Digimon, short for "Digital Monsters", is a Japanese media franchise, which encompasses virtual pet toys, anime, manga, video games, films, and a trading card game. The franchise focuses on the eponymous creatures that inhabit a "Digital World", which is a parallel universe that originated from Earth's various communication networks.
.hack//Sign is a Japanese anime television series directed by Kōichi Mashimo, and produced by studio Bee Train and Bandai Visual, that makes up one of the four original storylines for the .hack franchise. Twenty-six original episodes aired in 2002 on television and three additional bonus ones were released on DVD as original video animation. The series features each characters designed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, and written by Kazunori Itō. The score was composed by Yuki Kajiura, marking her second collaboration with Mashimo.
.hack is a series of single-player action role-playing video games developed for the PlayStation 2 console by CyberConnect2 and published by Bandai. The four games, .hack//Infection, .hack//Mutation, .hack//Outbreak, and .hack//Quarantine, all feature a "game within a game", a fictional massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called The World which does not require the player to connect to the Internet. Players may transfer their characters and data between games in the series. Each game comes with an extra DVD containing an episode of .hack//Liminality, the accompanying original video animation (OVA) series which details fictional events that occur concurrently with the games.
Masakazu Katsura is a Japanese manga artist, known for several works of manga, including Wing-Man, Shadow Lady, DNA², Video Girl Ai, I"s, and Zetman. He has also worked as character designer for Iria: Zeiram the Animation, Tiger & Bunny and Garo -Guren no Tsuki-, as well as the video game Astral Chain.
The Prince of Tennis is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Takeshi Konomi. The manga was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump from July 1999 to March 2008, with its chapters collected in 42 tankōbon volumes. Viz Media licensed the manga for English release in North America.
.hack//Legend of the Twilight is a science fiction manga series written by Tatsuya Hamazaki and drawn by Rei Izumi. The twenty-two chapters of .hack//Legend of the Twilight appeared as a serial in the Japanese magazine Comptiq and published in three tankōbon by Kadokawa Shoten from July 2002 to April 2004. Set in a fictional MMORPG, The World, the series focuses on twins Rena and Shugo, who receive chibi avatars in the design of the legendary .hackers known as Kite and BlackRose. After Shugo is given the Twilight Bracelet by a mysterious girl, the two embark on a quest to find Aura and unravel the mystery of the Twilight Bracelet.
Mobile Police Patlabor, also known as Patlabor, is a Japanese science fiction media franchise created by Headgear, a group consisting of manga artist Masami Yūki, director Mamoru Oshii, screenwriter Kazunori Itō, mecha designer Yutaka Izubuchi, and character designer Akemi Takada.
Bee Train Production, commonly referred to simply as Bee Train, is a Japanese animation studio founded by Kōichi Mashimo in 1997. Since their involvement with Noir, .hack//Sign, and Madlax they have a strong following in the yuri fandom for being involved in series portraying strong female leads with speculatively ambiguous relationships.
.hack//Liminality is an OVA series directly related to the .hack video game series for the PlayStation 2, with the perspective of Liminality focused on the real world as opposed to the games' MMORPG The World. Liminality was separated into four volumes; each volume was released with its corresponding game. The initial episode is 45 minutes long, while subsequent episodes are 30 minutes long. The video series was directed by Koichi Mashimo, written by Kazunori Itō with music by Yuki Kajiura. Primary Animation production was handled by Mashimo's studio Bee Train which collaborated for the four games as well as handled major production on .hack//Sign.
Super Robot Wars, known in Japan as Super Robot Taisen, is a series of Japanese tactical role-playing video games produced by Bandai Namco Entertainment, formerly Banpresto. Starting out as a spinoff of the Compati Hero series, the main feature of the franchise is having a story that crosses over several popular mecha anime, manga and video games, allowing characters and mecha from different titles to team up or battle one another. The first game in the franchise was released for the Game Boy on April 20, 1991. Later spawning numerous games that were released on various consoles and handhelds. Due to the nature of crossover games and licensing involved, only a few games have been released outside Japan, and in English; Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation and its sequel were the first of these in 2006. The franchise celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2016, and its 30th anniversary in 2021, and Super Robot Wars 30 was also released overseas.
.hack//G.U. is a series of single-player action role-playing games for the PlayStation 2, developed by CyberConnect2 and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment between 2006 and 2007. The series contains three games: .hack//G.U. Vol. 1//Rebirth, .hack//G.U. Vol. 2//Reminisce and .hack//G.U. Vol. 3//Redemption. As in the previous .hack games, .hack//G.U. simulates a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called The World—the player controls a character who plays the fictional online game. They were directed by Hiroshi Matsuyama who aimed to address criticisms of the previous series. Its narrative, by Tatsuya Hamazaki, was written concurrently with .hack//Roots, an anime set before the events of the games Produced by Bee Train, which depicts Haseo's first days in The World. However, due to narrative and character discontinuity resultant from Roots being written by a completely different production team than the games, manga and novels released as part of G.U., Cyberconnect2 now considers the prequel anime to be one of the non-canon entries within the .Hack Franchise.
