AnimeVision

11 - Party
Tsukasa, Mimiru & Bear go on a standard The World quest. Find magical statues, answer riddles, win valuable rare prizes, etc - the sort of thing normal players would do in an MMORPG. And just the sort of thing that normally doesn't happen in .hack. Is Tsukasa coming out of his shell a bit, or is he really just the same selfish brat we've come to know?

12 - Entanglement
Bear's been doing some research & thinks he's tracked down the real-world Tsukasa - a young girl, currently in hospital in a vegetative state and reliant on a life-support system. He's also quite disturbed by what he's discovered of the girl's home circumstances. Meanwhile, the girl's father is seen pleading with the hospital to turn off her life-support. When they refuse, he takes matters into his own hands...

13 - Twilight Eye
Disagreements between Bear & BT lead to them deciding to search separately for the Key of the Twilight. BT teams up with Krim (with Sora tailing them not-so-discreetly), while Bear works with Mimiru and Tsukasa. Through different routes, both groups discover a way to access a previously unknown area of The World, which they hope will hold the information they need...

14 - Castle
The hidden area turns out to be a layrinthine castle. Both groups race against each other to find the Key of the Twilight, but all they find is an apparition of a man, apparently lost in his own memories & not much use to them. Bear & co are forced to leave when the castle begins to collapse - but not before Tsukasa seems to remember something important. Unfortunately, before he can pass on what he's remembered, he's attacked by his Guardian & appears to be killed...

16 - Depth
Mimiru & Bear are worried about what's happened to Tsukasa, but before too long he makes contact with Subaru. Seems that in game terms he has been killed & 'restored', leaving him wondering if he's really still himself. Subaru realises that Tsukasa risks losing his self-awareness if he doesn't get out of The World soon, so contacts Bear & co to ask them to step up their efforts to find a solution to the problem.

Still a lot of standing around and talking, but then if you didn't like that aspect of .hack you should have given up by now. That said, there's also a reasonable amount of action, with some of the focus switching from simply talking about what to do, to actually doing something. While not a lot is resolved here, there does seem to be some movement towards finding out what's happened to Tsukasa, and with Bear making progress in the real world we get glimpses at some of the real-world situations which have made Tsukasa the way he is. This makes his in-game attitude easier to cope with - we even get to see another side of him in his dealings with Subaru, who he appears to have some sort of connection with (on several occasions over these episodes, she seems to be instantly aware when something bad happens to Tsukasa).

I liked the way the real-world scenes were handled - through a static haze & with dialogue done in a sort of old-world silent-movie style. Different. Also strange in that the real world in shown in a unreal style, while The World seems more lifelike...

Overall, then, we're making progress. Events still aren't quite unfolding at a pace I'd like, but it's not so slow as to put you off. Looking forward to the next instalment.