Warning: I have watched the whole series so there may be some spoilers about future episodes.
Episode one.
Who ever is in charge of continuity needs some help. First of all, the centipede demon scratched Kagome on her left side, however, later in the series, we see Kagome as a baby and the jewel looks to be closer to the middle of her chest. How on earth did it make it to her left side? Second, there is blood that comes out when the jewel is released from her body, as blood normally does when one is scratched. There should be blood on her shirt where the tear is. She also should have felt some pain, as the wound had to be deep enough to fit the jewel. After the attack though, there is no blood on the shirt and she doesn't seem to even notice that she got hurt. After being scratched like that and then being squeezed, there should be blood on her clothing.
This is just the first episode so I guess they are warming up.
Episode two and three
InuYasha may have a lot of suspense and action and sorts but it's also rather comical. I love that about this show. It can be serious, funny, suspensful, and heartwarming.
I find it interesting how well Kagome handles her situation. Suddenly she is in feudal Japan with demons and no phones or showers or shampoo or her family. She is suddenly hit with all this responsibility. She doesn't even know if she will be able to get back home and yet she doesn't cry or freak out, at least not till she goes back home. Of course for her, she probably learned all about this stuff in history class. I didn't. If it were me I would probably freak. It's still to early in the series to say much about the events or characters or to analyze it much.
Episode four
It's still too early to say much, but now we start seeing a bond slowly form between InuYasha and Kagome. The real question is, why did she not take a moment to explain to her family what she was doing before she went back into the well? Also, did anyone else notice that Kiate speaks stranger than anyone else?
Episode five
We meet Seshmaru. He is of great interest to me though I don't want to say too much and spoil the rest. It is made obvious to us right away that he cares not about the lies of the others. It is also made obvious that he hates his half brother. We see right away what kind of character he is. We see the two half-brothers bickering and we learn about their father and InuYashas mother. Seshomaru shows himself to be quite cruel using InuYashas dead mothers spirit to torture InuYasha. However it shows that he is able to bring back souls though we don't learn how until later.
Kagome also brings a bike to feudal Japan. Now how the hell does that work. There were no bikes back then. One would think such an item would be a bad idea to introduce to that time.
We also meet Mioga in this episode. In fact this episode does a lot of explaining and introducing of new characters.It is also interesting that in the beginning of the series we see Kagome in various outfits but then later she is almost always in her school uniform.
Mar 23, 2014
.hack//sign
So I have finished watching .hack//sign. If you are reading this hoping for some great answer about the ending, sorry, I don't have it. I don't plan to write too much about the actual story line till I have watched it a second time through. I watched the dub version (because listening to other languages gives me a headache) and one of my biggest pet peves about it isn't the end, it's how they don't translate everything. What I mean is, during the parts without dialogue where there are just words written on the screen, they didn't translate the words into English. What those words say are important to understanding what is going on. Yes, what happens during those scenes is later said by Bear, but not all of it and it's still helpful to know. I found out through youtube users. It isn't that hard to redo the text in English. If everything else is going to be in English, the text should be too, especially since it is so important. I cannot see any reason for leaving the text untranslated other than laziness or ignorance.
The ending is also annoying though. I don't like major cliffhangers. I don't even like it when shows end with everything sort of explained. I always want more. I want to know everything until ever character is dead, and even that probably wouldn't be enough. In this case though, they didn't even really end it. One minute they were all facing this huge monster and then Suburu and Tsukasa met and then.....what? Too many questions unanswered. What happened with the monster. What was the monsters purpose? Did they defeat it? Did Mimiru and Tsukasa go shopping. Did Tsukasa take Bear up on his offer? Did Tsukasa go to boarding school? And what the hell does Bear do for a living? It is brought up over and over throughout the show but we never find out! What about Silver Knight? What about the girl? None of it is explained.
It's hard enough to understand what is going on through out the show. The mystery and confusion is what kept me hooked. It's why I kept clicking on the next episode and almost finished the whole series in a day. I wanted to understand and figure it out. I figured it would be explained, but then it never was. All that build up leading to nothing just made the end more disappointing. After finishing it, I went on google to search for an explanation for the ending, especially episode 26 which didn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the series for the most part. Sadly, I didn't find much. Most people said you had to read the novels and mangas and play the games and watch all the series to really understand it all or that you had to at least play the games. Some claimed this was a great marketing technique. Well I'm not business major or anything but it seems rather crappy to me. I don't play video games. I don't have anything to play any on unless you count a broken DSlite or whatever the hec it is/was. Nor do I have the time to sit here and try to figure out what order to watch everything in and what to read and play etc. I'm not even really interested in watching any of the other .hack series after the disappointing ending of this one. It was a great series but the ending is awful, or rather the lack of an ending. Even though I have tried to find on google what order the series are in and what goes with what and after what, it's all so confusing.
The series isn't a total loss. It had it's good points. Some dislike it for it's lack of action scenes, but it was never really meant to be an action series. It was based on psychological and sociological themes such as anxiety, effects of abuse, escapism, compensation, and depression. I do wish there had been a little more action every once in a while just to liven things up a bit. However, I thought they did a pretty good job on exploring the themes.
