just great...now they have a good excuse to makel new series without a single old character. Why did they think people like me would be so interested in .Hack series in the first place? Of course we like the characters too. Now all the old characters were "killed" by a "fire". Well execpt poor Ginkan of Scarlet Knights was deleted by moderators from stupid Knights of War 1 year earlier...
btw, from my research, there are also at least 8 novels of .Hack series. Most part of them were not in neither the games nor the anime. While they are taking parts in the entire storyline. So it seems, each of the the game series, the anime series, and the novels are all a part of a big story.
Well here are more questions about,
***Question #3 - What's the storyline with the GAME series? And the relationships of storyline/timeline between the game series and the anime series? I mean how do the storylines/timelines of game series and anime series fit with each other? Explain the game series storyline in details please.
And also please list the names of all the .Hack game series.
(Please don't ask me to do research on my own again lol, took me a long time only got more confused with so many different random sources, there must be a million different web sites of .Hack series out there)
I really have some questions about the storyline/timeline of .Hack series need to be answered please
So far I know
there are at least 7 game series of .Hack and they are for PS2 if I am not mistaken.
And there are 4 anime series of .Hack
.Hack Sign
.Hack Liminality
.Hack Dusk - Legend of Twilight's Bracelet
.Hack Roots
I have 0 games of .Hack. Only watched some anime series.
For all this time since I watched .Hack Sign first about over 3 years ago, I always thought this awesome anime is the original. And I saw Dusk on TV due to the stupid wrong translation on Cartoon Network(or maybe because it was late and my ears were playing trick on me), I mistaken Dusk as a clone of Sign and it conflicts with the original of Sign...but now it is finally clear to me they are not conflict with each other at all but closely related. I thought for sure I heard the Knights of War called themselves Scarlet Knights...I thought why Scarlet knights reformed under a completely total stranger instead of the original leaderships who were among main characters of SIGN? Well now it is clear. They aren't even the same knights. I also saw .Hack Sign video game for PS2 on TV commerical a while ago.
Not too long ago I discovered there are A BUNCH of .Hack game series, not just a few. and also the other anime series. I did some research on the relationships of all of the games and anime series. Trying to fit them into one related storyline. Now I am a bit more confused since I don't have the game series.
So far what I know is, .Hack Sign is the first or original anime series. But I am really not sure if it is based on the games or the games are based on the anime.
So
***question #1 - Which one came out first?
anime or games?.Hack Sign anime seems to be standing alone well as the beginning of the storyline for anime series. It really caught my attention, and made me became a fan of MMORPG.
The storylines I know so far is, all started with .Hack Sign. -
- There is this one advanced MMORPG name The World. With players can use advanced user interface to play like they are actually inside the game world themselves. 3 years after the game launched. This player character name Tsukasa who plays a sorccer went to coma in the real world when play the game. And his conscious was trapped inside the server with no way to log out, and he lost pretty much all the memories. And the server system is an artificial intellegent being that was corrupted or maybe infected by some kind of virus(nobody was aware of it), and it is responsible for what happened to Tsukasa. The infected system tried to use Tsukasa and gave him some powers of outside of the game rules, include a summon creature that does not exist in the game and use a different set rules for fighting(cut through enemy weapons like butter, and the players who were killed by it will pass out irl for a few days and suffer mild memory loss), also Tsukasa can teleporting around the servers without using the portals which is guarded by Scarlet Knights(switching servers and log out all must be through the portals which is called Chaos Gate.). There are a group of players formed a legion called the Scarlet Knights. They acted like system moderators to punish cheaters/hackers and also random player killers. They thought Tsukasa was a cheating hacker and tried to capture his character in game. Even with 4 full squards of knights, they couldn't beat the "hacking" summon creature of Tsukusa, until a level 99 original knight who formed Scarlet Knights in the first place name Kurim showed up. He dodged all the attacks of the summon, and took down Tsukasa then let the other knights grabbed him teleported out of the area before the summon could react again. They captured Tsukasa and the "hacking" summon vanished. Soon a level 99 player killer name Sora who uses dual daggers broke into the jail and pked all the guarding Scarlet knights and released Tsukasa who he didn't even really know. Well after 26 episodes everything was clear and with the help of some other players they defeated the corrupted AI system and had Tsukasa finally logged out the server and woke up in the real world who is actually a girl irl. But at the end the legendary player killer Sora went to coma irl because of he backstabbed the AI system who he temporary allied with.
There are 3 bonus episodes came with the Sign. Episode 28 also stated some things that is also a part of the whole story but never showed in details in anime series. There they introduced 3 other "main" characters who did not show in Sign earlier. The legendary hackers(good ones) - Kite and Blackrose, and a normal player Orca. They were working with another legendary high level player name Barumunk together to search and destory the remaining viruses that infected the system. Though only Barumunk was mentioned a few times and showed up only once in all the first 26 episodes of .Hack Sign. From what I understand, the other 3 characters Kite, Blackrose, and Orca are also main characters from the game series around the same timeline if I am right.
========================================================================
Then for .Hack Liminality, it is the events that happened during real world during that Twilight Incident(the standard name for the incident took place when Tsuksaa was trapped in the game). I don't really know what happened since I don't have Liminality. From what I know, it seems they tried to find out the hackers and the source of the viruses, and the truth about the AI system that controls the servers which resaulted in the incident happened in the game. The whole show of Liminality took place in the real world.
