Manga Review: .hack//G.U.+, Vol. 1

.hack//G.U.+ vol. 1

Written by Tatsuya Hamazaki, Art by Yuzuka Morita
Tokyopop, 212 pages
Rating: Teen (13 +)

The first installment of the manga adaption of the latest .hack game series finally hits the US. Haseo, a player of the MMORPG known as The World, finds himself sucked into the mysteries and dangers that have haunted the game since its inception. His quest to locate the mysterious Tri-Edge brings into contact with System Administrators and unlocks his own hidden powers.

The art is stylish and eye catching. The characters and their weapons are quite snazzy, especially their costumes. Unfortunately, the layouts are confusing as hell. There are several points during the action sequences (and even in non-action sequences) where I couldn’t really tell what was going on. On top of that, the irregular layouts also result in some of the voice bubbles being placed in odd orders. I found myself reading from left to right than right to left in a diagonal pattern on more than one occasion. Definitely a bit awkward at times.

The writing is not too bad. Haseo is your typical moody protagonist and not exactly likeable. He’s prone to snapping at people and is really fond of playing the angst-ridden loner, which strikes me as an odd thing to do when you’re playing an MMORPG, but… meh, whatever. For me the real hook are the mysteries of The World, of which Tri-Edge seems to be the focus for this series. Tri-Edge is a mysterious character whose in game actions effect the real world. He’s also the reason Haseo’s all angsty. A while ago, Tri-Edge crossed paths with a friend of Haseo’s, Shino, and ever since then Shino’s been comatose. Everything surrounding Tri-Edge is shrouded in mystery, though. As the mystery deepens it’s revealed that some players survive their encounters with Tri-Edge and begin to manifest similar powers to his–namely, the ability to affect the real world from within in the game.

If you don’t like Haseo, there are couple of supporting characters to choose from, though the only member of that crew to really jump at me was Atoli. Atoli’s an odd lady; she resembles Shino and seems to spend most of her time in The World attempting to convince other players to do away with Player Killing. It’s just odd to think about someone signing up to an MMORPG and then deciding to campaign against a popular feature like that. Her reasoning is so pure and naive that I found it hard not to like her, though: she doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Awww…

I generally found .Hack//G.U.+ to be an okay read, despite everything not clicking for me. It did re-spark an on-again, off-again interest I’ve had with the .hack franchise for years. The premise and concept has always intrigued me, but I found some of the anime series a bit bland and never got around to picking up the games or the manga before now. That being said, I can’t really see myself picking up the rest of this series. But am I tempted to try out the games and some of the anime series.

Volume one of .hack//G.U.+ is available now.