.hack//Tasogare no Udewa Densetsu: Offline de Aimashou 576i40

Offline meeting special tells the story of how the cast of .Hack/Twilight get to meet. This is actually a lot of fun and reveals what each character is like in real life. We already know about Shujo and Rena but there are surprises in store for Hotaru, Sanjuro, Mirielle and Ouka.

The art/sound is not great but character and story are good. It's quite enjoyable and anyone who has seen Twilight should watch this to finish off the series as it provides a good sense of completion and closure. The only thing that could have made this better is if they had showed the Real Life ... type animations of each character, instead of the game image.

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I've already written a review for the main series, so I'd recommend reading that first. This is the first picture drama I've seen to completion. If you thought regular anime had budget problems, seeing one of these makes you realize it's no joke. Characters are represented by floating heads in circles over still backgrounds, kind of like a skit in a "Tales of" game which I imagine has a big crossover fanbase with .hack. Anyway...

In .hack//Legend of the Twilight: Offline Meeting Special, Hotaru visits Japan from America with Sanjuro ... and gets separated. Hotaru logs in to The World from an internet cafe where she asks Shugo, Rena, Mireille, and Ouka for help. They all work together to figure out Hotaru's location then eventually they go out to find her in real life.

There's a scene where Hotaru is explaining how she got lost in a big Tokyo crowd where Hotaru's floating head-in-a-circle flies and fumbles around a still watercolor image of a crowd of Japanese people viewed from the top down. It's so adorable that I screamed "k-kawaii!!!" in real life and made everyone in the internet cafe I was watching from leave in embarrassment. But I'm sure if they saw it they would understand.

To be blunt, this special is very disappointing. You literally do -not- see any single character's real life appearance. Even when they meet up in the story their portrait is of their game character. I've ired .hack's artistic choice to obscure any real world faces in their series, but making a special based around revealing that and just blue-balling the audience is a misleading and pointless thing to do. You get a detail or two about each side-character's personal life, but it amounts to so little and seeing what they really look like would've been a far better reward. Not to mention it was actually revealed in the final volume of the manga but not matched up to the specific characters so you kind of had to guess who was who.

The last quarter or so of the special is the voice actors saying something nice but frivolous about the character they voiced then saying some catchphrase. It's cute to hear how enthused they sound, but they don't say anything special.

And thus, this special in its entirety isn't. There really was almost no point to making it. Yet I might've liked it more than the actual series just because it's just this silly cute thing that never has any moments of stupid writing or slapstick. It feels more in line with the tone of the original manga, which was overall better than the anime adaptation. Anyway, I pretty much outlined the whole thing so you can decide on your own whether it sounds like it's worth watching. I'm just going to pretend Ouka looks the same in real life.

So I watched .hack//LEGEND OF THE TWILIGHT some time ago for the second time. Pretty good anime with a crappy ending. Oh well. The manga was better. Anyways.........I saw this on here in the anime list and I was like "Might as well watch it." And I am so glad I did! It was very original and pretty entertaining to watch. I didn't even mind the fact that it was just floating heads and hardly any animation. The peeing scene was kinda weird tho :\ So anyway! Onto the review~

Story:
The story was completely original! I loved how it flowed so prefectly with the original ... series and the surprise ending. WOW! Lol i'm not gonna spoil it for you so you watch it yourself ;)

Art:
Eh. The backgrounds which you looked at most of the time were not the best quality and the floating heads were kinda low standards too. Definitely a few steps down from the actual series. Disappointing.

Sound:
The sound wasn't much better than the art. Very staticy and bleh. Not much background music either. Just talking and some sound effects to fit the scene.

Character:
The characters really get developed fully here and you learn their ages and what not. And the surprise ending! Lol still not gonna spoil it ;) Only 5 characters and yet it was well pulled off.

Enjoyment:
I completley enjoyed this. Defeinitly not a waste of my time to watch. :) The little ending where the cast had a little say about their character was fun to listen to too. I might rewatch this again if I get bored lol

Overall:
Very good! Definitley a good thing to watch if you are a .hack fan. You're not bored to tears as in other .hack animes (a lot of them actually...). If only the art and sound quality was better :\