Well, maybe not, though most of my exposure to the IP as a whole comes from the fact that I apparently know way too many WUGners.

Hackadoll is kind of a weird one. Anime based upon mobile, Free-to-play games are not an uncommon commodity. There’s money in F2P games, but the issue with all those games is in user turn-over. Flashy adverts attracting niche audiences, particularly ones with fluid disposable income, is kind of an important part of the life-cycle of these things, as they require the attention of a constant stream of new players to sustain themselves, and that’s why things like Rage of Bahamut: Genesis end up existing.

Hackadoll, on the other hand… is pretty much what they describe in the anime. It’s a news aggregator that preports to customise its content, pulled from a whole bunch of well-known sites, based upon what your specific interests are, both through specific questioning at start-up, the ability to watch-list specific keywords, and supposedly what you deem worthy to actually read. It gamifies news to a certain degree, as actually looking through the stuff is throws in your direction earns you in-app Hacka (cash-money) that can be spent playing mini-games in the Hacka-Game Center, whilst artwork and things sporadically unlock. It’s a neat thing, I suppose, and I did learn that they’re making a Hibiki prize figure from playing around a bit. There’s no direct-cash infusion in the IAP-sense into the product, though – they don’t make their cash on whales, but I guess they still need to have eyeballs on whatever paid advertising partnerships they have in place.

Doing Hackadoll set-up right.
As for where the Wake Up, Girls come into things, well, the game content is all voiced, and all three Hackadolls from the app are voiced by members of the aforementioned cartoon-associated idol group – Miyu, Kaya and Nanami play the roles of #1, #2 and #3 respectively. Ayame, the BL-drawning girl the Hackadolls foist themselves upon in the shows first episode, is played by Mayu(shi) from WUG as well. As I say, secret WUG anime.

BL, coincidentally, is one of the categories the application asks you if you are interested in when you first start it up. That’s probably why the show specifically brings that up to make jokes about.

IT’S CHEESE!
As for the actual quality of the show, well, it kind of peeks a little too early for me by starting with a spoof on Ghost in the Shell-style near-future science fiction movies with an hilariously self-serious English voice-over. The rest of the show itself, well, clearly there’s less money in news aggregators than there is in free-to-play games. This isn’t to say that I think the show actually looks bad – there’s quite a bit of respectable looking key animation in there, though in many of those cases, it somewhat feels like it’s missing some of it’s inbetweens. I don’t think it’s as cheap as some snipers on twitter have suggested, and it’s certainly not Inferno Cop, but *shrug* it’s got a couple of fun gags, the character designs are attractive, and some cute voice work. That’s about what I would want and expect out of an eight minute show, so I can’t say I’m complaining about it or anything. I will watch more. Probably.

(I’m also kind of a sucker for anything in anime which represents flash-backs as being in 4:3 ratio rather than 16:9. It made me laugh when they did it in Kill la Kill, and it made me laugh here too)