I’ve been .hack pilled

Wanted some contemplative, sci-fi anime misery and the sane, sophisticated choice would’ve been Serial Experiments Lain. Nope! Threw on .hack/Sign, the very first anime in the multi-media project from 2002 (also been reading a little of Otaku: Database Animals by Azuma, and yeah, wow, .hack is very much of the anime simulacra breed).

I’m only 6 episodes in and wanted to highlight the show’s depiction of the police. In “The World”, the Crimson Knights are neither NPCs nor mods, they are, for real, paying gamers role playing as cops. These self appointed keepers of the peace are introduced investigating a player who wrote custom code for their furry themed avatar. The knights consider this illegal whereas we have no indication what “system admin” (the devs) think or care of what is likely little more than a breach of the ToS. And it gets better.

The Knights create checkpoints at fast travel gates, place wanted bulletins, and later collaborate with a “player killer” (a griefer) for a sting operation despite protests from one of their leaders and other players. Admin is treated like some unknowable God and they are but his humble servants, giving off big inquisition energy.

This is very much a character driven show and as such, undeserving of the flack it gets such as “being slow” or “nothing happens”. It came after the enormously influential wave of Eva and it’s immediate children like Lain and Gasaraki and should be approached with similar expectations. Whatever amount of anime you watch you are likely not starved of plot, but underserved in existential horror/mystery.

Took me long enough lol. You can download it here. There's another version on the Boot Video Repository already but it's taken from VHS source and is pillarboxed; the GIF is a little too crunchy to tell but I used video from the Blu-Rays for mine and slightly cropped it to fit the Steam Deck's native resolution.