Anime: .hack//Tasogare no Udewa Densetsu 16769

.hack//Legend of the Twilight leaves us stranded in a bewildering gap between it and '.hack/Sign', where characters like Kite, BlackRose, Orca, and Balmung make fleeting appearances in the form of a side story that never received its own anime adaptation. Truly, a missed opportunity of epic proportions. q626z

Now, let us turn our attention to the protagonist, who bears a striking resemblance to Kite but is nothing more than a chibi version of his avatar, complete with a borrowed bracelet. Oh, the audacity! Such lazy storytelling only serves to amplify the disgrace that permeates this anime. Brace yourself for a barrage of meaningless events and unfunny loli incest/fanservice comedy. Yes, you read that correctly—this abomination stoops to such deplorable depths. Do not waste a single precious moment of your time on this atrocity, for it offers no semblance of progression and can easily be skipped without any repercussions.

The characters In .hack/Sign were mature, nuanced, and dynamic, capturing our hearts with their depth and complexity. But in this travesty of a sequel, characters are childish and downright annoying beings. To make matters worse, old characters like Balmung and Silver Knight are shamefully left undeveloped, casting a shadow of disappointment upon the entire series. There is no progression, no growth—only stagnation and regression.

In summary, .hack//Legend of the Twilight stands as the polar opposite of its predecessor. Gone are the intricate mysteries and thought-provoking storytelling, replaced instead with a run-of-the-mill RPG anime that fails to offer any solution to the enigma of the 'World'. Spare yourself the agony and disappointment; steer clear of this abomination and seek solace elsewhere in the vast realm of anime. If you have any sense at all, I implore you to steer clear of this steaming pile of garbage. If you're seeking a respectable sequel to the innovative '.hack/Sign', I urge you to turn your attention to '.hack/Roots' instead.

- Let’s start our prologue with a warning. Don’t DARE to watch this before SIGN and LIMINALITY (made reviews about those as well, by the way). Not only you will miss the (slight) story continuity but you will also consider it a mediocre series, a thing that is not true.
- Let’s proceed with some production info. In the original planning of the .hack project, there was supposed to be a different chapter of the story made for a different form of media: SIGN would be a tv series, LIMINALITY an OVA mini series, the PS2 games would be a RPG quatralogy, and DUSK would be a manga. The decision to make an anime adaptation of DUSK not only ruined the originality of the project (one chapter per media) but also produced an inferior version of the original story that only damaged the reputation of the series.
- And now, let’s end with a little advice… READ THE MANGA! It has a lot more fan service and far better story and characters. The ending is totally different and a lot more satisfactory than in the anime. And not to fail to mention that it has…

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 6/10 (7/10 in the manga)
While the atmosphere of SIGN, LIMINALITY and the games was very serious and psychological, DUSK is totally different. It’s a light-hearted comical adventure, without endless philosophical discussions and total absence of action scenes (ok, the games had plenty of action). And THIS is the reason I enjoyed it more than the others; plain and simple. While the others had a boooooring plot and a slooooow development, DUSK featured fast pace, comedy, action scenes and light ecchi scenes that simply made it more interesting to watch. Not that it was great, though. Half of the jokes were mediocre and the action was quite simple and predictable (DATA DRAIN is a panacea!). But it STILL beats the aforementioned ones in entertainment.

STORY SECTION: 5/10 (7/10 in the manga)
Four years after the events in the games, two twins, a boy named Shugo and a girl named Rena, (living mostly apart because of their parents’ marriage problems) win the character figure packs of Kite and Black Rose, the characters from the games that stopped the virus from spreading. They decide to play THE WORLD (the game) as a way to be together, even when they are apart (the game is MMORPG). In the game, Shugo is quickly killed by a virus monster but escapes the coma by Aura (the AI from SIGN) who gives him the Kite’s Twilight Bracelet (and a kiss!) and asks him to search for her. The rest of the story is about learning to play the game, leveling up, making friends and enemies, participating in game events and facing viruses, game s and hackers.

