Rating: Summary: Weiss's Bloody Review Baby ^_~. Review: Alright, I dont usually review, but...Weiss is one of the best series out there. The plot and characters are good. Sure, the animation makes Aya-kun a little cross-eyed sometimes, and no one ever bleeds until the OVA, but it's still great. ^__^. If you watch it (And I highly recommend it. I waited 4 years for it to come over to the US so I could buy it and am now converting all my friends to loving it.), you might also want to grab the OVA and Gluhen, the second series. Both are on animeart.com. Just check out the "shop" choice. Sure, the subs are a little off, but that's part of the fun!
Rating: Summary: Weiss Kreuz- The best bishounen around! Review: Although the dubbing leaves something to be desired, the storyline of Weiss is extremely intriguing. There are a lot of loose ends that could be tied up, but the characters more than make up for it. The subbing is very well done, with only a few errors every now and then. The animation style, though it does not look as modern as some space or sci-fi anime, is very well done, especially for the characters themselves. If you like hot anime boys, this is the show for you. Also the interviews with the seiyuus, some of Japan's finest, are very amusing. Overall, an excellent anime with a great open ending for the Gluhen series as well as your own speculation.
Rating: Summary: Hunters of the Night, hunt the evils of tomorrow Review: Besides the non-direct translation of Weiß Kreuz (white cross) I totally recommend the DVDs. The storyline is angsty in some aspects and having mainly bishounen's as the main characters are a plus. 4 guys: Aya (Ran), Ken, Omi (Mamoru Takatori), and Yohji who work in a flower shop in the day and are assassins at night, each with a sad past and reason for being Weiß. Toss in their wicked rivals: Schwarz (male group of assasins with powers: Brad, Schuldig, Farfarello, and Nagi) and Shrient (group of female baddies:Hell, Schoen, Neu, and Tot) makes this anime a must watch. Having watched the series before it's release on DVD in the US. And watching the U.S. DVDs myself, the translations and conversion is great. Now if only they brought over the OVAs and Glühen. The manga is also a must get, with details on how Aya joined the Weiß group.
Rating: Summary: Hunters of the Night, hunt the evils of tomorrow Review: Besides the non-direct translation of Weiß Kreuz (white cross) I totally recommend the DVDs. The storyline is angsty in some aspects and having mainly bishounen's as the main characters are a plus. 4 guys: Aya (Ran), Ken, Omi (Mamoru Takatori), and Yohji who work in a flower shop in the day and are assassins at night, each with a sad past and reason for being Weiß. Toss in their wicked rivals: Schwarz (male group of assasins with powers: Brad, Schuldig, Farfarello, and Nagi) and Shrient (group of female baddies:Hell, Schoen, Neu, and Tot) makes this anime a must watch. Having watched the series before it's release on DVD in the US. And watching the U.S. DVDs myself, the translations and conversion is great. Now if only they brought over the OVAs and Glühen. The manga is also a must get, with details on how Aya joined the Weiß group.
Rating: Summary: Fun, if you like the style. Review: First thing I have to get off my chest is: Knight Hunters?! Okay, maybe that pun's just traumatizing to me because my high school mascot was the Knights, but it is very random. Weiss Kreuz, prounounced "vais kroitz," or no one will know what you are talking about.
Barring that (and them subbing that when I'm pretty certain they say "white hunters" - [Weiss = white. Get it?]) I enjoyed this a lot. But you have to understand what you're getting into.
The animation is pretty bad. Normally that doesn't bother me, but there's a few points (the burning car in the first episode, Yohji and Maki running paper cutout-style) that you just have to wince.
The plot is nothing masterful, but I still found it fun to watch. Just don't expect anything deep, and a couple episodes have some really overused plotlines. It's still fun to see where they go with it, though.
The characters... ah, the characters. That's where they catch you. I've said in relation to this series that 80% of the point is for the guys to look cute. That's not entirely true - that percentage includes them being mysterious, tortured, interesting and otherwise attractive. That doesn't mean you have to be a girl to like it - my brother likes it, you just have to like the characters in a more identifying way than an admiring way. Though if can't sustain an interest in at least one of the characters... I wouldn't torture yourself with this.
As a final warning, I found the English voice actors to be absolutely horrific. Everyone I've showed this to agrees with me, after watching the Japanese. It sets my teeth on edge to listen to them butcher the lines. I've only managed to sit through a few episodes in English. Watch this one subbed. Absolutely.
And don't take it too seriously. It's not a deep anime. It's fun, though. Like a summer action movie.
