Anime: Weiss Kreuz

This pseudo-German-sounding anime is practically a dried-up, poorly-made, gay version of Black Lagoon. Just like guys loved that show for having hot chicks with guns shooting at stuff and throwing in some piss-poor drama and social criticism, the Knight Hunters do the exact same thing for yaoi fangirls. It was adored a lot back in its prime for being a bishonen show that lasted far more than a few episodes and had a very high amount of emotional-moving and shock moments (amongst fujoshis only of course). Of course when I watched it like the completionist I am all I saw was a boring episodic show with crude visuals and lame plot twists.

So basically we have a male counterpart of Charlie’s Angels, four super handsome men, having a secret identity as florists during the day, and super powerful assassins, vigilantes doing what moral justice can’t touch, during night. Each mission is stand-alone, consisting from one to four episodes, where they get a Charlie-like old man giving them an order to go wipe out some criminals who are way too cunning or ruthless for the law to touch them. They infiltrate the enemy territory, usually disguised as silly workers or victims, and after a line of events that are there to make us hate the bad guys, they go to the offence and pretty much kill everyone.

In the style of lots of American shows I was watching back in the 90’s, such as Knight Rider, Mission Impossible, A-Team, or Miami Vice, the script is written on the run, and action scenes are made to be as cool as possible without trying too much to be plausible. Seriously, how can four men with swords and strangling cables take on fifty gunners and win all the time without a single casualty?

The show does a fine job at inflicting the casual viewer (fangirl) with emotions, as the heroes are acting all innocent and hot during their day jobs, and having lots of girls going all crazy about them. Each one of them though has a very tragic past which haunts him and is basically what drives him to seek vengeance all the time. They can become easily sympathetic if you don’t notice how they are nothing more than moody cardboards. Plus the villains will be constantly killing and torturing their victims in very cruel ways, easily becoming despicable in your eyes and wishing for the hot bad boys with dark pasts to kick their asses. It all plays out on a very cartoony way, with everyone being just a bold but otherwise shallow stereotype just strolling through a simple story before the good guys win.

It becomes slightly more interesting towards the end, when the big-shots of the criminal syndicate hire their own assassins to take out the heroes and finally having the liberty to keep being generic villains for the heck of it. To no surprise, these other assassins are also bishonens with tragic pasts and a pseudo-German name, dark counterparts of our heroes, as well as their toughest opponents. I guess in the show’s universe, the prettier you are, the stronger you are. Also, their Charlie ends up being far more than just a mission-giver. And guess what, he is actually the only one who gets some character development; the Knight Hunters on the other hand get none despite being the protagonists.

In all its cheesiness, the show could have worked a lot better (that is, being liked by more people than fujoshis) if the production values were good. Screw the episodic story; very few people care about an on-going scenario (I am amongst them). For most it is the characters and the visuals that matter and this is where the show fails to deliver. The former are tired stereotypes that don’t develop and the later are piss-poor animations and crude drawings. I hardly remember (or care to remember) the music score, the action scenes were boring and had a predictable outcome, the heroes weren’t anything other than emos, and there was no story to look forward to some development (aside from the ending, which wasn’t about the heroes but their boss).

Anyways, this is a completely obsolete and passable show. Modern fujoshis can get all the homos they like in Noitanima and some other later BS shows, which feel better only because they have slightly better visuals. But not characters or action because such types of women never care about that and thus nobody outside of them ever likes such anime in the least.

And now for some excused scorings.

Ah...The marvel of "Weiss kreuz"¨... After suffering through 25 episodes of it I realised that this is an anime made for fandom, mainly yaoi.
And let me tell you, it's a rather extensive fandom with some true masterpieces...
Take that away and the value of this anime is zero.

The animation is bad, to put it mildly. Yes, I know that it is from 1998 but so is Cowboy Bebop and that it's a low-budget anime but so is Trigun. There really is no excuse,WK is simply badly done.

Add to that no character development,plot-holes, overall predictability and you will get 25 episodes of sheer boredome.
The only reason I finished watching it was my maniacal stubborness. And a wish to better understand the fandom...

I can honestly tell that I did not enjoy Weiss kreuz and I will avoid seeing it again at all costs.

P.S: The interesting thing about this anime is the extensive soundtrack made by Weiss that has next to nothing to do with the series.

[ Story ]
The four popular men named Aya, Omi, Yoji and Ken work in a flower shop. But that’s just their secondary business to appear normal and harmless. In real those four men form Weiss, a group of assassins. They get their dangerous missions assigned from an unknown person called 'Persia' who uses them against criminals or illegal organizations that are untouchable by the law.
Everyone in Weiss has, beside the knowledge of using conventional weapons, an own fighting style. Aya prefers a katana sword, Omi is specialized on ranged attacks with darts, arrows and knifes (like kunais), Yoji strangulates his victims with an almost invisible wire and Ken knows how to use his sharp metal claw.
After a while they all notice that most of their missions, as well as incidents from their sad pasts, always lead to the rich Takatori family. They seem to be the evil roots who abuse their power to influence politics for their own advantage in every possible way.
The head of the Takatori family recruits a very dangerous group called Schwarz to get rid of Weiss...

[ Characters ]
The tiny development of the maincharacters is neither good nor bad. It's expectable and thus boring. All they have a dark and sad past that’s also nothing surprising. All are they still suffering of that and will have to face the dark incidents from their pasts during the series.
I must say the characters of their enemies, Schwarz, are more interesting than the actual heroes (some have supernatural abilities). But they also have a sad past. That makes this whole show already dull.
Also it’s still unknown to me yet why some florists (the members of Weiss officially are) are as popular as a popband. They’ve fans that come to the flower shop almost every day just to visit them (not to buy flowers).
About the voiceactors, I’ve only watched the US Version (official dvd box set) and only some scenes of the original one with subs. And the Engl. dub one was ok (in my opinion dubs mostly suck so that's why I've no high expectation from the beginning). Some voices weren’t well chosen and annoying; also some conversations were spoken boringly. A typical dub below average quality, I wouldn’t listen to it again in Engl.

[ Animation ]
Although it was produced in 1998 the animations suck. The quality of the drawings is below average. The characters show errors and are often badly animated, which doesn’t mean they’re ugly. Just look odd sometimes. Mouth-animations and spoken text aren’t synchronous sometimes, funnily the Engl. dubbed version was better there (that's why I bothered with it - it even had more lines/text). The cuts and scenes are alright. Nothing special. No effects.

[ Beginning/Ending ]
The beginning is done well and interesting.
The story does end at the end ;) So it's not an open end. Yet there’s a sequel (2 eps OVA).

[ Summary ]
If you’re utterly bored and have watched everything else already, then this series helps you to pass time. Some episodes are close to being entertaining but I found most dull. I wanted to know how the story ends and it became a little interesting with Schwarz. Also since I bought the dvds there was no turning back. I paid for it so I must watch it till the end. It had some extras, interviews with the voice actors and those were more fun (and shorter) than the anime.
That series has a lot of German words, but some are spelled wrong.
The biggest flaw of the series apart from the bad animations, which can be ignored once you’re used to it, and the plotholes in the story, is the fact that there’s almost never blood. And I can tell you Weiss don’t treat their victims prissily. When one gets sliced by a katana then I expect blood... but nothing, absolutely nothing.

I only gave it a value of 2 because I could sell the box set on ebay for more money than I originally paid for it. If that isn't 'value' then I don't know what else is =)
Also it's good to know bad done animes too, that way you value the good ones more.