After dusting off my bookshelf of old anime DVDs from my FYE-employee-discount era, I rediscovered .hack // signA Funimation-era anime that doesn’t get enough credit for being a main component of today’s trends. After watching it again (since it’s not streaming anywhere), I can say with all my heart that this might be my favorite depiction of gaming in a virtual space – not for its call to action or its action, but for how sharply it highlights an underappreciated aspect of gaming as a community space. That, and the fact that it doubles as a PSA to shut the hell up.
.hack // signAnimated by Bee Train, is a 2005 anime whose premise has become pretty tame by modern anime standards – and for good reason. Many credit it with introducing the tropes we know today. In this, friends game WorldA hot online MMORPG that feels like a mix of each other world of Warcraft, final fantasy xiv, the Legend of ZeldaAnd dragon quest, as a way to escape their daily life. Which is to say, it’s a crazy-ass fantasy game. Similarly, protagonist Tsukasa is an immensely powerful child who is not only trapped in the game but tied to an all-powerful MacGuffin called the Key of Twilight, which everyone attempts to gain control of. World.
Keep in mind, the anime’s wheels aren’t involved in the entire grand adventure, with Tsukasa and his new friends heading off in search of the Key of Twilight until the 13th episode of its 26-episode first season (leaving aside its two OVAs). And honestly, I appreciate this show more for its downtime than its action. Mainly because it completely takes away the communal aspect of gaming.
Whenever my friends ask me to “clock in” on Discord and play overwatch, FortniteOr marvel rivalWe’re not logging in just to grind for skins or get out of the Gulag that is console competitive play. We play as an excuse to hang out. The game itself is like going to a baseball game and treating your seats like your living room, while something exciting happens in the background, creating a relaxing atmosphere.
Between respawns, pinging where we’ve just been eliminated by an enemy player, and brief crash-outs on team chat messages that blame us as healers for why we had to walk the dog (always from DPS players), we’re chattering and asking how our days went. Sometimes things get overwhelming; Other times we’re making fun of each other before agreeing not to end the night with a loss and lining up for “one more match” before logging off.
There are moments throughout the series where characters point out how late it is for them, or try to go about their friends’ business – a wording that initially made me nervous seeing as they had never met in person and barely interacted enough to warrant the distinction when even “acquaintances” felt like a stretch. Still, that terminology deepened the early Internet structure of online gaming and the medium’s role in helping people make friends faster. Instead of navel-gazing at the novelty of online friends, .hack // sign The timing echoes a sentiment that pervades today: the importance of logging off – or, in modern parlance, of touching the hay.
And it’s the rallying cry that creates almost universal panic when Tsukasa gets stuck in the game land. Not because it gives Tsukasa an advantage in pursuing the big MacGuffin, but because being trapped in a virtual space – feeling pain and breathing endlessly – is no way to live, even if you’re super powerful. Whereas modern anime often abandons this dynamic in favor of the main character’s power-fantasy intrigue.hack //sign Twenty years later it still holds true because it focuses on the part of gaming that happens in between gameplay.
Of course, the series also has its fair share of gameplay-coded moments, like groaning at newcomers for dragging the party into a dungeon or punishing teammates for not saving before a quest. But one of my favorite beats in its early episodes is when the characters admit that the avatars they’re playing are roles they’re perpetuating – a genre of role-playing, if you will. High priestesses, elite guards, brawlers, scheming villains… and then, in the middle of those performances, they casually break the curtain to say they have to log off soon. Or even better, they’ll let their real lives come into play with some heated conversations with their friends.
There are two scenes that really drive this episode home. The first is one in which two adventurers are talking, both depicted as adult men. Still, the conversation they’re having isn’t about partying. This is a conversation between a father and his child of divorce. In this, the child blames the parent for putting more money in his or her account before delivering a gut punch or two that they spend more time together in the game than in real life. Coincidentally, in the second moment the same parents are shown lying on the ground with a female member of the party – who has come close enough to their parents in virtual life to know about their troubles and become their confidant.
It’s moments like this that hit especially hard .hack // sign‘S serial experiment laneA stylistic approach to the horrors of virtual worlds and the folly of considering gaming as pure escapism. At all times, the show doesn’t point a finger at the real power of forming friendships with people in gaming spaces, as long as the goal is to shut the hell up and continue to build these bonds out of World And in the real world, just like Tsukasa’s party does. It also doesn’t hurt that it has a raunchy OST. Whenever Yuki Kajiura’s music played (sometimes the dialogue that was being emphasized was over), I felt like I was flying in the air.
no surprise .hack // sign is quietly considered the pioneer of this prevalent trend in anime. Hopefully, by exposing it, more fans will see it, as I have, and find something beautiful in it that reaches across time and resonates with them, as it has with me. However, good luck finding a copy of it in the wild.
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