So another .hack project is in the works, and that means a new anime series. I've only seen a couple episodes so far, and while I'm not loving it like I did //SIGN, it's definitely better than that Legend of the Twilight thing, and overall it doesn't look too bad. I'm not terribly optimistic that there'll be too much worthwhile plot, since the series takes place during a section of time missing from the first game.

The strange thing is that Cartoon Network got themselves the rights to the show here, and premiering the thing at 5 in the fucking morning on Friday. Why even bother aquiring a new show if you're going to run it at insane o'clock?

CN doesn't know shit about scheduling.

Yeah. Retarded scheduling aside, I've really been digging ROOTS though. There's a lot more depth to the plotline than I thought they'd be able to pull off. It definitely builds nicely on G.U., if anyone's actually playing it.

Shinsen finished roots last month :o

I've been playing GU; got volume 1 the day it released.

Roots was a pretty solid anime, IMO.

I'm disappointed to hear the dub for Roots doesn't use the VAs used in the first volume of the game series. Yuri Lowenthal's performance as Haseo in the first volume was to be honest, amazingly well done.

Yeah, apparently Bandai US uses different companies for anime dubs and game dubs, and since they don't give a damn about the .hack franchise over here, they either didn't notice or didn't care that the two had the same characters. The game dub is definitely the better of the two, though I have to say I haven't noticed all that much, since the shared characters are so different (Haseo isn't angry all the time). I didn't know shinsen was subbing roots, though. I may start watching that instead of staying up or taping the dub.

I guess, now that I think about it, the different dubs for games and shows thing happens fairly often here. It's just that normally the games aren't part of the series canon, and are just random cash-ins on the series. In fact, they probably thought that G.U. was the same.

Speaking of which, we're apparently finally getting G.U. Volume 2 this summer. Which probably means we won't see vol 3 until 2008.

The Japanese are crazy about consistency when it comes to character voicing. Hell, there's characters that were originally in animes during the 70's that still have the same voice actors in games and other such things to this very day. When a person takes over a character's voice after the previous actor died(usually the ONLY time people leave roles), it's seen as something very serious and respectfully taken care of.

In the america's, despite some great voice actors, it's not seen as something nearly as in need of consistency to producers, it seems.