Volumes: 5/5 (Complete), OOP but not hard to find
Shounen
Genre: Fighting, Videogames, MMORPG
Summary: Haseo is a famous player in an virtual reality game, as a Player Killer who only kills other Player Killers (PKK) known as “The Terror of Death”. His goal is to go after a PK named Tri-Edge, who has somehow put his friend Shino into a coma after he PK’ed her. While trying to rescue her and solve the other mysteries of “The World”, Haseo gets involved with a group known as .hack//GU looking for answers.
Review: This manga was interesting. I did read all the way to the end, but I found it a mix of some very interesting ideas, some sympathetic characters, but also a very rough artwork and story. Like seriously, sometimes the art was absolutely gorgeous, but other times looked sketchy and unfinished, lots of closeups to the point where it’s hard to tell what’s going on, and just sort of a rushed look overall. But when the artwork is polished, it was nice.
The story is interesting. Back before Sword Art Online existed, there was .hack, involving stories about being trapped in virtual reality games and MMORPGs affecting the real world. That being said, for all its flaws, Sword Art Online is the better story, even though the .hack franchise was the first in the now sub genre.
After reading a massive amount of .hack lore, there’s this interesting subplot about a Westworld style world, where a secret researcher in AI and other advancements was funded and sold his research as a MMORPG game engine. But underneath it all lies a new form of intelligent life and has created a game that evolves on its own without the help of programmers.
And yet at the same time there are a lot of Scifi elements that seem outright impossible to exist and the mechanisms and reasons for their existence is never explained.
That being said, even though I find the concepts behind the story interesting, the actual story here is somewhat rushed, messy and leaves a lot unexplained. There’s also a weird pacing thing, where at this manga’s pace it really only should have had one final boss. Instead they defeat the boss by volume 3, there’s like an intermission, and then the last volume features a second boss. It was a really rushed fight, a proper length for this series ought to have been at least 7 volumes.
All in all, I still enjoyed it, but it’s hard to imagine non-.hack savvy readers enjoying this. That being said, at least it’s an actual complete story, unlike .hack//Link.
Recommended: for fans of the .hack franchise. If you are not a fan, I would start with .hack//Legend of the Twilight’s Bracelet manga. That one assumes you know nothing about the game, so it’s a better introduction for new readers.
Rating: PG13: some moderate violence
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