TAB: Tom's Anime Blog

Although it's been too long for me to give it a proper review, I'm confident in saying that .HACK Legend of Twilight's Bracelet (aka .HACK//Dusk) is the best of the two .HACK series. It may be better than the game... I can't really say, as I'm only halfway through the 4-game series (and on indefinite hiatus).

Anyway, Let's Meet Offline is a strange beast. Rather than being a proper anime, it feels more like an illustrated radio drama, or one of those shows on public TV where the one guy reads a storybook while the other draws pictures to illustrate important scenes. The scenes tend to consist of a static background with character pictures that change to illustrate their emotions laid atop it, so a comparison to visual novel bishoujo games would not be out of place.

This is obviously an attempt to milk the franchise for all it's worth. But whatever, it's worth it. The story is simple... it winds up that two members of the cast are actually Americans playing "The World" to improve their Japanese skills, and they decided to take a trip to Japan. They got separated, and the younger one managed to get to an internet cafe and log in to "The World". It's now up to the rest of the cast to find them, a task that's complicated by the fact that the cast is comprised of groups of people that have never met in real life.

It worked. The minimal animation didn't hurt the telling of the story, the story was interesting, and more was revealed about the characters than we had any right to expect. (There was even a cool tie-in between .HACK//LOTB and the game, which I didn't expect.)

I'll rate this good, but with the caveat that if you haven't seen the show, it won't make any sense whatsoever.