Just watched "Lets meet offline"

[Haseo Vi Awesome]

I'm totally shocked at all the twist in that skit.
Has anyone else seen it?
 I didnt know Hotaru is a guy! Also that Mireille is a 4 yr old with a IQ of 200.
I need to read more .Hack manga and .hack//wiki

[AuraTwilight]

 Let's Meet Offline isn't canon. Hotaru is a girl in the manga.

[Haseo Vi Awesome]

 About to say, Hotaru would be the biggest trap ever

[Kuukai]

Actually, although it's never stated outright... Hotaru's canon irl gender is implied to be male. He uses "boku" and in Firefly he talks about how his voice still hasn't changed by age 13. Also, in the trivia section of the manga he says something that in context can be read like, "I've got a pair." Moreover, Hotaru's canon PC gender is definitely male, as the trivia section states that Elk, Tsukasa, and Hotaru use the same model.
Most Japanese fans are in agreement on this, most American fans haven't played enough Guilty Gear...

[shugo_lover]

I agree with AuraTwilight. It never really says but if you look in the last book of the twilight series it shows them all off line so I guess you can guess who is who. So in the manga Hotaru is a girl

[Kuukai]

That picture doesn't prove much by manga standards, or even by .hack standards.

13 year-old girl, or 13-year-old boy with long hair? Like I said, there's a lot of evidence to the contrary... Remember, we know that Hotaru's in-game PC is male, and that looks like this:

Reminds me of how lot of people were convinced Endrance was female when the trailer first came out. Pretty much everyone looks androgynous in the manga:

Just try finding someone who doesn't know anything about .hack and will name these images as female, female, male on their first guess. I'm sure somebody will eventually, but I think I've illustrated my point...

[AuraTwilight]

Female, Female, and Male on their first guess? Uh...a lot of people. I just ran the experiment with some neighbors to demonstrate the point.

[Kuukai]

With a verifiable 100% success rate I'm sure. I know someone who thought Aura was a boy when .hack first came out. At any rate, the objective evidence is more important to this debate, I was just trying to make a case for the subjective evidence too...

Edit: I actually recently found a Japanese fansite that interpreted Hotaru as female in the anime, male in the manga, and male in the audio drama (which has different VAs from the anime), which is kind of interesting... I still haven't found a native reader convinced Hotaru's female by the end of the manga, though... I think we can partly blame Tokyopop for the difference here...

[Satoh]

It's really hard to say anything definite about the visual representations of The World in LOTT manga...

The Kite and Blackrose PCs aren't the same as the ones Shugo and Rena are using, though they are styled the same, they have been altered to appear younger. (I believe there is evidence of this when Kite is drawn on one page, in a less chibi format.)

As for using the same PC design, I can't say I find that to be a definitive piece of evidence either... Marlo and Silver Knight use the same PC design, as do Subaru and Terashima Ryoko. Bear and Orca do as well... My point is just because they use the same base, doesn't mean they have to be very similar at all...

I believe it is briefly mentioned somewhere that Mirei modified the stature of Mistral's PC when she changed it to Mireille. Though I don't remember where I read it.
(Interesting note about Mireille... Mireille is actually just Mirei, the player's name, with an 'lle' on the end.)

[Kuukai]

The Kite and Blackrose PCs aren't the same as the ones Shugo and Rena are using, though they are styled the same, they have been altered to appear younger. (I believe there is evidence of this when Kite is drawn on one page, in a less chibi format.)

I pretty much agree with this, but that too is often debated. It could represent more or less the way the character is "worn" by the player.

As for using the same PC design, I can't say I find that to be a definitive piece of evidence either... Marlo and Silver Knight use the same PC design, as do Subaru and Terashima Ryoko. Bear and Orca do as well... My point is just because they use the same base, doesn't mean they have to be very similar at all...

My point was that the models are broken up by gender...

I believe it is briefly mentioned somewhere that Mirei modified the stature of Mistral's PC when she changed it to Mireille. Though I don't remember where I read it.

It is? I don't remember that...

[Satoh]

I believe it is briefly mentioned somewhere that Mirei modified the stature of Mistral's PC when she changed it to Mireille. Though I don't remember where I read it.

It is? I don't remember that...

I could be wrong... I think I read that somewhere... but it may have merely been a post on a different forum...

[AuraTwilight]

Mireille's character indeed is the exact same as Mistral's with a mere namechange, but I never heard anything about stature. Since Mistral's character was always childish, it's just the art style effect it instead of an in-universe alteration.

[Silver]

Wow. I've gotta see this. I haven't yet seen the "Let's meet offline," thing.

... Did you seriously say Mirrelle is 4 years old!? Man, that's messed up. It's been so long since I've seen this series, and read the manga. I kinda saw this coming... well not really.

[shugo_lover]

I have to scan the pick in the back of the book