.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.