.hack//Gift

The .Hack franchise has always been loved by a select cult following, and hated (for the most part) by nearly everyone else. Some series in the franchise are worthier than others, but unfortunately with the advent of anime like Sword Art Online, Accel World, etc. new comers to .Hack find less and less to like.

It isn't as novel a concept as it was on release, and to have a great grasp on the series you have to play through the .Hack video games, which are expensive as well as a bit dated (the first game series especially).

I myself am a fan of the ... franchise. So when I sat down to watch this short expecting to see some new animation and all of the characters I had grown to love, imagine my horror when I pressed play.

The art of this is dismally unappealing. I expected to see more detailed character designs, and a nice new gloss of animation over the whole thing. What I got was a grade schooler's art project. And trust me, this kid ain't no Picasso.

This could have been a decent short like Unity, but instead we got a failed art project. I can't even recommend this to fans of the series. Only watch this if you are desperate for more .Hack, and keep in mind that you WILL regret it.

Okay so let's start this monstrous OVA review.

Story

It's plain and simple, Helba decides to create her own world by telling all the players and characters from the .hack series that she is opening up a hot springs and it's their job or quest to look for it, and apparently whichever group (series) finds it first will get a prize. Aside from the main story there are small little commentaries and tiny problems that the characters have with each other which seem more amusing than the main objective, it's literally like all over the place and it's hard to keep track on who has a problem ... with and whatnot. Overall the story is really not that important you'll just be entertained at the fact that Subaru actually used her axe for once.

Art

It's weird, it's plain weird. The characters are drawn in a very abstract manner, it's good that the anime says their name when they pop out because honestly it's so hard to determine which character is who because some of them look nothing like what they're supposed to look like. There were some parts where the animation and art would go back to normal but at such absurd times like when Crim accidentally sliced Balmung's cape and feathers appeared... when it focused on the feathers they looked perfectly fine, and another time when Bear and Orca were fighting and two naked women passed by, why were the women normally drawn while Orca and Bear look like a vomited canvas?!

There were some weird stuff that happened in the anime that I just can't explain; When Sora and Crim were fighting, strings suddenly came out of nowhere and attached to them like they were puppets. Aura came out at the last second right when the OVA was about to finish, did she have a purpose? Or were the writers that desperate to literally put all the characters in the OVA and just inserted her just so they can say she counts... seriously.
Another moment was when in that moment you see Mia and Elk lying down on the hill... and then they just started making out, like wtf no explanation at all?!

Character
There's not much to say about it since all the characters are taken from other series, but one thing is for sure most of them are out of their normal personalities, the writer certainly meant this OVA to be on the comedy side since pretty much all the characters had their own littler comedic twist on them.

Overall this OVA is really weird, enough said.

cheers?