In a lot of Isekai anime, manga and games, the purpose is to get more powerful. However, that’s the case with the .hack series. For many who visit the
The World”, the name of where the .hack series takes place, they do so for a variety of different reasons. Some to escape the reality of life, some to engage socially, and some to remove the preconceptions of their real-life bodies. Ok, and yes, there those who do want to play the game to get stronger and fight monsters.
The World in .hack is a way to explore their characters in a personal setting where they don’t have to worry about fitting into the real world’s society. Some go to extremes and PK whoever they want to feel a power trip, while others want a place where there’s less greed and fewer social constructs in place. It’s a great deep dive into the human psyche. .hack is an exploration of technology and its impact on humanity and society.
This gets furthered when we explore The World itself as a setting. Its creation started as one of passion before the one who was behind its original code was no longer behind the wheel. It went a more corporate route afterward as a way to appeal to mass audiences worldwide, but hidden inside that still lies the passion and love of the original creator, no matter how much the company CC2 tries to hide or remove it.
I do love this exploration of humanity and how literally everything in .hack is connected. Time moves forward, but the impacts of the past never leave. The only series that grasps this idea as well as .hack is the Trails series and the Xeno series. Technology will evolve, but the people behind that technology and the ones who use it matter more than the technology itself.
To get an idea of what I mean by this, let’s take a look at the original Quadrilogy of .hack. Kite is a friend to many in real life. He is sincere and cares for people. He is also a social butterfly who makes friends easily. He likes soccer and studies consistently. One of his longtime friends starts to feel distant from him, so he wants to take a bigger interest in what his friend loves. That friend is Yasuhiko. Yasuhiko tells him to start playing The World. Kite is in a world brand new to him and isn’t a hardcore gamer, but he wants to connect with his friend, so he agrees.
The day he starts The World is a day Kite will always remember. He joins Orca (Yasuhiko’s video game character) and begins his first area. While doing the basic tutorial, Orca grows nervous as he notices an enemy that shouldn’t be in a level 1 area. He focuses more on training Kite and introducing him to the game than on this new enemy until they leave the starting dungeon to gate out, when they are confronted by this powerful enemy.
Orca is highly leveled, so he imagines he should be fine to handle it. Attack after attack lands, and this enemy’s life bar doesn’t even move. After that, he is attacked with a strange power called Data Drain right before a mysterious girl asks Orca to use her book. Orca, however, gets attacked before he can answer. As Kite prepares to fight off this powerful attack, a system error occurs and he is logged out automatically.
Kite isn’t sure what just happened. He calls his friend Yasuhiko to learn that he is in a coma. This is what kickstarts Kite’s adventure into The World. He isn’t there by choice anymore. He’s there to figure out why this harmless video game caused his friend to collapse. His real-life duties now take a back seat; they aren’t gone, but his focus is on understanding and figuring out this video game enemy that took his friend away from him.
He’s confident and social in real life, but in this video game, he is the opposite. He’s a new player who doesn’t know anything beyond the small tutorial his now comatose friend taught him. He doesn’t know what’s normal or not to say in a video game, and a lot of the time, he relies on the experience of others he meets to help him. The connections he builds in these four games as he figures out the inner workings of The World never leave him. In fact, it’s these connections that provide him with a path forward in his real life as he devotes his studies to learning new languages to build more connections around the world.
The World isn’t just a video game. It’s a place to explore the human psyche. Building connections online is just as important as building them offline.
.hack//G.U. Last Recode is an easy entry point to the series since it is available on many current platforms. .hack//Z.E.R.O. is currently in development by CyberConnect2.
