.hack roots is a great show. Its the story of a new player that has a special power but does not now what it is. His best friend dies in the game and ends up missing in the real world. This show is one for the .hack fans. .Hack Roots is the anime before the game .Hack GU. it is a must watch for people that played a .hack game. If you played the .hack gu games you need to watch this show it will show you alot of every ones past. It is super cool and one of my fav. shows out there. one of the best.

It'd make more sense if you watched it subbed, and their dubbed voices brutally murder me anyway.

But this show was really good when I first watched it in Animax. Interesting.

Haseo joins a game called 'The World' and he is found to be special, as he possesses this 'factor' thingy. He is mutated after exploring the Painful Forest, and attacks without mercy to find out about Tri-edge, an AI.

AI is Artificial Intelligence, something like Aura.

Tri-edge is something that attacks people at random and causes them to have a coma in the real world and become Unreturners. The storyline is wonderfully written, wonderful action at the near end, and all characters had some great use.

I think the game; .hack//G.U. does a better job of explaining the show than the show itself. There was many long pauses which I'm sure were used for drama, but it just seemed to kill time to me. Voice actors not the best choice in my opinion, except for Tabby. She did a great job of the energetic adventurer. Not the best .hack installment out of the 3. Many themes were ambiguous which, I suppose is the nature of .hack, but this was too the point where nothing made much sense.
I feel as though a lot more could have been done with this show.

Ok I watched it subbed cause there was no way i would be up for it on cn(cartoon network) and it was one of my faves.
I'll admit that the first series .Hack//Sign was much better in my opinion. But they did a really good job with the story and plot ofr this one. This time you could actually follow along with the plot until they decided it finish the plot in a set of 3 videogames. It starts out with Haseo getting PKed(playkilled) by two people IYOTEN and Asta who were showing him how the game works. During that time his Epitaph avatar Skeith almost awakened and Ovan interviened in order to stop it. Thats when Haseo looked up to him in admiration and set his goal to be as strong. But Ovan saw that Haseo had no drive so he made an enemy character Tri-edge who takes the form of a ragged Kite from the first 4 part game for the series .hack//Infection, Mutation Outbreak, and Quarentine. Tri-edge was then used to PK Shino(Haseo's Closest friend) and she fell into a coma. After that Haseo became an enraged PKK(Player Killer Killer) and went after other Pker's to find out if they knew anything of Tri-edge. He later enters a player event called The Painful Forest nicknamed the Forest of Death. It had monsters of a very high level and no map so you were prettymuch blind and had to use up most of your healing items to get the furthest part. Once there you were asked a question by a fragment of Harald Hoerwick. Taihaku Makes it there first and gives a desirable answer and is rewarded with a very powerful steam gunner weapon. While Haseo's answer is considered to be distateful and he loses his twin blade weapons but is leveled up to 133 and skips the first job change and goes to the second one becoming a Flick Reaper. But after this he fights Tri-edge and is data drained. As a result he loses all his items and different forms goes down to level 1, and loses all his messages and player adresses.

.hack//roots is a prequel to the .hack//g.u. video games that shows how haseo joins the twlight brigade. The story will just amaze you with a the struggles of the story plot. As a fan of the .hack video games, as I watch the last episode I felt like ok now I'm ready to play .hack//g.u. and continue haseo's .hack story. Not only is the story good the animation is great as well! The battles are so cool looking and every character has their own look to them that makes it really feel like gamers created the characters to play in the world. This series is worth watching if your a gamer.

Starting eight months before .hack//G.U. and finishing during the events of the first .hack//G.U. game; Rebirth, Haseo logs into The World R:2 for the first time and falls victim to the PKers that reside within The World R:2. He is saved by Ovan, which prompts him to join the Twilight Brigade. The Twilight Brigade members are on a mission to find the Key of the Twilight, however, the TAN guild opposes this because they want Ovan's character data possibly because of his device in his arm and will stop at nothing to keep the Twilight Brigade from their goal. But possibly the reason is because Ovan is after it. Their current mission is to find the 6 virus cores before TAN does. Haseo has the green virus core and the purple core, Shino has the red, Sakisaka the Yellow, Ovan the grey, and Gord has the blue one. There is a Lost Ground with 5 towers, where the Brigade used the supposedly-unusable virus cores. When the five are used it transports them to the tower above the 5 small towers to where they can find the last virus core. This mission, unfortunately, was just a trap made by the members of TAN in order to investigate Ovan's strange character data. With Ovan gone, and no sign of the Key of the Twilight, the Twilight Brigade quickly breaks apart. B-set and Gord quit the game entirely, and Sakisaka and Tabby quit the guild, even though Tabby is still hopeful things will pick up. Shino goes into 'mourning' over Ovan, as it has been hinted that their relationship is that of more than friends, with Haseo by her side supporting her. However, even this is quickly shattered, as Shino is soon after killed within the game. What's even more alarming, is that Haseo can't contact her in real life...

.hack//roots stars a young boy named Haseo
he gets pk'ed (Player killed) by another group of players his first time in the game. Before his epitaph Skeith was to go out of control Ovan showed up and pkk'ed the two and helped Haseo to his feet. Ovan then late offered him a place in hsi guild the Twilight Brigade.
Tabby- a grappler which is a new battle type for the world R2 Shino a harvest cleric and sakisaka were the only other members. Haseo soon gets targeted by TAN an organization run by Yata who has the epitaph known as the prophet. Yata was looking for people who have epitaphs sp he could use their power to keep the game safe. After his assistant Ender loses her character after being banned she takes her second character Pai. Pai has the epitaph called tarvos which is known as the avenger. Haseo becomes even more powerful in his persuit to become stronger than ovan. Shino wants to talk to him one day about aura and wanted to tell him the real truth about all that was going on. But triedge a databug interviened and put Shino into a coma. Haseo vowed to get revenge but failed when he finally met triedge in battle. he was data drained and lost both of his job changes and was dropped from level 133 to 1. He later meets Atoli who looks like shino and even though her soft personalit annoys him they get along a little. Atoli tunrs out to be another epitaph user her epitaph is know as the mirage of deceit. Haseo meets Endrance at the collesseum and finds out that endrance is also an epitaph user who uses his epitaph to win his matches. Endrance's epitaph is known as the temptress.
Haseo meets saku and bo on seperate ocasions but never figured out that bo was able to see haseo's epitaph during the fight with Bordeaux. Bo's epitaph is known as the mechinator
Haseo meets Kuhn in an infected area with atoli and Kuhn saves them from a data bug. Kuhn's avatar is called magus the propagation.

.hack//Roots starts off with Haseo, who has been PK'd when he started playing "The World," however, Ovan was able to ressurect him. All other characters, except for Azure Kite, who he later takes on in .hack//GU, start asking Haseo about Ovan. In episode two, Haseo obsessively behaves in front of Ovan's guild. He finds out more about it asking everyone around. After finding Ovan, Haseo states that he will think about joining his guild. .hack//Roots takes place before the .hack//GU games, and I hope .hack//GU will also come to the PS3 Computer Entertainment System.

This show, .hack//ROOTS, is designed to be a prequal to the .hack//G.U. series, and it definately works. While both show and ending leaves a lot of things hanging, it still fits as this is a prequal, and it leads into G.U. nicely.

Character development is a main theme of this show, showing how Haseo, the main character, went from a confused beginner to crazed psycho to something somewhat calmer. Mysterious Ovan, hyper Tabby, serious Sakisaka, wise Phyllo and caring Shino round out the rest of the main cast quite well.

This show is a definate must-see for all .hack fans, new and old. I give this show a 10/10.