Saturday, June 6, 2020

.hack//Link (rank 4)

Publisher: Tokyopop
Volumes: 3/3 (Cancelled in Japan), OOP, vol 3 is hard to find but not too hard if you're patient
Shounen
Genre: Inside a Video Game, Fighting, MMORPGs



Summary: (from Tokyopop) Tokio Kuryu is an avid gamer who misses his chance to play the new release of the hugely popular online game, The World. His problems are seemingly solved when a mysterious transfer student offers him a black-labeled copy only to be suddenly transported into a game where the legendary hero Kite is battling a brand new evil organization! Now it’s up to Tokio to figure out what’s going on in The World and set it right!

Review: I don’t think I’ve ever roller coasted from excited about a manga series to disappointed so quickly. When I started reading it, it seemed like a solid Shounen title set in the .hack world, like it was going to be a kind of standard- but enjoyable- save the day, beat the bad guys, get the girl sort of story. Unfortunately the series was cancelled.


The Good part: this manga doesn’t require a lot of knowledge of .hack, since everything and everyone is mostly introduced and it stands mostly on it’s own. It does help if you’ve read .hack//GU+ manga or played the games but it’s not necessary. That being said, the quality of the panel layouts and the artwork are much better than .hack//GU+.


The Bad part: Well, the series was cancelled in Japan and they didn’t even give the story time to wrap up, not even a rushed ending. So it just ends on a cliffhanger. Apparently sales of both the game and the manga were so poor, that the creator said on twitter it’s likely it will never be finished. 


The series had promise, it could have been way better than it was with some tweaks here and there. But as it is, nothing is explained, like:

  • How did Tokio get transported inside the game by the black disc?
  • What’s Saika’s goal, and why does she look like the princess in his dreams?
  • Why are the cores and Akashic Records so important?
  • What is Schicksal’s goal and why? Why don’t the game admins stop them?
That in itself wasn’t too terrible, but the reveal on Tokio’s special ability was really corny and outright impossible- somehow he can chain fighting move combos from other video games inside The World, which is an RPG. It makes no sense at all, if he’s in the game physically with his real body, he should only be able to do moves that he can do in real life. OTOH, this could have been an extension of his other literally game/reality breaking special ability, but I honestly thought it was even dumber than the power leveling up montage I expected.

Recommended: Die-hard completionist .hack fans only.


Other comments: really blatant pantyshots that feel weird in an otherwise for-kids sort of manga. Also there is a weirdly stereotyped German player who is cringey, to say the least.

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