Rating: Summary: Great series, great DVD edition Review: I don't know where all those reviewers have been coming up with the notion that Cheesiness, Angst, & Extreme High Melodrama are *surprising*-- or *unwanted*-- in a shojo anime. Come on! Really. This is for us. We want our angst and family tragedies and long-lost siblings and haunted pasts and Good Vs. Evil and unrequited love and knee-weakeningly beautiful boys... we want it all, and we want it bloody.That said, the Weiss Kreuz collection is one of the best things that you could possibly take home & watch on the sofa with your box of chocolates & your pink tissues. Four pretty young things, each one with a worse revenge-complex than the next, all with clashing personalities; an expansion on the buddy-cop concept, only better... four pretty young vicious bloodthirsty international assassin boys who run a flower-shop. And of course they're all straight. If you don't love an idea like that right away, then you shouldn't be renting this in the first place. But if you have to keep hitting Rewind because you drown out the dialogue with your own squeals, then you're one of us, and you should buy this DVD set. The DVD edition is fabulous, easy to navigate, crammed with features, sketches, interviews, you name it. I was especially (pleasantly) surprised by the outtakes. Recording all that drama had to be taxing-- so it must've been a great release to make that mutant-monster croon "Till There Was You" at Aya while smashing him repeatedly against a piano. I personally like the animation well enough; it's not groundbreaking, but it does not look like 1987, either. The dubs and subs are equally good here, in my opinion. They put a nice amount of effort into the setup. I think the English translation was pretty great, very natural-sounding; people's opinions on these tend to run hot & cold, but I can say that at least the English doesn't sound stilted, and the subtitles at least follow pretty much what the dub says. Bold yellow subtitles were easy to read, for when you're in the mood to follow in Japanese for awhile. The voice actors were often lackluster, I agree with everyone on that point. I privately think Aya could be even b*tchier, Omi even squeakier, and Farfarello even crazier... in both languages. Schuldig's erotically snide baritone is definitely the brightest point of the English dub, however. You may find yourself listening to him purr "ruined lives taste like honey" repeatedly until your Rewind button sticks. You can watch many of these stories independently of each other without worrying about the overarching plot, which is nice for those who don't want the full collection. The boys get a mission, they go out and find the bad guys, and much fighting & bickering ensues. Most episodes have at least some brokenhearted weeping, and they all have bloodshed (although the pedestrian fight-sequence style in this anime doesn't do much for me). If you're lucky, you'll get to see the gang of psychic/psychotic villain boys, who are even more interesting than the heroes. You can start watching to just absorb the cheesy missions, but soon be hooked on the tangled interpersonal relationships and vendettas. Which is, after all, the point in a bishonen anime. So addictive!
Rating: Summary: Starts off strong, ends weak Review: I'm so disappointed that the animation changes halfway through the series. I love discs 1-3 but there are obvious changes in discs 4-5. The animation gets very choppy and the storyline no longer has any heart. The creators of this series need to fire the animators of discs 4 & 5 and bring back the original group. Only 1-3 are worth watching, 4-5 bored me to tears. Before you invest your money, rent it first (netflix).
Rating: Summary: Weiss Review: Ok, first of all, in response to Casi, I have to say--don't pick at the subtitles until you think you can do better! Have you ever actually seen the people translate? Well, I have to tell you, they go mostly by the people's actions! I've seen it done! So don't pick at the subtitles! The animation was pretty good, except for the fact that there should have been more blood in places--but a lot of anime are like that. The storyline was sweet and the characters were awesome. The ending could've been a little more interesting, but how Weiss got out of the factory? That's for the watchers to imagine on their own. All in all, I loved all 8 hours (plus the outtakes) of this DVD and greatly anticipate the OVA.
Rating: Summary: Evil Men Beware! Review: Taking place in our modern world. A group of four young men live and work together as florists during the day. The local women love their good looks and charm. The men also have a HQ underneath the flower shop, where they gather to receive orders for their secret missions. Orders given by a mysterious figure known only as Persia and Manx. The Weiss Kruez team are very skilled assassins that go after criminals and murderes that the police can't put away. At the end of every episode, the criminals always get killed by the WK team. This is one of my favorite anime titles. It has the right balance of storytelling and action sequences. The characters are all very likable, and get fully developed, the team works well together and avoids the stereotypical bickering that many team/buddy stories have. The artwork and animation looks very out-dated but this show is more about the story. The sound fx were good as was the music- tense and action packed. This anime feels a lot like a police drama; but adds to it with an air of creepiness because of the sadistic criminals commiting crimes. Crimes you hear about on the 11 o'clock news. The biggest factor in making this anime great is the sense of satisfaction it gives you when the bad guys feel terrified and get assassinated in a brutal fashion. Justice and retribution is the underlying theme that makes this anime worth watching. Throw in some intrigue and you've got Weiss Kreuz. Many of the episodes are self contianed, others continue. Contains blood, gore and light nudity. Good for adults only. Ends on Episode 24, but there are two OVAS.
Rating: Summary: Weiss kreuz Review: The dubbing is horrible, and the subbing is so-so.. the animation is not that great either. But that wasn't the point of this 24 episode anime. Mostly it was for the voice actors. I already have all of the DVDs and I'm waiting for someone to bring the OVA movie to the USA along with the manga. Recommended for those who like sappy, angsty, bishie drama.
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