Characters of the .hack franchise

Creation and design

Main characters

The World

• Aura is an advanced AI that takes the form of a young girl whose white hair, skin, and garments give her a ghostly appearance. She was created by Harald Hoerwick to be a symbol of the daughter he could have had with his deceased lover. She is the perfect AI and the spirit of The World. Since her awakening by Tsukasa, she has been fleeing the clutches of Skeith, as witnessed by Orca, Kite, and several other fictional players. She intends to take in and collect player information by data-draining the current AI control program, Morganna. In response, Morganna intentionally keeps Aura in her sleep-like state. After Morganna's plot to keep Aura asleep by using Tsukasa in .hack//Sign fails, Aura awakens and becomes hunted by Morganna's phases to prevent her from developing Data Drain. Aura manages to cultivate this power into an installation book, which is acquired by Kite. Aura becomes data-drained afterward and is scattered throughout The World. She communicates with Kite and other in-game players through corrupted emails, which leads to the defeat of most of the phases. During the final battle, Aura is scattered again and merges with Morganna to complete the Ultimate AI. She becomes an omnipresent yet mostly silent force within The World for some time. She later sets out to perfect herself by giving two in-game players, Shugo and Rena, chibi versions of their avatars, Kite and Blackrose, in a contest and giving birth to another AI, Zefie. This helps Shugo reach his goal of becoming a hero. Aura's eventual disappearance causes the decline of The World. Consequently, the CC Corp develops Project GU to recreate her.
• Albireo is the main character of the first volume of the novel .hack//AI buster and a central character in the second volume. In the fictional game, Albireo is a powerful Long Arm character who mostly keeps to himself as a solo player. Outside of the game, Albireo is Kazushi Watarai, a system administrator and debugger for CC Corporation. His job is to work out any glitches in the game and delete any system anomalies. He hunts vagrant AI Lycoris as part of his job, though he later meets and befriends her, unaware of her true nature. With the help of newbie player Hokuto, he helps her regain various pieces of data; when completed, Lycoris realizes that she cannot continue to exist and forces Albireo to delete her. Albireo reappears in .hack//AI buster 2, chasing after Tsukasa, though he soon runs into [|Macha] and is rendered comatose for several months. He is forced to resign from CC Corporation as he is blamed for causing the Twilight Incident. He then meets Hokuto's player, Haruka Mizuhara, and they begin a live-in relationship.
• Balmung, also referred to as Lord Balmung and "Balmung of the Azure Sky", is a legendary player in The World. He earned fame with his Blademaster character by defeating the game event One Sin, which was thought unbeatable, with his partner Orca, causing them to be known as "The Descendants of Fianna". Balmung received his title and white wings, which allow his avatar to float and jump higher than other characters. Balmung truly loves The World and plays it very seriously. He is formal and assertive in his views and sometimes appears arrogant. He follows a strict moral code of doing good in The World, investigates disturbances, and refuses to associate with.hackers. In .hack//Legend of the Twilight, he is much more carefree with new players, though completely businesslike with his associates. ; Doug Erholtz
• Bear is a large, burly Blademaster. He wears relatively little clothing, and most of his body and face are covered in blue wave tattoos resembling Celtic woad. Having played computer games for over thirty years, he uses The World to relax while helping new players and to interact with his estranged son. He enjoys interacting with Mimiru and BT, having met BT in person. Outside of the game, he is a famous novelist named Ryo Sakuma and enjoys reading and going to the theater. He later becomes the guardian of An Shouji, the player behind Tsukasa, and supports her financially as she attends boarding school.
• BlackRose is a female heavy blade with a tough-as-nails attitude who can be a bit full of herself at times. Clashing with Kite, she attempts to conceal that she's as new to the game as he is. They gradually warm up to each other, and Kite balances her shortcomings. She is searching for a cure for her brother, who was put in a coma by a data bug. Outside the game, she is a tennis player and high-school student named Akira Hayami.
• BT is a Wavemaster featured in .hack//Sign. Her avatar has blonde hair and dresses in light green robes. BT focuses her attention on finding the "Key of the Twilight" and seems unconcerned with Tsukasa's predicament. She often meets with Bear and Crim both online and in person. The name BT comes from her favorite food, a BLT sandwich, but without the lettuce, which she hates. Outside the game, she is a former model named Machiko who works at a dispatch company in the Tohoku region.
• Crim is a long arm featured in .hack//Sign. His avatar is a male with spiky blue hair, a red jacket, flared red and yellow pants, and a wave symbol on his chest. Crim plays as a very happy-go-lucky character, easygoing and sociable. He enjoys testing his skills against strong opponents and is always ready to help anyone in need. He founded the Crimson Knights with Subaru, though he eventually leaves. He is very close to Subaru and knows that she is handicapped. He is a businessman outside the game and frequently makes international business trips.
