.hack//Roots

Information of Anime

In 2016, CC Corporation releases "The World R:2" after a fire broke out in 2015 to their datacenter.  The World R:2 was originally another project for CC before the fire incident.  Haseo enters The World as a newbie where he later joins a guild called Twilight Brigade, which is lead by Ovan & Shino.

.hack//Roots takes place before the PS2 .hack//G.U. games.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

Haseo joins the Twilight Brigade when Ovan took interest in him.  Originally a player that wants to be alone, Haseo was invited into two of the biggest guilds: Twilight Brigade & TaN.  Haseo joined the first guild which was formed to find The Key of the Twilight, an item that probably doesn't exist in the game & is mentioned a lot in the previous .hack stories.  Twilight Brigade & TaN are rivals to each other & TaN controls a lot of the game's system & economy.  Although Haseo joins Twilight Brigade, he doesn't have much interest in doing the activities there such as looking for clues to The Key of the Twilight.  He was only attached to Ovan & Shino.  When the guild fell into a trap setup by TaN, Ovan disappears.  TaN's guild leader Naobi had interest in Ovan's left arm as it isn't part of any character designs or weapons from the game.  With the loss of Ovan, Twilight Brigade disbands as well as TaN when Shino showed evidenced to the system administrators that TaN cheated, causing TaN member accounts to be removed.

With the loss of the two biggest guilds, some of the members from both guild quit while others go their own ways.  Haseo decides to stick around Shino even though he doesn't really need to.  Shino, on the other hand, looks for Ovan who has been captured by Yata of Raven, a new character of Naobi.  In the meantime, a mysterious character named Tri-Edge goes around PKing players & causes them to go into a coma in the real world.  Shino becomes a victim to Tri-Edge who turns her into an unreturner, a person who is in a coma after getting killed by Tri-Edge.  With that, Haseo starts to lose himself & decides to get stronger to fight Tri-Edge.  In the meantime, Ovan escapes & wanders around in The World.

With an unknown event going around, some players on the BSS think that the event in the area Forest of Pain is something that CC is covering up on to prevent the Tri-Edge incident from spreading.  Haseo takes part in the event to become stronger.  In the end, he manages to get his character altered due to his selfish actions & wanders in The World looking for Tri-Edge & PKing players along the way.  Yata, who acts like a system administer in an area filled with screens of data, watches Haseo & believes he has the Factor.  Yata has interest in Haseo as he observes his progress.  When Ovan returns, Haseo is killed by Tri-Edge & is forced back into a level one character instead of being an unreturner.  From here, a lot of interesting points come up on the characters such as their real world counterparts & deciding what to do from this point on.  Meanwhile, a new bug emerges that's threatening the existence of The World which Raven is concern about.  We also learn that the Factor is Avatar, the mysterious monster summoned by players with the Factor. 

In the end, Haseo continues to save Shino with a different approach; leaving the story to be completed from the PS2 .hack//G.U. games.

My Personal Review

.hack//Roots is a another series to rise the .hack franchise that Bee Train originally wanted to build on & make it like a Gundam.  However, I found this .hack story to be very bad in comparison to the past ones.  If you are a .hack fan, you may want to watch this.

Animation

The character designs are very much the same as past .hack designs.  Plus, it's also something you will notice from Bee Train's works.  Long faces pointy chins with medium-sized eyes.  Plus, the usualy .hack marks on the face.  This time though, cat characters are shown a lot now.  Although they carry the traditional .hack style, the clothing designs are a bit more wild & showing more skin.  I didn't like the style overall as they look silly.  The faces look more cleaner though.  Now, they are some new characters running around the place such as the pig guild mascots & a small pony running the fields.

The backgrounds are pretty nice & detailed.  This is mainly for the towns though.  In the fields, it's quite plain with little details.  It's pretty much an open field.

The animation flow is pretty smooth.  But, there are quite a lot of jerking movements.  You will notice these mainly in the fighting scenes.

Sound       

The sound effects aren't bad.  They seem to be recycled from past .hack shows such as the teleporting to town sounds. 

The seiyuus aren't too good in my opinion.  Although they role play their characters well, it was quite annoying.  I hated Shino's soft voice.  It's calm & carefree, but it was more like dead to me.  Haseo was a bit of a pill with the stuffed nose sound.  Yata didn't sound much of a threatening or boss character.

The music is different from the .hack shows.  Yuki Kaijiura doesn't do the soundtrack for this show as ALI-PROJECT takes over.  Yuki only does the opening theme & the usually See-Saw group isn't doing that as well.  Unlike the past .hack shows, this one is a mixed feel to it.  Sometimes it's got that online gaming music & sometimes it's got something that I can't describe.  It's not gaming music & it's not your typical anime music.  The music sometimes matches the situation of the show, but I'm not a fan of ALI-PROJECT's music as they seem to have the same style in a lot of their songs.

Story

Unlike past .hack stories, this one touches more on the MMORPG elements more such as guilds, merchants, PK, RMT, etc.  It makes it more like an online game.  However, the movements & actions of the characters still give the impression that it's almost like real life.  Characters also panic over small things that shouldn't be taking too serious on games.  Also, this story rarely show you what is happening in the real world in terms of images.  You get sounds, but almost nothing on the other side.

As this .hack story, it's very dry.  A guild looking for an item that doesn't exist & a strange PC or computer character that CC can't get rid of.  It has some interest, but the way the show present itself goes in circles that can get on the nerves of some viewers.  The pace is so slow that it doesn't seem to matter if a new arc is approaching.  In fact, the arcs don't seem to tie with the show well.  Even with Tri-Edge appearing in different arcs, it doesn't tie the main storyline too well.  But, the biggest flaw of this show's story is the characters.

Although the characters have some unique & interesting personalities, they are very unlikeable in my view.  Haseo runs away The World without caring for others, Ovan acts like a God standing on the cliff with the waterfalls on the background, & Yata overlooks all the game's activities after being banned.  It's like role playing gone bad.  It's unbelievable & hard to imagine.  When the TaN members come back with new characters, nothing changes with them & a lot of characters, especially Haseo, don't seem to develop at all.  Although we see Haseo go through changes from weak to strong , he's still the same kind of person overall.

The ending is somewhat ok with most of the characters deciding what to do next.  However, you need to get the full story by playing the .hack//G.U. games.  If you don't have a PS2 like me, you will miss out the story.

Overall Conclusion

.hack//Roots isn't a good anime show to watch.  This show seems to fail in reviving the .hack franchise.  The story is dry & goes into a lot of circle with it's slow pace.  I had some beliefs that the .hack franchise will be good as time goes by, but it seems I was wrong.  If you aren't into .hack stuff or want to see a .hack show for the first time, I would suggest staying away from this one.

.hack//Roots gets a six out ot ten.  The story is too dry & the arcs it had doesn't seem to tie the main story very well. The characters are quite poor in their traits & don't seem to show a lot of life.  Plus, the main character Haseo was very hard to like for me personally even though he is struggling a lot mentally.