AN APOLOGY TO OVAN FANS

I'll be the first to admit I railed on him too hard in this video. We could argue all day about how the things he does are or are not justified, but regardless I can see how people would give him the benefit of the doubt considering his infection. I think a person's overall opinion on Ovan depends heavily on how charitable they're personally willing to be and how likeable they find his general personality.

There is still one game left and it's to be my understanding it's based around Ovan, and I'll be checking out more of the supplemental materials so who knows? Maybe my opinion will change.

I love how most of Endrance's appearances after Vol.1 are:
- Shows up out of nowhere;
- Saves Haseo;
- Roasts his enemy;
- Leaves.

I think another part of what makes the Azure Knights boss just that little bit cooler is that Azure Kite giving you his iconic triple-bladed Dual Knives is a parallel to a scene in the original quadrilogy, where Kite (the person Azure Kite is based on, go figure) is gifted the iconic Dual Blades of Sora (the PC of the at the time child that would grow up to play as Haseo here). It feels like "paying back the favour", kinda.

Amazing how the villains never thought of just getting Haseo banned for toxicity.

It always makes me laugh whenever there's a dramatic, emotional cutscene in the game to imagine that in their reality its actually just a bunch of teenagers sitting in their bedrooms, screaming into a VR headset whilst scrolling through a dropdown menu on the controller to choose the angry face emote. Still absolutely love the series though, one of my all time favourites.

I like the Sakaki twist. His motivation sounds childish. He lashes out at others and throws fits like a child. It's almost as if Sakaki is a...

Haseo and Yata were both players of the original The World but they never met. Both pretty intelligent 10 year olds lmao

It's worth pointing out that Cubia is kind of the Big Bad of the original franchise. For those of us who started there, it showing up was a really neat callback.

For Ovan and Shino, they're more analogous to parents from my perspective. If GU is to grow up, Haseo not only needs to learn how to be his best self, but also to let himself free of Ovan and Shino's plans for him. Haseo thinks he wants Shino, and for most of the game you just accept this, but Haseo is a kid, and Shino is clearly the first woman to give him attention. He doesn't know yet his own feelings until he genuinely experiences equal relationships with Atoli and Alkaid. Ovan is weird in that he remains forever enigmatic, but I feel like they just never found their footing with balancing the twist of the bad guy with wrapping things up in a "satisfying" way. Ovan has some of the post game to flesh him out a little bit. But they hyped him up too big to meet the implies expectation of his character.

I like how for being Morganna's (villain of the first game and maker of the phases/epitaphs) first Data Drain victim, Haseo gets to become a human version of Morgana by absorbing the phases within him.

Dam how does haseo not have a headache jesus christ

Okay, so about several characters

1. Yata

The reason he took getting kicked out so hard is because in the original series IMOQ, he was a very talented 7 or 8 year old playing the game. And helped solve a lot going from his introduction in .Hack Outbreak. He ended up getting the job he was kicked out of soon after the events of the original game, so he took it hard because he basiclly got his dream job as a young kid and then lost it, and which is why he thinks hes better at the game than the other players.

2. Endrance
The reason in game 3 and why he seems to slightly be better than the other players (hence siding with taihaku) and his need to feel wanted comes from the first game as he was Elk. And his bestfriend was Mia who turned out to be an enemy the entire time. He also got close to kite the protagonist of the first game but had to watch him kill his friend. Hence his connection to Macha the Temptress and why he got that Avatar

3. Kuhn
Why he ends up taking things so seriously is because he was comatose the entire first game as a chatacter named seig. He was one of the first people to become comatose, and only appeared at the end of the series to help stop the final villain.

4. Haseo
Is a player from the original series known as Sora from the .hack Sign anime. He was the first player to be data drained by Skeith and once he was his characters phantom appeared several times taunting the cast of SIGN, but his phantom helped defeat skeith. Theres a special scene with Sora at the end of .Hack Quarntine that shows him being freed from skeith once everything is solved. However he lost his memory of the events prior. Hence his connection to skeith and being the terror of death

Ovan
He fell into a coma after he activated the rebirth. What the Rebirth does is reset the world, in the original game the final battle was to prevent the rebirth happening otherwise all the lost ones would never return. In this game it reset the world to pretty much before Aida and removed all of the anamolies it "rebirthed the world"  

Cubia

Originally, it was a being that existed as the opposite of the "braclet," which was the only way Kite could data drain and defeat the 8 phases of Morgana, aka the wave. However Cubia was eating data and consuming it at a rapid rate causing quicker shut downs of technology in the real world simultaneously with the wave, and it consistently attacked kite over and over and over again. Until they finally realized what Aura said and that the braclet had to be destroyed as well, thus killing erasing Cubia.

As for the Shino reunion it feels almost WRONG in a way. Especially if you go for the promise route she has. It’s the equivalent of finally getting what you wanted back then and realizing you don’t even desire it anymore.

Funnily enough I liked it that way. This feeling that running back to her is wrong feels fitting. He’s finally outgrown who he used to be. And that means saying goodbye to the person he thought he loved.

I just really liked GU man this game was great.

IT'S HERE! IT'S HEREIT'S HEREIT'S HEREIT'S HEREIT'S HEREIT'S HEREIT'S HERE IT'S HEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Honestly getting this video out was probably the better Christmas present I’ve gotten during these holidays

41:48 Sakaki: GODDAMN POWER OF FRIENDSHIP BULLSHIT!!!!

Now while I love Yuri's performance for his anger towards Ovan
I dont think Haseo is just mad at Ovan for hurting everyone in the pursuit of his goals but also because everything he's saying about being special can apply to himself too but Ovan is someone he trusted to be smarter than himself and an adult, while Ovan brought people into his plan, Haseo while pushing everyone away at the end of Roots and the beginning of Vol 1 did so because he didnt think anyone understood his pain and had to learn everyone is the same and everyone suffers so him acting like a shit head and lashing out at people isnt suddenly justified because he just wants to save Shino, he even got people that were just trying to help him hurt and all the while whining in his head about how unfair it all is
Its a great piece of showing Haseo's growth over the games in his ability to properly put into words his feelings while also no longer being the rash and loud and dickhead self he used to be

Yata says hes better because hes a veteran of the Second Network Crisis and a memeber of the "Dot Hackers" the players who ended the crisis. Aka the story of the first four games. The person behind Yata is the same kid who plays Wiseman in the IMOQ games. There he is an information broker and was key to solving the riddle to what the MMO was made for and the entity behind it all. So, other than the protagonist of IMOQ, he's the only other person that knows the truth of the game. While hes not wrong in that he knows more than whats going on his grandiose behavior is exacerbated by the fact, that you pointed, he's only 17 during the events of GU.

"Haseo. I saw it all. Everything"

I was hoping you were gonna cut to one of the moments of haseo being a punching bag again.

One thing I like is how the forums update with story progression, when you get found out by the player base as a "cheater" there's some adept rouges in the forum saying how they admired Haseo up until that point as Adept Rouge is a hard job to level up with and get to full power but now that Haseo is a cheater it made them think the job was impossible to get good at legitly, it actually made me wonder how Haseo would think in that moment, like Vol 1 wouldn't care but now that he is a good person I wonder if he thought he would feel bad he had a positive effect on someone even when he was less than savory as a person only to make that person feel bad now that they looked up to him
Another fun thing is during the post game you get a mail from team Sweepstakers saying how they'll beat you and prove they're the strongest making me wonder if they think Haseo only became champion of the arena as a cheater and want to take you down but I love how they say come and fight them when you're actually prepared