Character development was somewhat flat, however, it is a short series. Still, the characters we watch aren't in any real danger and don't even feel. We don't know what they do for a living or why they escape to this world. We know a bit about Tsukasa, a bit about Suburu, and a bit about Bear. We know Tsukasa is in a coma in a hospital and has been abused. We know he/she suffers from anxiety and depression. We know Suburu is in a wheelchair and unable to walk. It is possibly from some sort of disease but we never really find out. We know that she likely has anxiety but that she is also very strong and courageous. We know Bear has a son and that he feels he failed as a parent. We actually meet the sons character briefly. We also know that Bear is 47. All we know about Crim is that he acts very differently in the game from how he acts in the real world. We know he is a business person of some sort. As far as BT is concerned, we don't know much of her other than she doesn't like lettuce and she has met Crim outside of the game. We don't really know anything about Mimiru outside the game. There are things we can assume or infer about the characters but we don't really know them. I didn't really become attached to any of them because of that. While the themes were explored decently, I don't think they were explored deeply enough.
It wasn't a bad series, but it wasn't great. Usually when I finish a series, I feel attached and I don't want it to be done. I don't feel like I could watch anything else. Sometimes I restart it right away. However, I didn't get that with this one, even though the ending was a cliffhanger. I'm not entirely sure what the intentions of this series were or why they did what they did with it, but as a series alone, without considering any other related games or series, just considering .hack//sign alone, it left a good bit to be desired.
The ending is also annoying though. I don't like major cliffhangers. I don't even like it when shows end with everything sort of explained. I always want more. I want to know everything until ever character is dead, and even that probably wouldn't be enough. In this case though, they didn't even really end it. One minute they were all facing this huge monster and then Suburu and Tsukasa met and then.....what? Too many questions unanswered. What happened with the monster. What was the monsters purpose? Did they defeat it? Did Mimiru and Tsukasa go shopping. Did Tsukasa take Bear up on his offer? Did Tsukasa go to boarding school? And what the hell does Bear do for a living? It is brought up over and over throughout the show but we never find out! What about Silver Knight? What about the girl? None of it is explained.
It's hard enough to understand what is going on through out the show. The mystery and confusion is what kept me hooked. It's why I kept clicking on the next episode and almost finished the whole series in a day. I wanted to understand and figure it out. I figured it would be explained, but then it never was. All that build up leading to nothing just made the end more disappointing. After finishing it, I went on google to search for an explanation for the ending, especially episode 26 which didn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the series for the most part. Sadly, I didn't find much. Most people said you had to read the novels and mangas and play the games and watch all the series to really understand it all or that you had to at least play the games. Some claimed this was a great marketing technique. Well I'm not business major or anything but it seems rather crappy to me. I don't play video games. I don't have anything to play any on unless you count a broken DSlite or whatever the hec it is/was. Nor do I have the time to sit here and try to figure out what order to watch everything in and what to read and play etc. I'm not even really interested in watching any of the other .hack series after the disappointing ending of this one. It was a great series but the ending is awful, or rather the lack of an ending. Even though I have tried to find on google what order the series are in and what goes with what and after what, it's all so confusing.
The series isn't a total loss. It had it's good points. Some dislike it for it's lack of action scenes, but it was never really meant to be an action series. It was based on psychological and sociological themes such as anxiety, effects of abuse, escapism, compensation, and depression. I do wish there had been a little more action every once in a while just to liven things up a bit. However, I thought they did a pretty good job on exploring the themes.
Character development was somewhat flat, however, it is a short series. Still, the characters we watch aren't in any real danger and don't even feel. We don't know what they do for a living or why they escape to this world. We know a bit about Tsukasa, a bit about Suburu, and a bit about Bear. We know Tsukasa is in a coma in a hospital and has been abused. We know he/she suffers from anxiety and depression. We know Suburu is in a wheelchair and unable to walk. It is possibly from some sort of disease but we never really find out. We know that she likely has anxiety but that she is also very strong and courageous. We know Bear has a son and that he feels he failed as a parent. We actually meet the sons character briefly. We also know that Bear is 47. All we know about Crim is that he acts very differently in the game from how he acts in the real world. We know he is a business person of some sort. As far as BT is concerned, we don't know much of her other than she doesn't like lettuce and she has met Crim outside of the game. We don't really know anything about Mimiru outside the game. There are things we can assume or infer about the characters but we don't really know them. I didn't really become attached to any of them because of that. While the themes were explored decently, I don't think they were explored deeply enough.
It wasn't a bad series, but it wasn't great. Usually when I finish a series, I feel attached and I don't want it to be done. I don't feel like I could watch anything else. Sometimes I restart it right away. However, I didn't get that with this one, even though the ending was a cliffhanger. I'm not entirely sure what the intentions of this series were or why they did what they did with it, but as a series alone, without considering any other related games or series, just considering .hack//sign alone, it left a good bit to be desired.
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