Seriously, I never, NEVER thought I’d say this about .Hack//Roots, but OMG that was a great episode!
Only now, two episodes before everything ends we finally get to see the fruits of all these episodes in which Haseo just rampaged around the world, without basically anything happening. Everything has just been building up! Only now, when the end is near, the creators suddenly turned five gears higher, and they finally show us some action.
First of all, Ovan comes back. He tells Haseo that Tri-Edge is about to return. If I recall correctly, he was away for so long because of his fight with Ovan. I think he had to recover, according to one of the commenters. When he hears this, Haseo’s face turns into a big evil grin. Afterwards, when he’s in the church, his face actually turns normal again! (Seriously, I could barely recognize him at that time). Then, Tri-Edge appears and he gets data-drained! Talk about surprise!
What’s more, something tells me that Ovan has been wanting this to happen all along. After all, he told him that they’d together fight Tri-Edge, but Ovan just was nowhere to be found. I never thought that he would be the bad guy of this series.
Especially the reaction of those around Haseo was amazing. Not only Yata, Pai and Kuhn, but especially Saburou and Touta’s reaction was great to see. I wonder how Tabby will react.
Of course, I highly doubt that Haseo will disappear forever, as there’s still a .Hack//GU game which follows afterwards, but if the creators manage to keep the same level up for the final two episodes, things could promise to be very interesting. And after so many episodes of building up, it would almost be blasphemy if this series doesn’t end with a bang.
I spoiled myself reading parody entries before watching so it wasn’t exactly surprise to me… But I’m pretty much worn out to follow the plot closely anymore, just waiting that this finally ends. When I think about it now I can’t name anything awesome, but they did at least something right keeping things fun to watch.