VALUE SECTION: 1/10 (4/10 in the manga)
The story has continuity with the previous titles mostly through cameo appearances of characters and settings. It is nothing much if seen as a stand-alone and doesn’t move the story any further than the others did (GRRR!). The ending gets more dark and serious but it feels only as a poor attempt to leave us with a better last opinion about it. Overall, it’s just a superficial retelling/repeating of SIGN and the games. So, its value also drops a lot because of the lack of story originality.

ART & SOUND SECTIONS: 6/10
Although the setting is THE WORLD, production values are far inferior to SIGN. That is a bad thing, although they wouldn’t fit the series’ cheery atmosphere to begin with. The artwork is mostly childish and the characters look and talk silly. They are cute and that makes them a bit likeable but that is all. It is practically a simple production made mostly for kicks.

CHARACTER SECTION: 6/10
No character gets to have a strong personality amongst all this silliness. And as far as character development goes, Shugo, Rena and Balmung (of the games) get more serious and strong-willed in the end, but that is all there is to it; all the rest are there for fun and don’t even provide further mythos or information as those in HACK. They are not a bad bunch but outside of comedy values and cameos they are nothing worth ing. Also be noted how they are going for the incest routine, where the two twins are for some reason sexually attracted to each other, even if they are just playing with fictional characters. Gets creepy if you are not used to that from overused anime stereotypes.

VERDICT: 5/10 (6/10 in the manga)

SUGGESTION LIST
Mahujin Guruguru, Dragon-Half, Slayers. Great RPG parodies.

Well, anime as any other, you'll say after watching this one, nothing particulary good or extremly bad about it... Wrong.

Fitst - the story. It takes place four years after "Twilight" incident, and //Liminality series. Twins, Shugo and Rena, formerly separated (there were some parental problems or something, it is not very clearly said in anime) win possibility to play "The World" game using characters of legendary .hackers team - "Kite" and "Black Rose" models. Rena is super happy, while Shugo thinks RPGs suck. Well, he somehow changes his mind when, during his first-ever play, he gets killed, revived and kissed. By Aura, some white-clothed air-floating semi-ghost girl. Kind'a interesting adventure, I'll say. At least it could be, especially as lucky boy gets super-rare artifact - "Kite's bracelet" - given to him by Aura. To "save 'The World'" of course. And have fun. Quite.

At the first glance story looks quite nice, if one likes teenage series. Then you may ask - why my rating is so low? Nothing good or bad, you will say (as I said at the begining). And it's still wrong. Very wrong.

You see, this anime as 'stand-alone' production deserves 5/10. Quite good music, Story not very good, but not bad either. Not very genuine and original but not lame either.
But - .hack//Dusk (as it is commonly called) is not a standalone. It is something like a sequel of .hack//SIGN. And .hack//LIMINALITY (as well as of 4 PS2 games). And cannot be judged "as is".

And - when you watch .hack//LIMINALITY (not even to mention .hack//SIGN, first and definitely the best part of the series) you start to ask - "what have you done with .hack project", "is it really connected" - and sentences like that. Yes, it is connected. It can be seen during the story development, when heroes encounter EXACTLY the same situactions as heroes of DUSK or LIMINALITY series. And when I say - exactly - I mean Exactly. Their reactions are different (sometimes) but only that. If it were not the same serie i'll say it is plagiarism. Well, I'll say it anyway. There are some uncrossable borders - in theory at least.

When it comes to comparison with .hack//SIGN TV serie, one of the very few which deserve 10/10 rating for me, situation's getting worse and worse. SIGN is prety psychological, with a lot of 'what is in ones mind' situations. It is the beautifull story of coming into one's senses. And heart, in some way, but not classical and boring one. It is definitely about higher feelings, not only so-called love, but also hate, sorrow, shame.. Beautifull, I advise every one to watch.

