Heartwarming / .hack//SIGN

• The ending has Tsukasa finally meet up with her beloved Subaru, the crippled girl who helped her through her imprisonment in the game. It's especially heartwarming since Tsukasa thought she was a guy herself for most of the series — but it doesn't matter to either of them.
  • Anything involving Tsukasa and Subaru is heartwarming, period.
    • Indeed. Another moment that stands out is when Subaru has just disbanded the Crimson Knights. She's kinda down and wandering through an area where she first formed the guild. A girl with a similar character design comes up and starts talking to her, then tries to Player Kill her. A beaten and tired Subaru wanders down into the cave where Tsukasa is sitting. Tsukasa initially panics, but she stops him, and they embrace. It's a very sweet scene.
• Anytime the song "Grandpa's Violin" plays in the background, it's going to be a heartwarming moment.
• An early episode, "Promise", is focused on Mimiru waiting for Tsukasa to come around to try and both get closer to him and see what she can do to help him out.
  • First, this is done after several attempts at messaging him to no avail, and Mimiru just decides to let Tsukasa come on his own terms. Rather than the pursuits and forced meetings Tsukasa's had previously, Mimiru is the first time someone actually lets him decide.
  • A lot of joking is done about how she seems to be waiting around in vain... but it's implied that aside from taking momentary bathroom or food breaks, Mimiru waits about 40 hours for Tsukasa. And her efforts get rewarded when Tsukasa comes because the amount of attention she's been getting.
• The episode focusing on B.T.'s personal life. She seems to be bitter and lonely in real life, all the people in the game either dislike her for her cold and snarky nature, or merely want to use her as a way to get information. She realizes she doesn't have any friends. Then Tsukasa shows up and saves her from two Player Killers she was trying to be nice to, and she starts bonding with him.
• Unison. All the main protagonists, including the ones from the games set after the events of .hack//SIGN, get together and have a strictly feel-good party, dancing the night away to the series' theme song.
• Macha showing Tsukasa the Aromatic Grass during her Heroic Sacrifice. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
• Any exchange between Tsukasa and Subaru later on in the series.
• Bear goes to extensive measures throughout the series to research Tsukasa in the real world. After BT semi-calls him out on using Tsukasa as a replacement for his own failed relationship with his real life son, he decides to take full responsibility and at the end of the series he adopts Tsukasa's player and puts her through college.
• From the Unison OVA, Sora was nervous about joining the other heroes during the festivities. Tsukasa tells him that it's okay, since they were friends.
• The fact that Sora himself gets a belated happy ending long after the events of SIGN and the games. Or rather, Ryou Misaki, the actual kid playing Sora, and seven years later, Haseo. Denied the chance to appreciate the friendship he gained with Tsukasa due to being Data Drained by Skeith, he'll finally be able to enjoy his own community of friends^note even a few women and one guy vying for his attention, though the one he gets together with also having her arduous emotional journey he helps her face, some even fire-forged, seven years after, while, after the Character Development that gains him that, being adored as a hero by a community that initially feared and even hated him.

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