***Question #2 - What did they find out irl in .Hack Liminality? And what really happened?
====================================================================
Then .Hack Dusk(DUSK is really a fan name, the standard name should be Twilight's Bracelet) suppose to take place 4 years after the incident of .Hack Sign. Where it seems almost all the old main characters were no longer playing, execpt the famous Barumunk who now became a system moderator. Orca also is still around(though he changed his hair a bit lol). But you can safely say that the .Hack Sign Main characters do not exist in DUSK, which is a down side imo. Well that squard leader of Scarlet Knights Ginkan showed up for 5 min. and he was gone for good...stupid moderators deleted him for his action of helping one of the DUSK main characters. And there came 2 new characters of a twin brother and sister, who won a contest and they were given the character appearence of the legendary hackers of Kite and Blackrose. Which is a shame in my opinion lol, since the real Kite and Blackrose who suppose to be main characters never showed in the anime series aside the episode 28 of .Hack Sign which is already after the incident ended. Dusk also have a more childish looks on Kite and Blackrose's characters. In Sign their in game characters looked like 14~16 years old teenagers, in Dusk they looked like 10-year-old little kids which I don't like lol.
Anyway, the storyline of DUSK,
in Dusk the incident of .Hack Sign repeated, but this time it is much worse. Random data corrupted mobs appeared randomly anywhere and they can't be stopped, they would keep regenerating after being suppose to be killed. And the worst part is, any players being killed by these data corrupted mobs will go to coma in the real world, while also disappeared in the game with no trace of log out being found in the logs. So there were A LOT of players went to coma. Include the moderator force of Knights of War. They tried to trace the hackers who caused this, just when one of the hackers summoned another data corrupted monster in front of 4 players, a million knights from Knights of War teleported in and surronded them, the hacker was so surprised and teleported out of the area immediately. The knights used moderator logs tracer tried to follow the hacker, but then the entire area was wiped out and an entire army of Knights of War went to coma in the real world.
In the end the problem was solved, the whole incident in DUSK was caused by another corrupted AI system and some stupid viruses with 4 hackers irl who worked together. The kid with Kite and Blackrose's appearences of course became the key to saved the "world". All the players who went to coma had woken up irl.
(obivously I would have liked the Dusk better if they have the original animation style for Kite and Blackrose instead of the 10-year-old childish looks. Also would be nice if there are more of the old main characters from .hack sign. I really also perfer the real original Kite and Blackrose instead of some kids newbie lvl 1 players who got their appearence from a contest. And Scarlet Knights > Knights of War imo just because stupid Knights of War were so ruthless and started to delete the characters of the players who just broken a little bit rules include one of the original leaders of Scarlet Knights...poor Ginkan...too bad Scarlet Knights was disbanded 4 years before DUSK, or they could have put up a fight...after all they used to control everything include the log in/out portals. Scarlet knights in .Hack Sign never went this far, they only temporary capture the pkers and cheaters in the worst cases.
I also know as a fact, during the Twilight incident which is the story in SIGN, the true bigger picture of the incident was not taking place in the anime of SIGN, the key to solve the incident was actually done by the team of Kite, Blackrose, Barumunk, Orca, and maybe Helba too. But these parts of stories are actually from the game series, which I don't have. From what I know so far there are at least 7 PS2 game series for .Hack
Correct me if I said any storyline/timeline wrong above.
I also enjoy the cool effect of the owntage style of Sora the level 99 player killer from .Hack Sign which was a direct reason caused me wanted to level level level in RPG lol...want to be cool. In "The World", it seems even 3 years after the game was launched, only very few players such as Sora the pker, Kurim of Red Lighting the original Scarlet Knight, Barumunk of Azure Sky, and a few others who reached top level among 20 million players. With entire rest of the population couldn't stand a 0.1 sec. conflict with any of them. I like the idea only very very few players can reach a high state of power with rest players don't stand a chance. It would be boring if everyone can just max out without much of thinking but simply spend more time on mindless grinding which is actually easy.
As for .Hack Roots, so far I only read a bit background of it. It took place 2 years after DUSK incident. And it sux imo, since the story started with "a fire took place in CC Corporation, and server data were mostly lost." The game was shut down for 1 year and launched again as a fresh new game with a changed world, and all the player data were lost, so everyone had to start over after 10 years! So of course they said 40% players did not return because they couldn't play their old characters. Just great...now they have a good excuse to makel new series without a single old character. Why did they think people like me would be so interested in .Hack series in the first place? Of course we like the characters too. Now all the old characters were "killed" by a "fire". Well execpt poor Ginkan of Scarlet Knights was deleted by moderators from stupid Knights of War 1 year earlier...
btw, from my research, there are also at least 8 novels of .Hack series. Most part of them were not in neither the games nor the anime. While they are taking parts in the entire storyline. So it seems, each of the the game series, the anime series, and the novels are all a part of a big story.
Well here are more questions about,
***Question #3 - What's the storyline with the GAME series? And the relationships of storyline/timeline between the game series and the anime series? I mean how do the storylines/timelines of game series and anime series fit with each other? Explain the game series storyline in details please.
And also please list the names of all the .Hack game series.
(Please don't ask me to do research on my own again lol, took me a long time only got more confused with so many different random sources, there must be a million different web sites of .Hack series out there)