DUSK on he other hand distorts and flattens whole topic. Situations are similar to sign (plagiarism I said) but reactions are so - typical - you can nearly every time say whar will be next. Boring. Very boring. And even more boring sometimes.

Suprisingly, it is enjoyable. It is a paradox, commonly seen in anime. I'll give this anime "the four" normally. But, as the sequel of "the 10" it gets -1 point. If you're fan of .hack, you'd better read DUSK manga, which is definitely better.

.Hack//Legend of Twilight Bracelet, often known as .Hack//Dusk, takes a very different route than .Hack//Sign. While Sign was overall very serious with a deliberately slow pace, Dusk is very lighthearted and warm. Overall it works very well, and being a continuation of the game's story and overall storyline only makes it that much better.

Dusk is set four years after the events from the PS2 games. Kite and BlackRose's character files, data that has been prohibited since the PS2 incident, are suddenly unlocked and in a big event awarded to a brother and sister. Soon enough, strange events start to befall the winners, Shuugo and Rena. Many familiar faces from the game return, and even a few new characters as well.

Sign first introduced us to our lady of the armor bikini, Mimiru. Then the games gave us BlackRose, the Mimiru look-a-like with even better bodyart. So, what changes does Dusk bring to BlackRose? Only Rena, the most adorable Heavyblade version ever. Kite is younger looking now as well, and both are hilarious to watch. The new character designs fit with the lighthearted theme extremely well.

As said, Dusk is a very lighthearted take on 'The World'. Shuugo and Rena are near clueless as to the past events, and are just enjoying their time together in the game. Dusk does a wonderful job of mixing the fun and gameplay of the PS2 games with the story of the anime. The music and animation is very cheerful and I highly enjoyed all of it start to finish. Like Sign, it really sets the stage well.

Sadly though, the second half of the anime tries to take on a more serious tone. In doing this, the fun and whimsy of the first 5 or 6 episodes nearly falls apart. The second half isn't bad at all, but it isn't anywhere near as great as the first half. While I'd easily rank the first half very highly, I'd only rank the second half good... still making for an overall great series.

The only similarities ".hack//Dusk" has with its predecessor ".hack//SIGN" are a few characters with a changed look and the location all the action is taking place, the rest is different like day and night.The character looks are something that I don't really like, they are just too childish for my taste, in fact the whole anime is kinda childish. Since it's mostly directed towards younger audience you can be sure to see the overall "happy-happy-joy-joy" atmosphere from the start til the finish. You can't create a good anime just by adding lots of cuteness, at least that's how I think.[br][br]The story and the action both lack many things. Nearly all the fights end with the same attack move and that makes it a little too repetitive. The story...well, it hardly invokes any interest from the watcher besides the last episodes where it got fairly exciting.[br]Since it has many cute characters and some comedic moments(not that I laughed at them), then what separates it from the rest of the meaningless magical action anime series? Well, it has quite a serious story hidden inside, or at least it tries to have. But trying sometimes isn't enough, that's why the story takes a more serious turn only in the last episodes.[br]"The World" being the only place where the main characters can meet each other and the separation factor in the real life adds a little more deeper meaning to the anime but it's kinda countered by some hits to incest between them.[br][br]The animation itself is bright and clean with nice CG special effects but the sound quality is something to wish for. Not only is that constant "Renaaaaaaaaaa!!" and "Oni-saaaaaaaaaan!!" screaming annoying but the background music is a failure, it's unoriginal and lacks the distinction.[br][br]This anime is clearly meant for younger audience, so happy end is guaranteed. Others who want a more melancholy anime from the same class should stick with ".hack//SIGN" if you haven't seen it yet.

If you believed that .Hack//Dusk would be in the same style as .Hack//Sign or even as .Hack//Liminality then you will be seriously disappointed.