• Cubia is a monster in The World, the 'opposite side' of the mystical "Twilight Bracelet", born during its creation. It constantly attempts to prevent Kite from progressing until it is finally defeated, which results in the destruction of the bracelet. .hack//XXXX features Cubia with a human avatar who befriends Kite. Cubia returns in G.U. as the anti-Epitaph, with power equal to all eight Epitaph PCs. It spreads throughout the internet, causing malfunctions worldwide.
• Elk is a shy Wavemaster who only finds comfort in working with Mia, showing loyalty and concern for her as her condition worsens. He eventually accepts Kite and his companions, and they work together. In the next version of The World, Kaoru Ichinose, the player behind Elk, creates Endrance the Temptress. Endrance obsessively plays the game, logging off only to sleep, and is cold towards other players while interacting with a small cat, which he believes to be the reincarnation of Mia. The cat is actually an AIDA feeding off his emotions. Haseo destroys the AIDA while fighting Endrance, who falls into a deep depression until he becomes connected to Haseo in a similar format, devoting his life to what he believes he owes.
• Gardenia is a quiet Long Arm and a romantic with a great love for flowers, which she shares with Kite. Though she seems mysterious, she is not part of the conspiracy that Kite is battling. Recruiting Gardenia in the game is optional; it is done by reading a message board post from her "groupies" and visiting their meeting place. She resembles the character "Mimika", whom Mimiru saw use "Ap Crystal" in the episode "Intermezzo", but, contrary to popular belief, she is not one of the three players who controlled Mimika.
• Harald Hoerwick is the German programmer responsible for creating The World. He meets his unrequited love interest, Emma Wielant, at a seminar for anthroposophy. Harald was grief-stricken when she died in a car accident, and he created a virtual daughter, Aura, as an expression of his love. His plan to use Aura to gather data on humanity goes awry when the program designed to nurture Aura, Morganna, decides to bend its own programming to stay in existence. Obsessed with completing Aura, he decides to rid himself of his physical body and become part of The World. Morganna traps Harald and restricts him to inaccessible areas, leaving him as "The Broken Man", where he loops dialogue expressing his regrets and the error he made in creating Morganna. He eventually helps Bear and his companions get on the right path to Aura, but Morganna deletes him soon afterward. Remnants in the form of a stone tablet appear to Kite, giving him clues on how to proceed, before being destroyed by Cubia. The next version of The World also features remnants that appear to belong to Haseo.
• Helba is a professional hacker of extraordinary skills both in and out of The World. She plays an edited Wavemaster character with a white dress with purple triangular designs and hides her eyes behind a red visor. She provides help and information to some of the main characters in the storylines, though she usually works in the background. Helba's name comes from the long-lost, widely distributed text, "The 'Epitaph of Twilight'. She created the Net Slum from a disused town in the game, which serves as a sanctuary for vagrant AI, trash data, and other illegal items. It is suspected that she made a brief appearance in the second episode of .hack//Liminality outside of the game as Kaoru Asaba, a strange woman who helped Yukichin. The information book .hack//analysis, which compiles various information regarding characters and The World, mentions that she is a working single mother with a little girl.
• Kite is the main character of the .hack//Games series. He plays a Twin Blade character who is kind, considerate, and courteous to those he meets, even those who hinder his quest to save the coma victims. Kite is a close school friend of Yasuhiko, who plays online as Orca, and joined The World to meet with him there. Soon after, Yasuhiko is placed in a coma by Skeith, and Kite receives the Twilight Bracelet from Aura, allowing him to Data Drain. Following clues set by Aura, Kite defeats the various phases and cubis, destroying the bracelet. Aura eventually gives him a new bracelet called the Dawn Bracelet. In .hack//G.U., Haseo gets a message from BlackRose that indicates that she and Kite met offline and that she has feelings for him.
• Marlo plays a blademaster who has a negative personality and has difficulty showing gratitude. He was a loner until he joined up with Kite. He seems to like Kite because Kite tolerates his rotten personality.
• Mia plays a Blademaster in The World, with the appearance of an anthropomorphic cat with purple fur and long rabbit-like ears. She has the strange ability to see Kite's bracelet. While she thinks of herself as a hacker with advanced skills, she is actually an incarnation of the phase, Macha. She is close to Elk because of Elk's resemblance to Tsukasa, a friend from the previous incarnation, and she is constantly searching for an item called "Aromatic Grass". As Kite defeats each phase, she loses her memory and begins to wander the root towns. As The World becomes more corrupt, she eventually awakens as Macha the Temptress. She is destroyed and later revived by Aura. Mia is captured and killed after the Project G.U. staff remove the Temptress data from her. The original Macha is an AI character created by Morganna to follow Tsukasa and make sure that he never leaves the game. She eventually turns on Morganna and sacrifices herself to save Tsukasa and the others. After Macha was data-drained and killed, her data was reconfigured as Mia. ; Kari Wahlgren
• Mimiru appears in .hack//Sign. She is a 15-year-old girl who plays a female Heavy Blade, which appears as a teenage girl dressed in an armored bikini top and a short skirt, with large greaves on her legs. Mimiru plays a tanking character who is poor at planning and following through. Nevertheless, she has a big heart and an even bigger attitude. She meets Tsukasa and soon gains his trust and friendship. She also teams with Bear, whom she refers to as an "old man", and spends considerable time attempting to learn about his career outside of the game. She eventually meets Tsukasa outside of the game as An Shouji, and they go shopping in Shimokita. She is an only child and has few friends. Her father works at a company that manufactures semiconductors.
