.hack//Quantum



One of the newest parts of the .hack franchise, a three episode OVA by Kinema Citrus and Bandai.

It's 2022, and The World is still as popular as ever. Three friends - Aida Asumi, Ikuta Iori, and Etou Eri - are, naturally, avid players of it. During a regular dungeon crawl, they accidentally ruin a guild's attempt to kill an infamous monster, The One Sin, and promptly get a bounty placed on their heads. During the ensuing chase, Aida happens upon a strange cat PC by the username of Hermit, who's looking for something...

It comes to a head when the chase lands them somewhere strange - an anomalous area called the Digital Prison, where Eri and a few others are PK'd and sent into a coma. Asumi and Iori are left to puzzle together why CC Corp is transferring comatose patients to one hospital, what a list containing the personal ID of the afflicted means, and who's behind the attacks...

.hack//Quantum contains examples of:

 * Butt Monkey - Remember IYOTEN!? He's injured a LOT during the chase and is the first to be PK'd and turned comatose by an entity in NetSlum.
 * Call Back: Reiko Saeki known as the player character Pi appears in a significant role.
 * Chekhov's Gun -
 * Chibi - Hermit.
 * City of Canals - Mac Anu... again.
 * Distaff Counterpart - Sakuya's avatar is basically a female version of Kite.
 * Elegant Gothic Lolita - Shamrock, . She says it's to throw off suspicion and lampshades her appearance, noting it's something a fanboy would use.
 * Fan Service - A scene at an onsen, and
 * Forbidden Zone - The Digital Prison.
 * GIRL - Invoked. Hermit blushingly wonders about who Sakuya is in real life and hopes it isn't a dude.
 * Human Resources - According to Geek, the caged humans in the giant tree are being used as components of a giant quantum computer, and each one contains 14 billion entangled qubits, which is about the number of neurons in a human cerebellum.
 * Leeroy Jenkins - Sakuyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Well, not really her fault, but would anyone really care?
 * They even put a bounty for her head. 300,000GP to be exact. It turns out it was IYOTEN's Guild [a bunch of P King griefers and trolls] did it for kicks.
 * Like Brother and Sister - Invoked:
 * Man Behind the Man - Invoked: near the end, Reiko suggests that some third party, connected to, may have been the real culprits behind the whole story.
 * Meaningful Name / Nightmare Fuel - The Digital Prison turns out to be where criminals with life sentences are kept. The Complete Guide implies it's some foreign country (i.e. not Japan or America).
 * Super Powered Evil Side -
 * Tomato Surprise -
 * Subverted:
 * Double Subverted: According to the novelization,
 * Triple Subverted:
 * Virtual Ghost - The new bout of coma victims, along with the old Dot Hackers' data.
 * You All Look Familiar - Sakuya, Mary, and Tobias use (modified) avatars of Kite, BlackRose, and Balmung, respectively.
 * Hermit's avatar is a chibi version of Mia/Macha.
 * Shamrock's avatar is a variation of Aina's.
 * If you watch carefully, you'll see expies of Shino/Atoli, A-20/Natsume, Silabus, Kuhn, Grein, and even a female version of Zelkova. And sometimes even multiple expies of the same character in the same screen, but then again, it is an MMORPG...
 * Womb Level
 * World Tree: A corrupted version, the Digital Prison.
 * Zettai Ryouiki: Sakuya.
 * Womb Level
 * World Tree: A corrupted version, the Digital Prison.
 * Zettai Ryouiki: Sakuya.