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A review on .hack//Legend of Twilight Bracelet

This light-hearted anime begins with two seperated siblings who overcome a great distance in the physical world by meeting and playing together in a MMPORG game calle "The World". They begin their journey in the newly discovered world with their awarded special player characters figures, which seem to hold a great importance. Soon, through a mystical in-game death, the male main character Shuugo is entrusted with a mystical bracelet called The Twilight Bracelet. With it, he can fight the hacked monsters that appear and generally just save the day. Now, this may seem a little straightforward setting, so it really shouldn’t surprise you at all that the actual series is even more so. It mainly revolves between the sister and the brother, some kyoudai ai (sibling-love), lots of quests, treasure hunting and other player character involvement. Now this could be dragged on to utter boredom like the original Hack Sign series was. However, it manages to entice the viewer with its sugar coated, happy-go-lucky and a genuinely warm feeling. This series is actually fun to watch! The characters are interesting and plenty to go around, even if they are a little stereotypical. I also noticed that only few of the characters were actually being developed over the series. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since otherwise it may tip towards drama and resulting in less fun. Now those of you who have watched the original Hack Sign, it’s mostly void of all the self-pity, anguish and pain present in the original. While both series take place in the same virtual world, they might as well be worlds apart. With all the laughter, bright colours and the humoristic scenes, most troubles seem distant at most, though the mood does tend to change towards the end. It’s cheerful to the extent that it may not be entirely clear to the viewer that the actions in the seemingly harmless virtual world has its own repercussions in the real one too. That comes evident later on in the series, when people killed by hacked monsters collapse into coma by the dozens. For the viewer to better understand the events, watching the original series is desirable, but far from being required.

There are 13 episodes in this series, which is just about right for this kind of series. The original spanned for 26 episodes and I was about to be bored to death watching it. Now this series isn’t without flaws. Like so many other light-hearted anime, it tends to get tedious at times. The characters getting hyped of things that you couldn’t care less of, or they just brush off things that should definitely should be a bother. Especially the ending was a little too .. well, “amai sugiru” for a lack of a better word. It roughly translates to naive or overly sweet. Now to things that matter less to me: The production quality. The graphics are up to date and colourful. The artwork has been used well to fill the entire viewing area, even though it may not be top notch in sharpness nor detail. Mainly it seems like pastel, or watercolour work, which fits with the mood very well. The music is well made and isn’t nearly as intrusive as in the original series. It’s not quite as good as an OST as Kajiura Yuki’s one for the original, but there are lots of catchy themes that suit the series well. Another positive point worth mentioning is that this series sports an ending theme from See-Saw, a group I have only lately come to appreciate. There are no complaints of direction nor production. Even the voice acting is the usual Japanese quality, so no problems there. The series won’t demand too much of your personal cpu either, so it’s a good way to unwind after a rough day. But I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s really good… Usually good anime have some re-watching value in them too, and I can’t imagine myself watching this again anytime soon. However, I’d say that it’s still a series worth watching, especially if this review spiked any interested in you at all. Please point on the pictures to the right, as they’ll give you a better insight on the series.

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