• Mistral is a Wavemaster character with bright pink hair and an eternally cheerful personality. She joins Kite's campaign in order to search for treasure and plays the game for recreation with no secret agenda. She is a stereotypical noob: hopelessly enthusiastic, begging to be given rare treasures, and using many emoticons in her messages. Near the end of the game, she goes "off-line" in order to give birth.
• Moonstone is a Twin Blade character who is obsessed with increasing his character strength. The strong, silent type, he often speaks in one-word phrases or short sentences. He has a great deal of respect for other strong characters and is the first character to send the player his address through email.
• Morganna Mode Gone is an AI system created by Harald Hoerwick to oversee the birth of Aura by gathering personality data from The World and allowing herself to be absorbed into Aura. However, Morganna attempts to stall the growth of Aura in order to prolong her own existence, resulting in many of the events in the.hack series. In .hack//Sign, she imprisoned Tsukasa in The World and tried to use his negative emotions to prevent Aura from waking, but she failed. She is able to bend her programming by succumbing to a paradox and eventually overcomes her programming to take on the persona of the Cursed Wave from the Epitaph of Twilight. She exists everywhere in The World with the exception of glitched areas; when she is damaged, The World becomes corrupted. Unable to keep Aura sealed, Morganna tries to kill her with the Eight Phases. Morganna is merged with Aura to create the Ultimate AI.
• Natsume is a twin-bladed sword with the same model as the A-20 of .hack//Sign. She is obsessed with gaining more power and fears that she will always be inadequate. Despite this, she has an upbeat nature and is a good teammate. Outside of the game, she is a ninth-grade student who plays The World to gain confidence. To gain her as a party member in the game, one must read her weapon-hunt request and help her acquire a rare sword. ; Kate Higgins
• Nuke Usagimaru is the host of a battle-commentary show where he tries to tackle a powerful monster solo, providing humorous commentary and physical comedy while others watch. Though his gaming attempts often result in failure, Nuke takes it in stride and is always using his past experiences to improve on future shows. Nuke acts in a flashy way even in normal situations. His closest friends in the game are Kite, whom Nuke sees as the ultimate straight man and his ideal partner, and Rachel, who acts as his editor via e-mail. Nuke's character class is "long arm," and his dress is something like that of a clown. Later, by the time of .hack//G.U., it is implied that he and Rachel have become somewhat famous.
• Orca is a high-level male Blademaster played by a fourteen-year-old boy named Yasuhiko. Orca is given the title "Orca of the Azure Sea" after beating an event thought to be unbeatable with Balmung. Orca has been known to lend his strength to fledgling players of The World. After having his friend Kite join the game, he is given the Book of Twilight by Aura due to his reputation. Orca was originally meant to be the true keeper of the Twilight Bracelet, but he is Data Drained by Skeith, leaving Yasuhiko in a coma until Kite helps complete Aura.
• Piros is a heavy axeman with a huge body and a proportionally small head. Piros believes he is the true protagonist of the story and has an odd speech pattern. He involves Kite in his misadventures, which are usually the result of his naivety. Although he can be very childish at times, Piros is a graphics designer and programmer outside the game.
• Rachel is a Blademaster who is greedy and money-obsessed and is always scheming for ideas to make money in The World. She drags Kite into helping with her schemes, which usually fail. Despite her obsession with money, Rachel does not accept anything that is low in quality.
• Rena Kunisaki is a player who wins a special chibi version of BlackRose's avatar in a contest developed by Aura. She originally plays as a female Blademaster named Brigit but becomes bored with The World until she learns of the exploits of Kite and his companions. She then plays with her twin brother, Shugo, using her new character to support him in becoming a hero. The two work to reunite Aura with her daughter, Zefie.
• Sanjuro is a Heavy Blade character modelled after a samurai, played by an American man who loves watching Japanese Samurai films and discussing their merits. He is an optional NPC and can only be found if the player reads his message board entry and helps him find a rare weapon.
