The anime franchise that codified the “trapped in a video game” cliche

Anime is a medium driven forward by its tendency to not only draw inspiration from the rich cultural foundations of other media, but also by its culture of celebrating itself by encouraging the new to constantly draw from the old. Many stories, especially in anime, are reinterpretations of older stories or tropes, and as for isekai, a niche has emerged where characters find themselves trapped in fully immersive video games.

At this point, Sword Art Online is synonymous with this particular trope in anime, but various other hit titles have also explored this in their own unique way; however, none have explored it quite like the .chop// Franchise did. Before it Sword Art Onlinethere was .chop// – here you will learn how the “trapped in a video game” motif was codified in anime in the early 2000s.

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What is the .chop// Franchise?

A science fiction classic from the 2000s with an interesting perspective

The .chop// (“dot hack”) franchise is a series of anime and games set in an alternate history after a technological disaster that struck the world in 2005 and strange events that occurred in the fully immersive, massively multiplayer virtual reality online role-playing game called “The World”. The franchise, developed by CyberConnect 2 and Bandai Entertainment, started with Project .chop//which began with the .hack//SIGN Anime series that premiered in April 2002 and the .hack//infection The PlayStation 2 game was released in June of the same year. Project developers included Koichi Mashimo of studio Bee Train, Kazunori Itō of Catfish, and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto of the now-defunct Gainax.

The .hack// Anime Project

We present .hack//SIGN

.hack//SIGN was produced by staff at Bee Train and Bandai Visual, directed by Kōichi Mashimo, with scripts by Kazunori Itō, and character designs by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. The series ran for 26 episodes from April to September 2002, and followed a “wavemaster” named Tsukasa, a player of the MMORPG The World, who mysteriously wakes up in a dungeon with no memory of who he is or how he got there. To make matters worse, Tsukasa is unable to log out of the game, so he sets out to find the truth. It’s a character-driven story that can be slow-moving and confusing, but its exploration of psychological themes and the strength of its setting and characters have made it a cult classic. .hack//SIGN is set in 2009, after the outbreak of a computer virus called Pluto’s Kiss, which caused a major Internet outage, with almost catastrophic consequences that led to severe restrictions on the entire cyberspace. After two years, free access to the Internet returns, along with the release of the virtual reality MMORPG “The World”, the first online game released since the virus outbreak and developed for the Altimit operating system; the only one immune to computer viruses.

“The World” is a game with a fantasy setting where players can take on different classes and explore alone or form groups with other players and earn XP by completing dungeons. Despite this setting, the anime is not driven by battle scenes, but the dialogue and character development, as well as the mystery inherent in the series, make up its charm. By slowly revealing secrets about “The World” and the characters, the true endgame of .hack//SIGN becomes clear. The supposed existence of a legendary object called the “Key of Dusk,” which supposedly acts as some sort of omnipotent imposter that can bypass the game’s system, becomes Tsukasa’s only hope of logging out, but the search also reveals the mysterious Morganna Mode Gone, an AI system created to feed personality data into an AI called Aura, which lies dormant and buried deep within the game’s code, placed there by the game’s creator who wanted to create the ultimate artificial intelligence.

The many .hack// games

A series of four games

The series begins with .chop//, released on the PlayStation 2, which takes place after the events of .hack//SIGN and follows player characters Kite and BlackRose as they try to figure out why some players, including Kite’s friend Orca and BlackRose’s brother Kazu, have fallen into a coma after playing the game. The series is described as “a game within a game,” and in this first installment, players control Kite, but can also “log out” of the game and access a desktop with various features. This game was released in four volumes: .hack//infection, .hack//mutation, .hack//outbreak and .hack//quarantine. In addition to the four PlayStation 2 games, there was the MMORPG .hack//fragmentthe first massive multiplayer .chop// game; as well as the TCG .hack//Enemy, which ran from 2003 to 2005.

Subsequent .hack// Anime parts

Titles set after the events of .hack//SIGN

After .hack//SIGNThe anime was continued with the anime adaptation of .hack//Legend of the TwilightThe .chop// Manga by Tatsuya Hamazaki with art by Rei Izumi. The series follows twins Shugo and Rena, who won chibi avatars from Kite and BlackRose, legendary players of “The World”. After Shugo receives the Twilight Bracelet from an ethereal girl, he and his sister set out to uncover the secret behind the Twilight Bracelet. In this story, several people fall into a coma after their characters’ HP drops to zero during unlikely encounters with powerful monsters.

Although these people are in the hospital, they still seem to be online. A DVD-OVA box set titled .hack//Liminality was included with the PS2 game and focused on the real world rather than the events taking place in “The World”. Currently, the .hack// property is in its second phase, called “.hack Conglomerate”, and has its own series of anime releases, including .hack//Rootsthe last .hack// title licensed by Bandai Entertainment. This part was followed by the .hack//GU Trilogy, a CGI adaptation of the video games of the same name, and .hack//The Movie, published in January 2012.

Impact of the .hack// franchise

A unique exploration of futuristic technology and gaming

Its emergence began in the early 2000s, a period particularly marked by the introduction of the Internet, and in the wake of nearly half a century of speculative fiction and science fiction that grappled with the potential consequences of humanity’s technological expansion, particularly in the age of computers and the Internet. .hack//SIGN focused particularly on the relationship between technology, identity and interpersonal relationships, but is unique to titles such as Sword Art Online or Log horizonwhich appear to have drawn inspiration from the franchise in many ways, going beyond portraying characters trapped in a video game. Its narrative, while entirely rooted in the game itself, manages to make the liminal depictions of the characters’ offline lives into an interesting journey that, when coupled with the infinite mysteries that the core setting brings, results in something very memorable. Any fan of gaming or speculative science fiction should definitely check out some form of .chop// Media in their lives.