.hack comprises "Project .hack" and ".hack Conglomerate". It is a Japanese multimedia franchise primarily developed by CyberConnect2 and published by Bandai. The franchise is set on an Earth with an alternate history. In this timeline, a new version of the Internet arises following a major global computer network disaster in 2005. Central to the premise is a mystery about the wildly popular in-universe video game, The World. As most of the story takes place within The World, characters typically play and interact as their avatars.
Haseo, real name Ryou Misaki, is a fictional character in the .hack franchise first introduced as the main character in the video game trilogy .hack//G.U. in 2006 by CyberConnect2. He is also the lead character in the anime television series .hack//Roots by Bee Train. A player character from the fictional massively multiplayer online role-playing game The World, he is feared in the .hack//G.U. narrative as the player killer of all player killers. This earned Haseo the nickname "The Terror of Death". Searching for the killer Tri-Edge, who sent his friend Shino into a coma in real life, Haseo comes into contact with the guild G.U.. They seek to use his PC to destroy AIDA, a computer anomaly responsible for leaving players in a coma. Haseo's appearances in .hack//Roots depict his early days in The World as a member of the Twilight Brigade guild led by Ovan, where he first meets Shino. He has also appeared in other printed adaptations based on the .hack//G.U. games.
.hack//Roots is a 26-episode anime series, animated by studio Bee Train, that sets as a prologue for the .hack//G.U. video games. It is the first .hack TV series broadcast in HDTV (1080i). It is set seven years after the events of the first two anime series and games. .hack//Roots revolves around an MMORPG game called The World R:2, also known as The World Revision:2 and serves a sequel to the original version of "The World".
Lucky Star is a Japanese four-panel comic strip manga series by Kagami Yoshimizu. It has been serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Comptiq magazine since December 2003. Cameo strips were published in other magazines such as Shōnen Ace and others. Lucky Star focuses on the daily lives of four girls, there is little in terms of an ongoing plot.
.hack//Link is a single-player action role-playing game developed by CyberConnect2 for the PlayStation Portable. The game was released exclusively in Japan on March 4, 2010.
.hack//Quantum is an animated three episode OVA series for the .hack franchise, produced by Kinema Citrus and presented by Bandai Visual. It was initially scheduled to be released in November 2010, but it was later changed. The first episode was released on January 28, 2011 with the following two episodes to be released in one month intervals. Excluding the all-CGI animation movie .hack//G.U. Trilogy, it is the first animated OVA project not to be produced by Bee Train. It is not related to a planned CGI movie tie-in to the newest game in the .hack series, .hack//Link. Masaki Tachibana of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 directed the OVA project and .hack// writer Tatsuya Hamazaki scripted. Kinema Citrus animated the series and Kow Otani composed the music. Yuuka Nanri performed the theme song for the series. At Anime Weekend Atlanta 2011, Funimation announced that it had licensed the series and it was released on DVD and Blu-ray on February 14, 2012, making it the first in the franchise not to be licensed by Bandai Entertainment. The UK release was published by MVM Entertainment on July 9, 2012.
.hack//G.U. Trilogy is a 2008 Japanese CGI anime original video animation (OVA) directed by Hiroshi Matsuyama based on CyberConnect2's games .hack//G.U.. It was released on January 25, 2008 on DVD and Blu-ray format. The OVA features the voice talents of Takahiro Sakurai, Ayako Kawasumi, Hiroki Touchi and Kaori Nazuka. Its story focuses on an online gamer known as Haseo who seeks to find the player killer Tri-Edge who sent his friend Shino on a coma after her character was killed in the game.
Hiroshi Matsuyama, born in November 23, 1970 in Fukuoka, is a Japanese game designer. He is the CEO of the company CyberConnect2. He developed multiple games including the .hack franchise as well as adaptations of the anime series including Naruto and Dragon Ball. Besides developing games, Matsuyama has participated in directing two .hack films as well as voicing a character from the series.
.hack//G.U.+ is a shōnen manga written by Tetsuya Hamazaki and illustrated by Yuzuka Morita. Based on CyberConnect2's role-playing game trilogy .hack//G.U. for the PlayStation 2, the series follows an online gamer called Haseo who is on a quest of revenge to defeat the player killer Tri-Edge who sent his friend Shino into a coma in real life. The series was published in Kadokawa Shoten's magazine .hack//G.U. The World between 2006 and 2009 and collected in a total of five tankobon volumes. TokyoPop licensed the series to be published in North America starting in February 2008.