The animation is pretty okay. It has nice animations, like morphing screens and such. The characters look okay too. I actually have a hard time trying not to show my personal opinion with this, since I really dislike the appearance of the characters. But I think that they look okay, if you haven't seen //Sign nor //Lim yet. Still, if you don't like childish anime, this will definitely be something you want to avoid, since most characters look really childish.

The sound is okay. The OP/END song are done by the same people who did Chobits, so it kinda sounds cute, but it's not good enough to get a good rating from me since it actually sounds like they're having some trouble singing it. The voices for the characters are okay, except for a bunch of annoying people who also have annoying voices. Shuugo is probably the worst casted voiceactor, since he keeps yelling 'Rena', but he says it with such a monotone voice that I'm seriously thinking that he didn't got paid afterwards. The voice for that character was probably the worst mistake, therefor I can't give anything better than this. Too bad they didn't stick with the //Sign music, which would be a lot better - but then again, it wouldn't fit the atmosphere here.

The story is not great. Both //Sign as //Lim start off slow, but they're building up towards a big climax, unfortunately, //Dusk tries to do the same, except it doesn't have enough story to do so. The .Hackers-legend gets ed onto two teenagers who clearly act like they haven't even ed the age to become a teenager, and that's how the story starts. Even though the appearance of characters as Balmung got my hopes up, they didn't develop the story at all, just focusing on the foolish attempts of Shuugo trying to level up with the help of some random childish characters. So there is lots of potential, but unfortunately none of it gets used, which is a real pity.
In the end the atmosphere changes to a more serious one, more darker, but that's probably even worse, since the characters look so cute and childish that one can't really look at them and imagine them in that dark scenery. Also, the ending turned out to be a very disappointing one. While you expect a true magnificent ending battle, there isn't any. And even though it kind of explains why The World started glitching and twisting, it fails to be even slightly realistic and doesn't give any satisfaction at all.

Character development is just plain crap. Shuugo changes a bit, Rena changes a bit, but to say that it's a big character development is overdone. It's hardly decent, at max.
I got seriously annoyed by Shuugo yelling 'Rena' all the time, since the voiceactor didn't gave any feeling with those yells. Also, even though Rena and Shuugo are supposedly teenagers (around 12-14 iirc), they act like they're not even 10 years old. Another annoying person was that classmate, who tries to speak French. He's definitely brought in to make this anime funny, but he only succeeds in annoying me.
Balmung was an interesting character though, and he changes quite a bit as well. I would've liked to see a //Sign series which featured him.
All other characters don't change at all. They get introduced and they play their parts, but other than Kamui and Reki none of them actually develops at all. It's as if they're just added to spice up the series, but nobody knew what to do with them, which is a real waste, since some of them had some potential, like the WolfGirl (she had such an big role that I don't even her name, 10 minutes after watching the last 5 episodes) or Sanjiroh (or something).

I don't really know if this is worth rewatching for anyone, but I certainly won't. I kept getting more and more annoyed, especially because of Shuugo. His voiceactor was really bad, and most of the characters were annoying as well. After having seen //Sign and //Liminality I expected a nice series which would somehow look like the other two, but this is just a kiddy anime which doesn't even slightly resemble the world I liked. I don't mind childish anime; I liked Angelic Layer, and I kinda liked Dragon Drive, but //Dusk is meant for even younger children, and that's what I didn't like.
The comedy in //Dusk is mainly Shuugo falling in the water, walking with his head to a tree and more of that stuff, and that's what 5 year
old children would laugh about, but nobody else.

Personally I wonder why they created //sign as an introduction of The World, not finishing the entire storyline (but it was decently finished), followed by //Liminality, about how everything in The World had its effects on the real world, and concluding it with //Dusk. Now you can say that none of them are really related except for 'The World', but you cannot create anentire world, introduce a problem and not finishing the story. //Dusk was nothing more than making a kiddy anime in order to deal the final blow, as if they really wanted to get rid of the whole concept.

For me, even without realizing it was a 'The World' anime, it utterly failed to capture my interest.