.Hack//Roots

Damn, there's more than one novel out already? Now I have to track it down during my Kingdom Hearts 2/Harvest Moon shopping run on Thursday. ;___;

For some reason, I've loved all things .Hack so far except for the .Hack//Key of the Twilight anime. Near the middle it turned away from what the manga did and was pretty awful. .Hack//Sign was interesting to me since I was more curious about the plot rather than hoping for tons of action. AI Buster was okay for a quick read, but Tokyopop did seem to make it a bit confusing on the main character's gender.

Like Conan-the-3rd said, it's surprising that .Hack//Roots seems to pretty much mirror the game rather than add a different story to it. I hope it becomes certain as to whether or not that's the case soon, since I'd rather not spoil the game by watching the anime first.

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Ah yeah, I remember being confused when they started saying Kamui was a male all of a sudden.

Good to know about the anime. I can steer clear of the manga easily enough until I finish G.U.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Um, I have a translated version of the game trailer if that's what you mean.

As short as the clip was, I still like what I see for the animation.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

The game trailers can all be found right here. I think the TGS Subtitled one is the translated trailer.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Er, it's more that I never thought to post in the thread again. I'm really liking Roots so far. It's not nearly as slow moving as Sign was in the beginning, and the characters are much more interesting. Hopefully Tri-Edge and Haseo's evil form will make appearances around the mid-point of the series rather than just the end.

The end of ep. 4 did make me laugh pretty hard though:

Spoiler:

The news that Tabby has been PKed was just delivered WAY too dramatically. I mean, she couldn't have been that high of a level at that point, and they already made it quite clear how common player killing is in The World. Besides, it's not like there are any horrible penalties incurred by dying. Yet the news is still met with a shocked gasp!

I was speaking idiomatically.

I've had plenty of trouble with LuPerry's releases too. Several of them tried to play as glitchy audio files in WMP, so I had to use VLC instead. In VLC the subtitles don't show up unless I click the option for them, and then they overlap the OP and ED lyrics. I plan to redownload all of the episodes once Shinsen catches up fully.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Shinsen's doing worse than LuPerry? Hard to believe considering all the problems I've had getting LuPerry's subs to work, let alone all of the grammatical errors. I haven't seen any of Shinsen's .Hack subs yet though.

FELIPE NO

Okay, this is going to sound really stupid, but how do you get ZW's torrents to work? When I try to click the link or right click+Save As I always just get a page of garbled gibberish. I downloaded the first episode from them somehow but I haven't been able to figure out how to do it again.

I've been okay with Roots' pace until this last episode. The beginning shot of just everyone sitting around lasted for like 3-4 minutes, and at the end they were charging towards each other and yelling for a very long time for such a short distance.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

That's where I get my torrents from as well. When I click ZW's links I just get a page of gibberish though, and when I try to Save As it only shows up as a text file containing the same gibberish.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Nope, nothing but a page of gibberish or saved as a text file filled with the same gibberish.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yeah, I usually don't right click -> Save As. I'm just mentioning that I've tried it since that's usually the first suggestion people make.

That running scene was just hilarious after awhile. It went on for about 3 times the length it should have, and when Haseo and Sakisata were shown their faces never changed at all. Same with Ender, but it was more obvious with them. Such a terrible way to avoid showing more content and being lazy.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Huh, what do you know. It worked. I thought I had already tried adding .torrent to the file name, but I guess not! Thanks, now I can watch the much better ZW subs.

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Is the manga seperate, a retelling of Roots, or a retelling of the new game? I've heard all of those from different sources so far.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'm actually glad you've been using spoiler tags, since I checked this thread for any non-spoiler info while I was three episodes behind for various reasons.

Spoiler:

Okay, so it's only because a friend got me hooked on Lost and I couldn't stop watching that.

Anyway, it's very nice to see things finally happening! It's interesting seeing Pai and Yata being Ovan's captors, since they're party members in the game too. I'm guessing as of right now Ovan won't be too thrilled seeing them again. Also nifty watching Haseo already start to earn his title of being a PKK. Loved how he made the guy slice his own partner.

