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Spoiler warning if you haven't watched the TV series.

The TV series is better. The music in a lot of scenes was changed. The original music direction, in my opinion, was way better. For example, Kallen and Suzaku's final fight in the TV series was totally carried by the epicness of the BGM. Another example is Lelouch's death. It just lacked impact compared to the original and they took out Nunally's flashback when she touches his hand...it kind of just dulled the moment. I believe the original sound director died, so no wonder it sucks. Also, the movie was just blasting through each moment way too ... fast, but that's inevitable because of the time crunch from condensing a whole season's worth of material into a movie. Overall, this just felt like a bunch of scenes stitched together. The only part worth watching was the last minute of the movie. Regretfully, I have to give this one a 6/10 because it is inferior to the original. I hope the pacing slows down in the 4th movie because there's no reason to rush through new material.

I’ll be a special snowflake here. I think it deserves a 7.6/10 based on just the 3 episodes. Including the whole show, it would be a 6/10. Shaft's direction and art-style never ceases to amaze me. They insert weird shots of characters moving their lips or eyes that you just don't see coming, to the point it can kind of freak you out, and I'm saying that as a positive. It's not often you get these dynamic camera shots, and Shaft is one of the few that loves doing those. I love it; maybe I'm a masochist viewer. Also, I guess I like reading a ... philosophical diatribe (I watched this subbed). This one really doesn't hold back on the talking, or the Nasu-talking philosophical rants, which I found very fascinating. Who cares about hack and slash anime when you can watch this and feel enlightened about the simple things in life. But yes, it is extremely boring leading up to these final 3 episodes. And that is the main weakness of this show. The lack of explaining things while pouring a psychological mind-****ery on you is kind of bad combination, so I would say going into this anime from the very first episode with the expectation it will be like the other fate anime is a huge mistake. You have to go into this with the mind set that you're entering a lecture with Nasu about existential nihilism. And as I said before, the animation was beautiful, like OVA or movie quality. The fights in these final few episodes was worth the time. The ending is like "wtf" and kinda leaves you thinking what the hell was that? At the end of the day, I gave this a high rating because it seems like a lot more thought was put into this than your typical-kind of anime. It was just executed in a way that turns off people with a short attention span.

I don't know where to start with this. Short and simple, this anime is horrible. Now continue reading on if you want to know why.

I watched .hack//SIGN over a decade ago, so I can't compare it with that anime in a very detailed matter. However, I can definitely say the music took a nosedive. The music in .hack//SIGN is simply one of the best ever made and leagues above the music in ROOTS because Kaijura was the main person behind it. But in ROOTS, Kaijura only did the OP music.

In ROOTS, the music felt off in many scenes. For example, when something serious ... is happening, you hear some comedic opera singer bull**** that just doesn't match the mood at all. I can go on and on about how mediocre the music was for this show. Simply, the music was horrible.

The story was chockfull of filler. Related to filler is the catgirl character named Tabi. Everytime she appeared, I just wanted to kill myself and became more frustrated with this show. She is the most cringey example of stereotypical NYAA NYAA anime cat girl stereotype. It became apparent this show was going to be bad the moment the "Guild" scenes started to pop up a bit too much. I can only assume it's setting up the viewer for the games that come after. Still, the repetitive, formulaic way of cutting from the important scenes back to Tabi scenes was really what killed this show for me. And that leads to my next point. Whenever an interesting fight or an interesting conversation is about to start, they cut away to something else happening in another area for what I could only guess are budget reasons. Also, there was a lot of unnecessary flashbacks (DBZ syndrome) and lots of static shots which made it even more obvious this was cheaply made anime. The fights were not that interesting and again, whenever the fights would get intense, they cut away to another scene. I always found myself asking myself "What just happened?" because the story moves around so much and way too many trivial things happen and before you know it, they're already talking about something else.

Regarding the other characters, most of them don't matter. The only ones that mattered in my opinion are Haseo, Shino, Ovan, and some mysterious observers that pulls the strings in the background. This should have just been a movie or a few episode OVA focused on those characters only, not 26 episodes. This had me thinking the whole time that this show was a cheap way to make something a 26 episode boxset price. Well, I'm here to tell you that that is exactly why this show is so bad. Whoever produced this thought they could rip off the consumers by adding in bunch of filler to make it an expensive buy. So I'm writing this review to tell you it's not worth your time unless you are a hardcore .hack collector or a completionist. I'm a completionist. That is the only reason I watched it, and I want to play the games just to see the rest of the story the way it was intended to be ingested. So unfortunately, I forced myself to sit through this mediocrity. I've never, EVER, upped the playback speed for an anime, but this was the first anime to ever make me play it at x1.5 speed. The characters talk ridiculously slow, everything happens at a ridiculous slow pace (back to my point about the flashbacks) to make it 26 episodes. It almost makes me not want to play the games, and I'm dreading having to deal with that catgirl again.

This is one of those rare times where I will say I'd watch this English dubbed. I'm not saying the subbed version is worse. I just couldn't bear reading the subtitles because I felt like I was reading dialogue for the stupidest show ever, so listening to it in English at least gave me a break.

So to sum everything up, yes, this show was horrible enough to make me watch it in English. Only watch it if you're going to play the games because it serves as the prequel.

