.hack//SIGN Episode 1 is honestly a bit hard to get into. It opens with a dreamy, mysterious game world, but for most of the episode, I am not very clear what the anime is trying to say or where the story is heading. Later, I start to understand that the story is connected to being trapped inside a game world, which is interesting, but the pacing still feels slow. One character also dies so suddenly that I thought, “Wait, was this character not important?” Overall, the atmosphere has potential, but this first episode did not really hook me yet.