Pretty much my only disappointment was that Tri-Edge used his daggers to kill Shino rather than Data Drain. I was really hoping to see some Data Drain action. The question is if Shino and Atori (in the game) are the same people or just copy character models like with Blackrose and Mimiru. One of the chains at the cathedral altar rusted after Shino was sliced, and those 8 chains represented each of the 8 Waves before, so that sorta hints that they're the same person.

I honestly wouldn't doubt it if we get a new OP after this episode. It's exactly halfway through the series, as of right now over half the characters in the opening are banned/quit The World, and we all know the show is more concerned with appearance than actual story development at times.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by soulsteelgray

Spoiler:

I can confirm without a doubt that Shino and Atoli are two different people. It's kind of hard to play a game as a different character when you're in a coma.

Spoiler:

Oh, okay. I've tried my hardest to avoid G.U. spoilers past the trailers and basic info, and last I heard about Shino/Atoli was something about Tri-Edge data draining her but she still played as an ally to Tri-Edge. It would have fit with the Mirage of Deceit title, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense otherwise.

FELIPE NO

Za-Warudo's subs seem to be the best so far. I've downloaded mostly LuPerry's subs, but that's only because they seem to be first most weeks. LuPerry's subs tend to have a lot of grammatical mistakes and sometimes my WMP refuses to play their releases.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Keym

Spoiler:

No, I'm not talking about the name. I know it's not the same. Doesn't matter. I only meant the way she greeted Pai. You can't tell me they didn't show that on purpose.

Spoiler:

I thought the same thing. Her name immediately caught my attention, and it would certainly be interesting for an old character to make a return in Roots. Sadly, it's probably just one of the TaN guys since he/she had to borrow a character body and the leader of TaN was in league with Pai and Yata already.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

There was one thing that I really liked about this episode, despite it being total filler.

Spoiler:

Phyllo making fun of the main characters to Kuhn, particularly Haseo, for always being emo and standing around doing nothing once something happens to them. That was just great, and makes me like Phyllo a lot more than I did before.

At least Tabby is becoming more and more bearable too. She's gone from the annoying bimbo who you want to thwack every time she opens her mouth to a decent character.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Since the show is over now, I suppose I'll revive this thread for impressions.

Spoiler:

Wow, this was a badly paced show. There were so many things, especially towards the end, that should have been fleshed out. Instead, we got a lot of useless scenes and many, many unnecessary slow camera pans. What was with that scene of Haseo and Silver Knight in ep. 26? That just came out of nowhere and added absolutely nothing. Not to mention that as far as continuity goes, Silver Knight was banned and had his character deleted in .Hack//Key of the Twilight.

The final episodes focused way too much on Tabby as well. The Paw Squad? Having Hideo refer to her as "mama" and Haseo as "papa"? That poor guy must have absolutely no self-respect. I liked how ZW even put in a note at one point saying something like "Yes Tabby, you've been wondering that for the past 8 episodes. Please just die already."

Phyllo's death just seemed random and unnecessary too, aside from getting rid of him before the game. I suppose it sort of explains why he just sat there on the bridge all the time, but you'd think someone about to die would prefer to stare at the actual sunset outside his window.

It was a decent series overall, but it could have been condensed down into 13 episodes pretty easily. It was frustrating how they kept us waiting for action, and then when a huge fight did happen it continually cut away to people talking about it. The best example of this being when Haseo slaughtered 100 PKers, but it focused mostly on the Paw Squad talking about how horrible it was, Phyllo and Tawaraya talking about how the ambush might be happening already, and the moon as we hear the screams of the PKers. Even the fight with Tri-Edge in the cathedral looks lame in comparison to the same scene in the .Hack//GU trailer.

Unlike .Hack//Sign, which I loved, Roots was a little hard to finish with its dragging style.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Yeah, Haseo in Roots is an emo loser. He's a far better character in GU, thankfully. It doesn't sound like the American dub of Roots even uses the same VAs as GU does, which is really strange since usually they're very good about keeping the same VAs between .Hacks during localization. I guess they just slapped Roots together because they know how much it sucks. Hell, Cartoon Network premiered (and may continue airing it) at 5am Saturday night.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?