Just finished it...

Okay, I just finished .hack. Loved it! Awesome.

But that "Unison" bonus episode......

Good golly lord, that sucked like no other suck. It was so obviously wrong on so many levels that I wish I went and researched it first so I wouldn't have wasted my time. It's like one of those "oh dear, the ending was too obscure, we have to tack on a 'everything's okay and wrapped up' bit of closure to the whole thing." What a waste.

Tsukasa & Subaru meeting at the end; that was the closure, damn it! Leave it there! It was the "true moment" that everything led up to. Anything else is hollow and superficial after that.

I should have guessed, I suppose. Now I'm dissappointed. I could have left it on such a wonderful note, but then I watched that shallow followup. I'll have to rewatch the series again to try and end it correctly again.

I don't know if Mashimo actually directed that tack-on; and I'm really hoping he didn't. Everything about it was so totally out of place and wrong that I really suspect he didn't. But there's always the possibility. I guess the bills need to get paid somehow. Anyway, there's a whole set of other "bonus" episodes and a follow-on series that he's only "executive" director or some such thing (it's his studio after all), and now I have zero desire to even sample them.

Damn, I need to see an new Madlax episode, and soon!