I really hope the annoying ginger bratty girl was a one-off character, put in a filler episode for some (wrong) reason; we will never see her again and live happy with it.

A-20 appears once or twice more in SIGN but thankfully, she's not a main character and does not appear in any of the rest of the .hack series, so you don't have to put up with her often.

Thanks! I have to say I am feeling I am struggling to finish this series: slow pace, whiny characters and it feels dated in more than a way, unlike many other shows from the same time.

If not for Yuki Kajiura OST (which is often just thrown there without proper thinking, IMHO), I am not sure I would even continue watching.

That was heart warming. This is a very forgiving game. If this were SAO, there would definitely have been a monster either inside the chest, or behind the players once they opened the prize chest.

But I will say, that they got me personally curious on what bear’s real job is. Hell, I’m curious what the woman who chills with bear dies also. We at least know that mimimru as you standard student