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- 3rd Season -
While the series was suffering in the west and many people thought .hack was finished for good regardless. Yet just a month after Redemptions North American release, a page for a new manga popped up on CyberConnect2's website entitled .hack//Link: Twilight Knights. The franchise wasn't finished. Not by a long shot. At least, in Japan anyway. Over a year after that, a single new game in the series would be announced simply called .hack//Link.
Five days ago, CyberConnect2 posted a mysterious countdown on their website, which isn't set to end until Friday... but its eventual reveal has almost certainly been spoiled by the early release of this week's issue of Famitsu: Bandai Namco and CyberConnect2 are preparing .hack//Link for PSP, a series all-star action RPG in the vein of Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology. Its release date is TBA.
Source: http://www.1up.com/news/hacklink-announced-psp
True to their word from an earlier interview, this would not be an episodic release but a single volume. The game would be released on the PSP which had been all but dead in the west for years, but was growing in popularity in Japan. This fact alone didn't bode well for the game making its way overseas, however I and others held out hope. After all, at least in North America, we'd gotten all 7 main games, all three tv series, numerous OVAs, and Tokyopop was still licensing and releasing .hack manga & novels.
The September issue of Kadokawa Shoten's Newtype magazine is announcing on Tuesday that a .hack//Quantum anime adaptation of Bandai Namco Games' .hack games has been green-lit.
Source: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-08-06/new-.hack/quantum-game-anime-green-lit
It was strange not to see a new anime series prior to the games launch. This three episode OVA series began release nine months after the .hack//Link game. Now things are starting to look bad for the series in Japan. This "third season" amounted to a single game and small OVA series. Where is new side material? The non-canon Link manga never resumed, the Quantum+ manga isn't canon. Its arguable the Epitaph of Twlight novel is part of the 3rd Season and seems to be canon, but even then this series seemed considerably smaller than past ones.
What is this?! What happened to the campaign?
While we campaigned hard to get .hack//Link properly localized in English, unfortunately Namco Bandai has opted to not license the game. That may sounds like bad news, but keep reading. The great thing about the Internet and a few hardcore fans is that things mega-corporations don't want to do - especially within the gaming and anime industries - can get done if the stars align right! Since February of 2011, a small but dedicated group of .hack fans have been slowly translating .hack//Link for the PlayStation Portable into English.
Source: http://linkus.dothackers.net/
Here I sit over a year and a half since the games japanese release and it still hasn't been brought out in the west. Its clear to even me now that it won't be. Meanwhile, more capable fans have been working on their own localization. While it is no substitute for an official localization I will be more than happy to try it for myself and I thank those involved for their effort!
CyberConnect2's teaser site is now open and it's for a 3D GC film titled .hack//The Movie. Kite from the PlayStation 2 titles will be in it, but as a character from the game. Sora Yuki, the main character in .hack//The Movie, controls Kite.
Source: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/08/23/cyberconnect2-was-teasing-hackthe-next-installment-is-a-cg-movie/
A completely original, feature length 3D CG film huh? That could explain why this latest .hack era seemed small. A lot of focus and resources would surely need to be poured into this. As Bandai Entertainment has yet license Quantum (if they have, they haven't announced it yet) it leave me to wonder if this movie will be brought to the west at all. Only time will tell.
All I know is that wiith this 3rd Season and Tokyopop folding earlier in the year, the checklist of unlocalized .hack content continues to grow. After the initial "perfect storm" things have gone sharply downhill us non-japanese .hack fans. You'd think they would have more faith in a series which has managed to stick around for nearly 10 years now. All I know is that I've put over 100 hours into a game in a language I don't know. Its made be both happy and sad and I wonder why it had to come to this?
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
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