Weißkreuz

I'll admit, I've only seen through the seventh episode of a decent fansub. But it was extremely good, I highly recommend it. There's more to it than weekly assassinations and bloody deaths, each character has a complex past that is revealed slowly. While it could be considered graphic by an American not used to cartoons meant for older audiences, it's rather conservative when compared to other anime.

The animation is good, the storyline is great, the seiyuu are amazing to say the least. It's well worth the money to get a fansub.

Sure the plot sounds dumb. You have four cute guys running a flower shop in the daytime hours surrounded by horny schoolgirls who spend more time watching Aya, Yohji, Ken and Omi than buying flowers. However when Manx (and later Birman) comes by with a videotape and their next assignments, at night these four guys are all business as they execute evil people who work outside of the law.

Over the course of the series you learn about the pasts of these four floral assassins and what motivates them to work for Kritiker as Weiss. It's a rather entertaining series, that will soon be released in the US under the title White Hunters.

I have seen all of "Weiß Kreuz" and I would like to say that it's one of my favorite animes, and I have seen a lot. It's basically about four boys/men who run a flower shop by day and at night they kill people. Weiß is part of an organization dedicated to serving justice to those who manage to escape it the legal way, i.e. murderers who buy their way out of serving a sentence, that sort of thing.

Weiß is as follows: Aya Fujimiya (Abyssinian), Omi Tsukiyono (Bombay), Ken Hidaka (Siberian), and Yohji Kudo (Balinese). Aya is the leader, and his preferred weapon is a sword. Ken plays soccer and he uses these strange claw things. Yohji is a flirt who uses this really nifty wire hidden in his watch. Omi is kind of the brains, since he does most of the research and he directs everything from in front of his laptop. His preferred weapon is a crossbow, though he often uses darts and sometimes a regular bow.

So basically they kill people. Sounds simple, right? Throughout the series each of them must confront something bad that comes from his past. And Schwarz doesn't help. Schwarz is a rival group who use psychokinetic powers. Crawford, the leader, can see the future. Schuldich can read minds. Nagi has telekinesis. And Farfarello is a crazy Irishman with a knife fetish. He is also immune to pain.

Schwarz persists in hindering Weiß throughout the series.

The main bad guy in the first part of the series is Reiji Takatori, whose family is all bad. Weiß has to kill them. Schwarz is Takatori's bodyguard. And Omi is basically scarred for life after this segment. Watch to figure out what I mean.

The bad guy in the second part of the series is an organization called Esset or Esstet, not exactly how it's spelled. They kidnap Aya's sister (also named Aya, for reasons explained in the show) and try to use her in a ritual of some sort. This segment is basically Aya trying to get Aya-chan back from Esset.

So why do I like the show? For one thing, I like the bishounen. They're really well developed, even Nagi, whose past we don't know much about. Hell, we don't even know much about Schu other than the fact that he's German.

Another thing I like about the show is the plot. Weiß doesn't think of itself as the good guys. The members call themselves a necessary evil and fully expect to pay for their sins. And the plot isn't "Oh, let's go kill someone." The members have their own reasons for joining Weiß, explained throughout the series, and they don't enjoy it.

I also like the seiyuus. The seiyuus of Weiß are also the music group Weiß, and they do all of the music for the show. My favorites are "Gluhen," done for the second series, Weiß Kreuz Gluhen, and Velvet Underworld, the first opening of the first series. It was the group Weiß that created the show. I think that the reason why people don't like the dub very much is because of the seiyuus. They don't do as good of a job as the Japanese seiyuus.

I would recommend Weiß Kreuz to anyone who likes anime.