Toggle Background Color
Since Sourceelement is taking his sweet time with the next update, he said it was okay for me to start covering .Hack//Legend of the Twilight (Bracelet).
.Hack//Legend of the Twilight (Known as Legend of the Twilight Bracelet in Japan) is a manga spin-off of the .Hack series. Released shortly after the first game, Legend of the Twilight is a romantic comedy set 4 years after the events of the first 4 games. It managed to not suck (despite being a romantic comedy manga based off of a popular video game series) and is quite liked by most of the .Hack fandom. It was my first encounter with the .Hack series, and is one of the few encounters I've had with the series as a whole. Though it does have a bit of a problem with
fanservice
.
I'm going to try and avoid spoiling aspects of the game, and I will withhold updates until Sourceelement gets to the point where they are no longer a spoiler. I will also be covering the character backstory and their real-life identities, so I would appreciate it if people would refrain from posting spoilers about the characters and their respective backgrounds. Thank you.
The first volume actually starts with "Chapter 0," which is a quick summary of the first two chapters. There's nothing important in it, so I'll be skipping over it.
The first chapter starts with a young girl trying to convince her brother to play "The World", a popular online game blah blah blah. The brother remarks that RPG's are too tedious and says that he'd rather do homework
, but the sister says that it isn't like that at all. Reluctantly, the brother puts on his headset and logs in.
So there's our plot synopsis. It's been 4 years since the end of the original .Hack games. Kite, Blackrose, and everybody who helped them out have gone down in internet history as the group known only as: the .hackers (although the only ones people recognize are Kite and Blackrose). What did they do to earn that respect? That's classified information (AKA:spoilers). Anyways, CC corp has given away K&BR's avatars in a competition to attract new players to play "The World," and our protagonists have won them fair and square.
Here we get introduced to our first protagonist, Shugo. Shugo is very different from Kite, which can take some getting used to. But we'll get to that later.
In the Tokyopop version of this page, Shugo says "I look like such a nerd!" in the textbox that currently says "Wo...Wow!"
And Here comes our second protagonist, Rena. I don't know what the hell is up with the whole "Rina" thing. The character's name is Rena, and her username is Blackrose. In the Tokyopop version, Shugo says "Is that you, Sis?", which she responds to by saying that in the game he should call her "Rena."
Rena responds with "I think it's cute" and mentions that they're the same character models as the one's used by
THE .HACKERS!
Since this was released shortly after the first game, they couldn't reveal exactly what the .hackers did to earn such fame. Thus the vague "solved the final mystery of the world" excuse. Only notable difference here is that in the TP release, Shugo says "You mean this dorky-looking outfit...Makes me a hero?"
A couple of girls approach Shugo and ask him about his character design. They mention that they've never seen his character before, and ask him if it's a rare character design. Shugo, seeing his chance to impress the ~*~ladies~*~, casually reveals that they have the character designs of the .hackers.
Shugo and Rena are immediately mobbed by rabid fans of the .hackers. Rena manages to escape with Shugo in the confusion and promptly chews him out for being so loose-lipped, saying that the character designs are super rare and that Shugo shouldn't brag about them. After getting an apology out of Shugo, she takes him to the Chaos gate and shows him how to use it.
Rena heals Shugo after his (snrk) very difficult encounter, before chewing him out again over his unwillingness to read the manual or follow simple rules (he also forgot to equip his weapons first). Shugo responds by saying that RPG's are a waste of time and gets up to leave. Pay close attention to Shugo's behavior here, since it plays into the general theme of his character growth.
No, I don't know why they call it a "Demon Glaymore," it's called a golem in the TP release.
The Golem chases them around for a little bit, with Rena asking why they would put such a strong monster in the beginner's area. Eventually, the Golem decides to attack Rena directly. The next few pages speak for themselves.
At this point, Aura is supposed to kiss Shugo (which Shugo says was his first kiss) and restore his health, but every single manga-hosting site used the same scanlation which was missing that page. Over the past couple of days, I have gained a new-found hatred for Scanlation groups.
Since the first chapter flows directly into the second, I'm just going to tackle both of them in one go.
Shugo's wrist starts shining brightly as Aura begins to disappear. Before leaving, she tells Shugo her name and says that they'll meet again.
Shugo looks at his wrist and notices that something is different.
Thus we are introduced to the titular item of this series: The Twilight Bracelet. It's basically the bracelet from the original games, except...well, you'll see. Shugo stares at it for a moment, when his thoughts are interrupted by Rena shouting through the dust and asking him if he's still alive. He responds by asking her if she's all right, before noticing a familiar face as the dust clears...
The Golem from before re-apears and starts charging at them. Rena suggests they run, but Balmung decides to stand his ground. Well, I'm sure this monster will just plow right through him no problehahahahahaha.
Shugo mentions that he doesn't know how to use his bracelet, which immediately causes the bracelet to start working.
No, I don't know why they called it "EXTENT!! POWER EXPANSION", since that's pretty obviously a data drain.
Shugo turns around to ask Balmung why he knew about the Bracelet, only to realize that he has disappeared. Rena starts looking around wildly, asking where "The Hunk" went. Shugo begins to wonder about how much Balmung knows.
Mireille notices Shugo's bracelet and begins sniffing it, saying it smells of rare treasure. I'm starting to get the impression that all wavemasters are like this. Rena asks herself if there was such an item in "Kite's" character design, while Mirielle begins obsessing over Shugo's character design.
Shugo then looks at his bracelet, mutters about how it belonged to Kite, and mentions that his journey as "Shugo" has just begun. We then cut to Balmung, watching them from a distance.
And that's the first two chapters of .Hack//Legend of the Twilight (Bracelet). I hope you enjoyed reading it, and I'll try to cover the rest as this LP goes on.