Weiss Kreuz (Knight Hunters)

[rachelmanija]

Thanks to Kelly and wordkink, I have now watched the entire first series of the infamous florist assassin anime, Weiss Kreuz. It is terrible. But also hypnotic. So bad it tips over into being awesome, and then tips back into plain bad, and then awesome, and then surprisingly actually good, and then back to terrible, like one of those bobble-headed drinking bird toys.

Four pretty boys, Ken, Aya, Omi, and Yohji, are florists by day, assassins by night! They all have code names that are cat breeds, and are commanded by a mysterious guy who appears on video on the TV in the flower shop basement, announces that someone is causing people to spontanously combust/kidnapping little boys/etc, and says, "Hunters of the night, deny these evil beasts their prey!" And then the pretty boys do some incredibly incompetent investigating, and assassinate the villains.

But it's the details that make this series special. Very special.

- The animation is the worst I have ever seen. In the first episode, the animators ran out of time, or possibly colors, and someone dies in a scribble fire.

- There is a surprise!tentacle monster, in a totally awesome episode that also involves a drawing of a cardboard doll-like Aya getting repeatedly whomped into a piano.

- This is about the fourth anime I've seen in which someone takes on the name of their dead twin because they feel so guilty.

- It was insufficient to do the normal organ-legging trope of someone waking up in a bathtub of ice with a kidney missing. Instead, they wake up in a giant underground swimming pool of ice.

- There is a sports drink that makes you melt.

- There is a victimized little boy named Shota.

- There is a traumatized girl named Death who kills people with a parasol. (Tot is great.)

- I totally see why people kept suggesting that I assess Weiss. But that could take a while. There's just so much trauma and mental illness, it would be quite a lot of work. Everyone's history and psychosocial stressors would be "See attached files."

- There is the opposing group, Schwarz, which is so ridiculously overpowered that they are clearly just keeping Weiss around for amusement value. They are Brad Crawford, who is precognitive; Schuldig, who is telepathic; Nagi, who is a telekinetic and possibly also God; and Farfarello, whose psychic power is being totally batshit and hating nuns. They have meetings in Nagi's bedroom, which is in outer space. This is never explained.

So! Any fic recs? I hear this is one of those series where the fic is way better than the canon.

Knight Hunters & Knight Hunters Eternity-Complete Thin Pack

Comments

[the_rck]

It's out of date, but I have a Weiss Kreuz section on my recs site. I haven't added anything new in about four years, and some of what I link may not be there any more.

I also write Weiss fic which can be found either at my website or my AO3 profile.

I have a completely irrational fondness for this series and fandom.

[the_rck]

Here's a dump of the links to fics that I've saved, intending to rec them. It's been long enough that I remember nothing about most of these fics. I can't guarantee any of them will be to your taste.

Colour of Deception by Esinde Nayrall (red_squared). I lied. I do remember this one. It remixes one of my fics.

And the Promises They Hold by daegaer

Care of a Kitten by Beren

Chance Encounter by Ravenbell

The Economy of the Heart by daegaer

Face of the Monster by vr2lbast

First Do No Harm by quietladybirman

Gluttony by casualotaku

A Good Teacher by vr2lbast

Jazz Memory by vr2lbast

Lust by casualotaku

New Man by daegaer

Patty Hearst Lived Here by lavenderonion

Private Project by trio

Pushing Up Daisies by chaosraven

Something Unexpected by vr2lbast

Strange Land by Eleanor K.

Stripped by Viridian 5

Tokyo Underground by vr2lbast

Urotsukiyohji by GuiltyRed

You'll Never Tan In This Town Again by lady_ganesh

Youth Today by trensaddiction

Schwarz vs. Unicorn by ahpookishere

On the Table by fireun

Transitions (The Truth like the Sun Remix) by daegaer. Another remix of one of my fics.

By the Beautiful Sea by Lady Ganesh

[adrian_turtle]

I find Daegaer's Weiss Kreuz fic hilarious when she's doing crossovers. I haven't read the source text, so I think it collapses into incoherence by itself...but maybe that's the point? Highly recommended, in any case.

[cyphomandra]

Weiss Kreuz! I love the completely appalling animation, and the completely unbelievable plots! (TAKATORI!!!)

