.hack//Liminality

While playing the newly released MMORPG "The World," Minase Mai and Tomonari Kasumi collapse in the real world and are sent to the hospital after hearing a mysterious sound. Only Mai recovers, while her friend Kasumi slips into a mysterious coma. Mai is later approached by the creator of "The World," Tokuoka Junichiro, who unveils to her that, just like her friend, six other players across the country also collapsed while playing "The World" and are now in mysterious comas. What exactly is "The World," what is this mysterious sound Mai keeps on hearing, and why are people slipping into comas from this game? Minase, Junichiro, and their acquaintances set off to get to the bottom of this problem before any further harm happens.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Minase, Mai Main

Kobayashi, Sanae Japanese

Tokuoka, Junichiro Main

Ebara, Masashi Japanese

Aihara, Yuki Main

Chiba, Saeko Japanese

Toono, Kyouko Main

Hisakawa, Aya Japanese

Skeith Supporting

Hoerwick, Harald Supporting

Yamazaki, Takumi Japanese

Kasumi, Tomonari Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Sato, Ichiro Supporting

Seki, Toshihiko Japanese

Narumi Supporting

Kubo, Sayuri Japanese

Kiyoka Supporting

Moto, Minako Japanese

Maseba, Yutaka Producer

Nozaki, Keiichi Producer

Uchiyama, Daisuke Producer

Egawa, Kuninori Producer

Reviews

Nov 3, 2008

Stormy_77

Recommended

Story

The .hack series isn't an easy one to get into for those of us who haven't played the game as there is plenty of background information that is left out in the anime. The strength of Liminality is it addresses some of these questions in a very intriguing manner. Liminality spans more than one .Hack anime, several of the manga and some games but the genius in this anime is it does so from the Real Life point of view (vs. gameplay). It manages to tie many loose ends together and in an entertaining fashion.

Characters

The characters are well fleshed out and developed. There is ... no sense of incongruity that these people don't behave like normal people would behave In Real Life. They're realistic and believable. Even the backstory characters of who developed fragment and why, is lovingly done. Overall, very solid.

Art/Animation and sound

Opening theme showcased the game in a very persuasive manner. If the game graphics looks anything as good as what's presented here then more people will play it. Character animation was clearly of a higher quality than .Hack/Sign or .Hack/Twilight. Sound effects are wonderful, music is good and even the insertion of the Hack/Sign theme was well done. Again, this was solid.

Enjoyment/Overall

Story wise, this has been the best of the .Hack anime I've seen so far, probably for the "summation" nature of this ova. It didn't feel too short or too long, there was no "filler" type material. The plot was tightly woven, pacing was great and thus I enjoyed this much more than the other .Hack series I've seen. Very very solid and good. I would have rated this higher if I were more familiar with the manga or played the game.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 16, 2011

HangJarrel

Mixed Feelings

All right before we get started, just want to make sure that you all know that I haven't played any of the hack games, although a lot of my friends have been telling me to go and get the games because they are really good (from what they said)

Unfortunately the anime series are a completely different form of media so yeah this is my take on it.

Story

Honestly though, it's hard to watch an anime that where you're already supposed to know things and with the lack of background information it's really difficult to get into the story line especially when ... there's still so much to explain. Although it's quite fairly simple and almost identical to the other .hack stories, it focuses on the mysterious comas that's been happening to the players all over the world, and how they're trying to solve it and yadda yadda yadda it goes on. One thing that really surprised me about this is the fact that the settings is completely in the real world, I expected it to be placed in the video game because it's .hack and all but that caught me off guard when the whole thing was set in the real world. Overall, it's getting old hearing almost the same thing over and over again from other series, but the upside is there's always new information that they present about the whole .hack series as a whole which kind of answers a lot of questions from the other series.

Art

The fact that it's an OVA, the art is already given as better than worse. I do have to point out that the style of art is quite different from all the other ones though, maybe because it's an OVA or maybe because it's actually placed in the real world rather than the colourful places of "The World", either way I really have no complaints about the art.

Character

I never really saw any character growth mainly because the time spent in the whole OVA weren't really that long, it didn't take them years or months to get to the end but I would say just days, so the amount of character growth from the beginning to the end I would say was "just right" not too much but not to the point where you wouldn't notice anything. They give you a good variety of characters, but the protagonists weren't very persuasive about their beliefs or goals, they never really showed that much passion about the whole ordeal. I found them too laid back with the situations that were happening and wished they'd react in a more believable manner. There was that guy that always had a cigarette in his mouth, I've always liked characters that are like that, shows them that they too can relieve stress the deathly way.

Overall

Honestly though, with my full opinion on this, the .hack series were probably the ones that I dreaded through watching the most, but then again I think back they were probably one of the first animes I've ever really watched seriously, so it was hard form to get into it and try to analyze as much crap as I can to make a good review.

Liminality was different because they weren't in the video game for once, and that already, gives this anime a point of uniqueness compared to the rest of the .hacks!

cheers

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Feb 6, 2015

brynolf

Not Recommended

Overall
I might have got the chronology wrong, but I started out with this OVA, and have yet to see "Sign" and "Twilight". That's probably why I didn't understand a thing.

Animation
Not bad, not great. It looks kind of like most TV animes out there. I guess you expect more from an OVA, though. I like the attention to detail in the animation, though (throw a frying pan down a hatch, and it's still there when you get down there).

Sound
Voice acting is solid but nothing special. Background music is a bit repetative and there are few different songs considering this being a rather short OVA.

The ending theme ... gave me a real deja vu. I can't put my finger on it, but I have heard it before somewhere. Are there other animes using this song?

Story
Alright, I probably should have started with "Sign" or something... I didn't understand a thing! Yes, there are strange things going on regarding "The world", but what? And why is this rag-tag collection of characters seeking the truth?
Hopefully this OVA will make more sense when you have watched other parts of the .Hack story.

Character
As I said, I can't see how the characters' backgrounds link together, and certainly not how they are connected to the story (which I also failed to understand, by the way). Mai-chan is the only one with a real motive as far as I can see. Even though every character gets a whole episode of their own, there are no explanations of who they actually are and why they do what they do.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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