.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.
Kanon is a Japanese visual novel developed by Key, a brand of Visual Arts. It was released on June 4, 1999 for Windows as an adult game. Key later released versions of Kanon without the erotic content, and the game was ported to the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Nintendo Switch. The story follows the life of Yuichi Aizawa, a high school student who returns to a city he last visited seven years prior, and he has little recollection of the events from back then. He meets several girls and slowly regains his lost memories. The gameplay in Kanon follows a branching plot line which offers pre-determined scenarios with courses of interaction, and focuses on the appeal of the five female main characters by the player character. The game once ranked as the second best-selling PC game sold in Japan, and charted in the national top 50 several more times afterwards. Kanon has sold over 300,000 units across several platforms.
.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.
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.
Yuri (Kasahara) Shinada is a Japanese female opera singer.
Saeko Chiba is a Japanese voice actress and singer. She grew up in Tokyo and married on her birthday in 2007. She is contracted to the Space Craft Produce.
Yūka Nanri is a Japanese actress, voice actress and J-pop singer from Sasebo, Nagasaki. She is represented by Space Craft Entertainment.
Eat-Man is a Japanese manga series created by Akihito Yoshitomi in 1996 which was serialized by MediaWorks monthly in 19 volumes until 2003 in Dengeki Comic Gao! magazine. In 1997, Studio Deen adapted the manga into a 12-episode anime television series which was broadcast in Japan from January 9 to March 27, 1997 on TV Tokyo. A sequel, Eat-Man '98, was also animated by Studio Deen and ran from October 8 to December 23, 1998. Both anime series are licensed in North America by Discotek Media and the manga series was licensed by Viz Communications before it was dropped. A second manga called Eat-Man The Main Dish started serialization in Monthly Shonen Sirius in May 2014.
Kite, also known as "Kite of the Azure Flame", is a fictional character from CyberConnect2's video game series .hack. Introduced in .hack//Infection (2002), Kite is player character avatar in a fictional massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) known as "The World". Kite's whose school-friend Yasuhiko, who uses the alias Orca, introduces Kite to The World. When Orca is killed in combat by an unknown enemy, Yasuhiko falls into a coma. Kite forms a team in The World to investigate Orca's case alongside those of other players to whom the same fate befalls after similar encounters. Kite also appears in finale of the series' anime sequel .hack//Sign and in a manga adaptation of the games. Although the teenager behind Kite leaves The World in following games, his avatar was used to create characters who appear in sequels.
.hack//G.U. is a series of single-player action role-playing games for the PlayStation 2, developed by CyberConnect2 and published by Namco Bandai Games 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.
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". Its original Japanese television run aired from April 5, 2006 through September 27, 2006.
Sherry Lynn is an American voice actress who has played roles in anime, animated television series and video games. She portrayed Sasami Jurai in the Tenchi Muyo! franchise.
Kyō no Go no Ni is a Japanese seinen manga series created by Koharu Sakuraba, the author of Minami-ke. It was originally serialized in Kodansha's Bessatsu Young Magazine from 2002 to 2003, and the twenty-two chapters were later collected together in a single tankōbon volume along with two extra chapters and published on November 11, 2003 by Kodansha. The main premise of Kyō no Go no Ni is the school life of the fifth year class 5-2, focusing on an elementary-school boy named Ryōta Satō.
Ovan, real name Masato Indou, is a fictional character introduced in the 2006 video game .hack//G.U. Vol. 1: Rebirth by CyberConnect2. He is also one of the main characters in the prequel anime .hack//Roots by Bee Train. Ovan first appears in Rebirth as a player character from the online game "The World" saving the protagonist Haseo from player killers. Ovan is introduced as the creator of a guild known as the Twilight Brigade who recruited Haseo and other players until he went missing for unknown reason. He later helps Haseo in his revenge quest against the player killer Tri-Edge who sent their friend Shino into a coma. Across the video games, Ovan looks over Haseo's quest to defeat Tri-Edge, hoping his former subordinate will develop an unknown power. He has also appeared in the games' printed media, including the manga, light novels, among other titles related with .hack.
.hack is a Japanese multimedia franchise that encompasses two projects: Project .hack and .hack Conglomerate. They were primarily created and developed by CyberConnect2, and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. The series features an alternative history setting in the rise of the new millennium regarding the technological rise of a new version of the internet following a major global computer network disaster in the year 2005, and the mysterious events regarding the wildly popular fictional massively multiplayer online role-playing game The World. The series mainly comprises anime and video game titles which have been subsequently adapted into manga, novels, and other related media.
My-Otome 0: S.ifr is a 2008 anime OVA produced by Sunrise and directed by Hisayuki Hirokazu, the former My-Otome character designer. It was developed as a prequel to the other My-Otome anime of the time. The peculiar name "0~S.ifr~" relates to the number zero.
