.hack//Sign

So like, .hack is this multimedia project, right? That means its one big story or group of stories that's designed to be told through a bunch of different methods, in this case books, television, comics, and video games. Sign was the first anime in the franchise, and it's also not very good. Basically the idea behind it all is there's this MMO called "The World" (or "Za Worldo" if you're Japanese and can't really speak English), and these games and shows all take place mostly inside it. That's right, there are single-player RPGs where you pretend you're playing an MMORPG. In Sign specifically, there's one player called Tsukasa who can't log out for some reason, and the mystery behind that plus the search for the "Key of the Twilight" make up most of the story.

And it really isn't very interesting. Most episodes consist nearly entirely of these people playing a video game, and just standing around talking about what's going on. Like... just talking. About the same stuff over and over. Interminably. There are about eight main characters, and in any given episode you can expect most or all of them to make an appearance and talk about stuff. Occasionally they will engage in some brief, inept action scenes where they swing a sword around against some monster or each other, before shortly returning to the talking. It's not poorly done or terribly animated, and there are occasional glimpses of the real world which are genuinely intriguing, and the actual plot behind it all isn't that bad. The normal course of events though is just so boring that it's hard to really like the series. After the conclusion which does a decent job of wrapping crap up, there are a couple special episodes, one with some back story for a certain supporting character and another that has them celebrating their victory with a bunch of random other characters, most of whom have the same design as someone else with a color swap (which makes sense given the setting, but come on). It's an odd finale the a series that's hard to hate but harder to really like.