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Thank you Blood+ fans for voicing your discontent over how shit this is compared to the original. Based on that I decided I'd watch this one first and I have to say: it was really enjoyable! Saya and her little tunes were adorable, the action was good, watching people get brutally and violently ripped apart in every conceivable was gruesomely satisfying, the cast was serviceable (and the twins were pretty cute)

If you've never heard of Blood before and have a passing interest, give this one a try first. It's barely 6 hours long, and is worth it at least for the creative monster murders alone. ... Can't wait to see you guys on the Blood+ train!

I'm not sure how to feel about this one. At first glance it's about an mmo full of combat and exploration and.....it has none of that. At all. You see 4 monsters in the show total. Apparently one of the most popular mmo's of all time in universe with millions of players. You'll see about 57 people in the background over the entire show. But the main characters will bump into each other constantly as if guided by some other-wordly force (not even getting into the fact of the entire main cast living in the exact same city, what a HUGE coincidence). And with a ... soundtrack that is odd at some times, very good at others but usually ill-fitting of what's usually going on

And yet, despite all that, it had me hooked. I wanted to know more about the breadcrumbs of plot it would give us, about the characters, their motives, their personality, both in and out of the game. Hack will spend most of it's time having the cast meet up in pairs of 2 and slowly (and I mean really slowly) get to know each other. Sometimes they'll be deep discussions, sometimes they'll talk about current topics, but most of the time it will be about nothing at all. Just like how we would in real life. It doesn't make for the most interesting viewing experience but it does build up these characters, love them or hate them you'll get to know them pretty well. But not as well as you'd like, because just as this show finally picks up it's pace and decides it's time to finally actually have a plot and reveal it's hand about "The World" and what's really going on?

The show ends

One of the most abrupt ends ever to end a show as the entire cast is lazily force logged out of the game right at the final battle and.....that's it . I felt like I was just sucker punched in the gut. All the build-up of getting to know this cast, finally seeing them put their differences aside for a greater cause, and it's all for nothing. You'll get a brief 20 second shot of Tsukasas's fate which is actually very sweet, but I feel as if we were robbed of a lot more. All of these characters we had grew to love or hate are cruelly ripped away from us via an abrupt fade to black. Did Subaru finally come to terms with the real world and the difficulties it brings? Did Silver Knight find his purpose without Subaru and the Crimson Knights? Did BT find that connection she was deeply missing in her heart? Who the hell were Helba and Balmung? AND WHAT ABOUT EVERYTHING WITH SORA AT THE LAST 2 MINUTES? And many more questions

Unfortunately it seems that 70% of the questions you have won't be answered, because we won't see 2/3 of this cast ever again, outside of a few cameo's in the Hack IMOQ videogames and the short 20 minute OVA which is a final farewell send-off not just for the characters of Hack sign, but for everyone in this series. That includes the characters of 2 short novels, 4 videogames and 2 anime shows. So I've got a ways to go before I can comment on if that ones a worthy send-off or not, but as of right now I just feel let down

For a story that tries to tell a message of how important it is not to lose yourself in videogames and escape the real world but to instead embrace it, we never get to see anyone outside of it, except for a few brief flickering shots, it will merely tell us how certain characters have met in real life, but it will never expand upon it or show us. And I really wanted more of that. Their motivations and desires in real life were what drove them in the game. Silver Knight and his desire for justice, Bt and her desire to be loved, Bear and his desire to protect others, Mimiru and her desire for friendship and so much more. And that really breaks my heart, because despite all of it's shortcomings and weak budget this show had that something special that pulled so many people back when it first aired that wasn't just a fluke, as it's pulled me in even now all these years later.

My brain says 6/10
My heart says 8/10
I'll settle on a final score of 7/10

Some of the worst Gundam the franchise has to offer. Forgettable music, laughable plot, mediocre fightscenes, terrible voice acting, atrocious characterisation and an overreliance on killing a character the moment they get any semblance of backstory makes this a regrettable watch indeed

I feel like if I went off on everything bad about this show I'd be here writing 20-30 paragraphs, not only that but I'd be repeating what the top negative reviews have already went over in depth. So I'll just leave the thoughts that stick with me most to remind me never to re-watch this. However before I begin I'll give this show ... ONE positive point and that is the writers listened to the fans on them wanting a certain General who murders newborn babies and non-combatant mothers to meet a grisly end, and they certainly delivered. Watching him get crushed to death ever so slowly in the final episode was immensely satisfying and gave me the biggest grin I've had since I started this show. Now, onto the main show

Voice Acting. Where was the budget? You can't have most of the main cast each voicing up to 4 minor characters. This is jarring, incredibly lazy and an insult to the quality of prior works spanning all the way back to the original Gundam. If these voice actors were quality I suppose there would be room to forgive, but they weren't. They were incredibly bad, the type of VA's you hear in every generic videogame/anime. And making Johnny Young Bosch a main character was painful for my ears

General Characters. I'm going to sum up every arc of a character for you. "Man I haven't seen my brother scrimbly scrombly in 10 years now. I'm now bringing this up out of the blue completely unwarranted, but it's whatever since I'll never see them again I guess. Mars is a huge place, space, even larger. But I'm sure I'll see them one day...." -30 minutes later he finds scrimbly scrombly after 10 years of searching, however a fight breaks out and said brother is forced to perform a dramatic sacrifice jumping in the way of a lethal shot because idk my Gundam's thruster is jammed by a stick or something- scrimbly......scr.....scrim...............SCRIMBLY SCROMBLYYYYYYYYYYYY -dramatic camera panning-

Main Characters. Mika is an absolute psycho, incredibly one note, only like's choking down Orga's orders without ever having an opinion. Orga never learns from his mistakes. Gets everyone killed 1 by 1. Doubles down on everyone dying otherwise "their lives were wasted." Kudelia. Uses everyone for her own goals, complains she is using everyone for her own goals and they are dying for her. Cries a little. This happens about 15 times. Does nothing to change it. She doesn't really affect anything either after she meets her goals. If anything she makes things worse showing the world how useful child soldiers. Then she gets in a REALLY weird NTR'ish situation and ends up raising another woman's child

Plot. I don't think I've ever watched a show where the main villain not only loses every single battle he ever partakes in, doesn't once face opposition from the protagonists yet still gets completely and utterly decimated. It's incredibly sad to see. So kudos for that I suppose. However I'm not really sure what the writers were aiming for here.

I could go on but I don't really want to. At the very least in Gundam you'll usually find the politics and theme's to be rather interesting with a unique villain to boot. But there's none of that here. I know on the flip side there's a few villains of Gundam fame that meet pathetic ends that never really achieve anything, but I think chocolate man takes the #1 spot for that by a country mile. What a waste of time this show was. S1 was mediocre but felt like a huge prologue setup to S2. They even open rather interestingly in S2. But in the end anything remotely interesting is reduced to ash.

Goodbye Barbatos, you weren't a good anime, hell you weren't even a good mobile suit