.hack//G.U.

Here we have Ryou, he plays an online game called The World. He's level 133, it took him a year to get there. One of his friends who used to play the game, her character in the game was killed. When her character got killed she went into a coma and Ryou has been trying to find out why. One day Ryou meets the character in the game that killed his friends character. He kills Ryou's character in the game and Ryou goes unconscious in the real world. He wakes up though, unlike his friend and finds out his character has been knocked back all the way to level 1. That whole years work, gone in just 1 hit from this mysterious player. Now what is he going to do?

In the game the players can join guilds, groups of other players. Some groups are good and play by the rules, they are against PKing. Player Killing, when one player kills another player's character. Stronger higher leveled players picking on the week newbie players that are just starting out in the game. When Ryou fist started the game his character was killed this way. The player acted all nice at first but as soon as they got a chance they killed his character.

Ryou has met the leader of one of the more shady guilds in the game, they don't seem to play by the rules. Their is something strange about their guild house. Cameras all over the place, how is it they can see into the real world? They show Ryou a live stream of his friend in the hospital. This is some kind of hacking he's never seen before. It make him mad because they also show him where his friends dead character is still lingering in the game. They even know all about Ryou, his real name, where he lives, everything. 

Now Ryou has to decide is it worth joining this guild and cheating to get his character back to level 133. He still  has that vow he made to his friend in the hospital to think about. How is he going to find out what happened to her and help her if he's at level 1? It took him a year to get to level 133, his friend may not have much time left so he needs to hurry.      

.hack//G.U. is one in an long line of manga/graphic novels by Tatsuya Hamazaki. I'm not sure where it all starts.