I had seen this when I was around age 14, and now I'm 28 as I review this with a different perspective. At 14 (I never played the games) I really didn't understand what was going on at all in this. I just thought it was another episode to knock off my list of anime to watch. But now I'm back after playing the 4 games and refreshing my memory of SIGN.

You can't truly appreciate this without having played the 4 PS2 games games from Infection to Quarantine. Otherwise, the episode seems pretty pointless, and you wouldn't understand why for example Sora is walking around, ... or who Macha is and why they can't remember anything.

The purpose of this episode was to tie up the past-history of SIGN that was teased throughout the 4 games together with the characters from the PS2 games, while beautifully giving us closure on Macha's backstory.

So my positive bias comes from the fact I played all 4 games and Macha's backstory (from .hack Quarantine's Macha epilogue) makes this episode worth your time. I wouldn't watch this if you only watched .hack//SIGN. It's meant to be watched after SIGN and the 4 games.

This review is just about the last movie, but it sort of encompasses my feelings for the movies before this final chapter as well.

Story(8/10)/Characters(9/10): The whole plot is about what the characters are going through and how they persist. Over time, the viewer eventually uncovers more and more about the the protagonists and antagonists. The final chapter plays a huge part in fleshing out the characters, what their motivations are, and what their pasts entailed. There is a lot of stuff to chew on in the final movie as far as the Geass universe and how it is connected to metaphysics. Anyone who has watched ... End of Evangelion will see inspiration from the NERV raid, and it is very entertaining to watch a base defense scenario. Honestly, there is a lot of inspiration from Evangelion. Some of the story elements introduced in this might feel forced and randomly confusing, but it inspires a sense of a mind f***, which is fun to experience. 8/10 is kind of generous for the story rating, but I felt since this was the climax and the loose ends were getting tied, this would be higher than what I would give to the previous chapters. It does leave me wanting a continuation to the Geass series.

Art (8/10): CG is the only detracting factor. The rest of the animation is somewhere in between OVA and high budget movie quality.

Sound (7/10): The BGM is what makes the Akito movies vastly different from the Geass TV series. Instead of epic choir music from the TV series, you have a crazy jazz saxophone blasting in your ear and rumbling bass with a MIDI-like sound accompanying it. It's a very disturbing combination, and its intention is clearly to cause a disturbing, chaotic mood during the battles. The BGM is what made Geass stand out as a "Death Note" type of show. And both Death Note and Geass had the epic choir music. So to go from a show and "chess-battle" genre that was totally defined by the 'epic music' to something with a completely different vibe, yet same character artwork, does work in its favor. I feel it was someone's selfish intention to go with this music choice as a way to delve into ideas and themes differently than the TV series.

Enjoyment (8/10): If you enjoy action and some conscious-sharing, this will be an enjoyable experience.

Overall (8/10): Although the 4 year wait fresh in my mind while watching this ruined my viewing, I'd rather this as an 8/10.

I would have given this show prob a 7 or very generous 8/10 if it weren't for the horrible MMO education-advertising-sega brainwashing crap in over half the episodes. And the whole tone of the show with the stupid highschool, slice of life bullcrap was so off putting. Would have been much better if handled with a higher budget and better studio. The source material this show comes from is amazing. They should've adapted the Red Ring Rico/Flowen story from PSO1 with a higher budget... something like along the lines of God Eater would have been so much more respectable than this trash turd of a ... show. This show's story is actually faithful to PSO2's story, but it was very disrespectful to PSO2 and the whole franchise. As a whole, one of the worst shows I've seen.

Story was horribly cliche and completely predictable, horrible cg animation with bad framerate, sounds were ripped from Fate Stay Night UBW (honestly this show ripped off Saber's Excalibur animation and probably because the actual game itself had a Fate/Stay Night event/vanity options), characters that make you cringe, only enjoyment was from realizing the MMO-education b.s. was over near the end of the show. I only watched this because I loved PSO1. This show totally disrespected the PSO franchise. Overall rating: 4/10.

Warning: Partial spoilers for Epilogue

I gotta say I love the sunset fading to night scene leading to the ending credits. It makes the viewer actually feel like they are experiencing that world in real time alongside those characters. Something about it was too beautiful to put into words. Guess you could say it's a perfect way to end a thought provoking epilogue that makes you think twice about dropping out of school. Right before, Rin was saying there is so much in the world that is worth suffering for and experiencing, so it was worth dropping their things and taking a risk going off the ... normal path. It takes the point home when you see the view from a small dorm room to the city landscape. And of course the night sky which is limitless and transcends every era of time like Saber's. I don't know if anyone noticed this yet: In the end, I think it is very likely they were trying to give weight to the title. Rin talks about their fate and staying together, which is followed by the night sky. Fate/Stay Night. Voila!

Unfortunately, I felt the second cour was mediocre as an adaption. I could tell the epilogue would have complimented a good adaptation very well, but it feels slightly out of line because it feels deeper than the previous episodes, which had no substance and lack of characterization. The conversation/monologues they had at Saber's grave site and just Shirou talking to himself is a great example of what the series was seriously lacking for VN viewers. There was really no good reason to leave those things out when they have so much time to fill with anime original scenes and this epilogue which is basically all original. So the ending feels less impactful than what was probably intended. I'd call this adaptation a tragedy because it was a wasted opportunity which took a decade to become a reality. Heaven's Feel next, which will have a lot less hype now because UfoUBW technically dropped the ball.