• Silver Knight is a Blademaster who is the second-in-command of the Crimson Knights under Subaru. His avatar is an edited version of the standard Crimson Knight design, with the addition of full chest and back armor plates, helmet horns, and red eyes. He possesses a strong sense of justice but is extremely naïve, and can be influenced and used as a tool. He is extremely overprotective of Subaru. Silver Knight also appears in the .hack//Legend of the Twilight anime, where he helps Shugo until his character is deleted by the Cerulean Knights. He makes a third appearance in .hack//Roots, where he offers Haseo his assistance after stating that he has been in a similar situation; Haseo refuses.
• Shugo Kunisaki is a player who wins a special chibi version of Kite's avatar in a contest developed by Aura. He originally believed that he had outgrown video games, but after winning the contest along with his twin sister Rena, the two joined The World. He lacks planning skills and has difficulty turning down the requests of others. Aura gives him a version of Kite's Twilight Bracelet that does not harm humans. Aura's plan is to motivate Shugo by allowing him to be a hero after meeting and talking to him using another player's character in the past.
• Skeith,also known as Skeith the Terror of Death, is the first phase that Morganna creates. He absorbs Sora using Data Drain and is then sent to find Aura. His avatar appears as a humanoid seemingly made of rounded rock with floating disjointed appendages and a two-piece ring-shaped horn. Skeith carries a red staff, upon which he 'hangs' his victims prior to data-draining them. He resides in an amnesic Sora until Aura is found. Skeith seals Sora within his staff and drains Orca, which places Yasuhiko in a coma. Kite later fights and defeats Skeith. Skeith is recreated with the other phases as part of CC Corporation's plan to reconstruct Morganna, though the plan backfires. Based on Sora's condition, the corporation gave him the ability to fuse with players. The seven phases absorb the consciousness of their players and escape into the network., where they waited for the right person to "connect to". Skeith eventually becomes part of Haseo, a new character created by the player of Sora, from whom Skeith had his data drained. Haseo can use Skeith to data drain opponents.
• Sora is a Twin Blade player-killer who seeks out attractive female characters and attempts to obtain their addresses. Outside of the game, he is Ryou Misaki, a 10-year-old fourth-grade student. He interacts with Mimiru, who finds him to be a nuisance, and BT, who exchanges information with Sora and is often on the receiving end of his player-killer activities. Sora searches for interesting activities, which leads him to Tsukasa and the Key of the Twilight, Aura. He eventually comes into contact with Morganna and works with her until he becomes bored. She has Skeith Data Drain absorb him, causing Misaki to fall into a coma. Skeith uses Sora's avatar, which is covered in rags and has no memory of past events, to track down Aura. Sora's avatar is later absorbed into Skeith's wand until he is freed by Kite. Misaki awakens from his coma after Morganna is destroyed and later becomes the main protagonist in .hack//G.U. as the creator of the character Haseo.
• Subaru is a female heavy axeman with blue-green hair, a puce-colored tattoo on her forehead, and rudimentary wings on her back. She first joins The World hoping to make friends, though she knows nothing of the game and wanders around for hours. She eventually meets Crim, who teaches her to stand up against other players, and the two form the Crimson Knights to bring order; it is heavily implied they are a couple. She later comes into contact with Tsukasa and forms a somewhat sibling-like bond with him, acting like a devoted older sister. Outside of the game, she is Mariko Misono, a paraplegic girl who enjoys the illusion of mobility in The World. At the end of the series, she meets An Shouji, Tsukasa's player; and they become good friends outside the game.
• Tsukasa is the protagonist of the .hack//Sign anime series. While his body is in a coma, his consciousness remains active in The World through his Wavemaster persona. His avatar is a young, silver-haired boy clad in gray robes. Morganna uses Tsukasa's negative emotions to poison Aura and prevent her awakening. Tsukasa is distant at first, but he eventually connects with Mimiru, Subaru, and Bear. Aura is eventually awakened, allowing Tsukasa to log out. Outside of the game, Tsukasa is a girl named An Shouji, who was raised by an abusive father after the death of her mother. The abuse caused her to dissociate from her gender. After waking from her coma, Ryo Sakuma, the player behind Bear, becomes Shouji's legal guardian and allowing her to go to a boarding school. She meets with Mariko, Subaru's player, and the two begin an offline friendship.
• Wiseman is a wavemaster with a calm and collective attitude and an excellent perspective on business. He is greedy like Rachel, but he shows it indirectly, and his attitude causes people to think that he is holding back information. Outside of the game, he is Takumi Hino, a ten-year-old boy who enjoys collecting trading cards and playing soccer.
• Zefie is a vagrant AI and Aura's daughter. She is separated from Aura and becomes attached to Shugo when she smells Aura's scent on his bracelet. She always vies for Shugo's affections and is rude to all who try to stop her. She can control The World and avatar appearances however she sees fit. At first, Zefie is selfish, spoiled, and rude, but she matures through her interactions with Shugo and Rena.