After my tour with Star Trek, I decided to go back to an old favorite and watch .hack//SIGN.  I saw this show the first time when I was working on my undergraduate degree at Mesa State College, and it has stuck with me since as an interesting character study.  I got the Funimation DVDs and was (for the first time) able to watch it with dubbed audio, which helped me just sit back and enjoy it.

The main reason I like this anime is that it’s a mystery, and it is an exceptionally deep and complex one.  The reason I believe so is that it’s interwoven with so many pieces that we like to believe are the same, but, in fact, are not.  As viewers, we’re watching a mystery unfold in The World (which is, in fact, a virtual world) that seems to have some connection to the real world.  The people that are working to solve that mystery are characters that inhabit that world.  What makes this so complex then, is that this mystery affects The World, the characters inhabiting The World, the players playing those characters, and the real world.  How it affects each of these is different because while they are all connected, even the players in the real world and the characters they portray in The World are different.

In thinking about how the characters in The World are different from the players in the real world, it makes sense to look at how deeply they play their roles.  In my mind, BT and Crim are most deeply invested in The World as a game.  Crim does so by keeping The World in The World and living that fantasy persona to the fullest, while BT does so by playing the game – for her, it’s less about playing a persona, and more about progressing her goals.  Bear and Mimiru have characters to play, but their characters augment what their natures rather than being separate roles.  You can see this most pointedly in how they are more caregivers than fighters, but their characters give them something else they don’t have in the real world – the physical strength to do the right thing.  Finally, Subaru, Ssora, and Silver Knight all use the game as a means of escape.  For them, the game is not as important as the ability to do something they can’t normally do.

That’s what brings me to what the core of .hack//SIGN is to me – how all the characters interact and how this mystery changes them.  In particular, I’m constantly looking to see how the events affect the characters in The World and, from their actions, trying to figure out how it’s affecting the actual people.  This complex dance is fascinating to me as we only see the reactions of the players as buffered by their characters in The World, and yet the mystery takes place solely there, so we see the direct effect of their actions on the mystery.

In the end, while I enjoy .hack//SIGN, it’s only one piece of a larger work.  I’ve not typically been a fan of mixed-media stories in this way (primarily due to accessibility – I don’t own a console,) but in surfing around youtube, I was able to find videos of the story beats and cutscenes from the games.  So, I figured I would give it shot and see…  …I’ll let you know what I find out.