I definitely agree with recs for Daegar - Mars Assassins for long fic, as well as other crossovers, but she's also one of the few authors who can do absolutely amazing drabbles. There's a Nagi letter to Omi one (as part of an "open in the event of my death" meme, sorry no link but out of town and no home computer) that made me cry.

Viridian5 (at AO3) has a lot of stuff. I love Girl, which has Aya start changing into a girl (unsurprisingly), and is hot, funny, and not afraid to fool around with the characters' expectations. I also like Reason, which has Aya's sister, and if you have a ridiculous amount of spare time, her big story is Glass Houses, 800K plus and ongoing.

[oyceter]

I have no adequate response save that VM told me about this series way back when on SF public transportation, and I'm pretty sure we scared the entire bus laughing so hard over fits of "twin!!"

[smw]

You had me at "scribble fire". I've yet to watch any truly terrible anime and this seems like a good place to start.

[whump]

They have meetings in Nagi's bedroom, which is in outer space. This is never explained.

This prompts me to go to my boss and request that all daily standups be held in outer space.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I am not actually in the fandom or even on the fringes of it, so I can't rec fic, but I think WK is the most unintentionally hilarious thing I have ever seen. At least, I assume it's unintentional. It transcends 'so bad it's good' and becomes something completely separate that cannot be assessed on mere human scales of goodness or badness.

Also: TAKATORIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention the part where Aya throws a sword at a helicopter, while screaming, "TAKATORIIIIIIII!!!!!"

The Takatori revelations were actually pretty well-done. And then they went on and on until they tipped over into hilarious.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

I found myself getting worked up over the strategic planning stuff the other day and muttered, Takatoriiiiiiiiiiii! to myself. As one does. Then I realized I sounded like a mad person and laughed out loud. I hope no one saw me. At least I didn't lick any knives?

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I... kind of need to watch this.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Decisions, decisions. This does sound fun. Except, Netflix says the average rating is 3.2, and predicts my rating would be 2.1. So either Netflix's collaborative filtering does not understand "so bad, it's good", or I'd get stuck on the "so bad" that I never com around to "it's good".

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

I am unable to not read "Farfarello" as "Farfalle." And "Schuldig?" Subtle. (It means "guilty.")

This is about the fourth anime I've seen in which someone takes on the name of their dead twin because they feel so guilty.

Clearly Wb Jnygba should write an anime series.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I had the exact same thoughts about both Farfarello and Wb.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

I daresay she would be entirely uninterested in such a project.

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

There's a *lot* of badfic out there. Among the good stuff, I love all of daegaer's fic (sorted in her memories, and focussing mainly on Schwarz). Also mami_san's, toscas_kiss and emungere's stuff, indelicateink's and error256's art.

If you want accurate canon analysis, see balljointedomi's recent posts and genkischuldich's fandom posts. The mix of Kapitel (the series you've seen), the OAVs, sequel series (with almost entirely redesigned characters), the 2 differnt mangas & the drama CDs there's not much clarity around; people often pick & choose which bits to follow.

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

In the "Weiss Kreuz: Gluhen/Knight Hunters: Eternity" 13-episode sequel series in which they go undercover at an elite private school where students keep turning up dead, Aya, who formerly had relatively short red hair, suddenly has lightish-brown hair worn in a braid long enough to sit on. Aside from the fact that this is not exactly the most unobtrusive or universally acceptable hairstyle to adopt when you're attempting to get hired as a teacher at an exclusive private academy, this hairstyle was so irresistibly reminiscent of the trademark look of a certain Gundam pilot that when Aya first appeared onscreen at the convention where I saw this, a girl sitting behind me immediately yelled out, "It's Duo! Grown-up Duo!" Supposedly the drastic change in the characters' appearance had something to do with the production staff involved having lost the rights to the original character designs. Under the circumstances, I would have thought that this would make them hesitate to so obviously swipe the most distinctive elements of a character design from an entirely different series. But evidently the "Gluhen"/"Eternity" producers suffered no such qualms.

As I recall, the "Gluhen"/"Eternity" anime itself actually seemed to be pretty good, with decent animation and everything--at least for the first six episodes, which were all I got a chance to see. In any case, it certainly seemed more coherent and less ludicrously cracktastic than some of the older episodes from the original series that I'd seen at previous conventions. Although the characters' habit of saying things like "He's a Weiss" (pronounced "vice") was rather disconcerting.

Weiss Kreusz

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User chomiji referenced to your post from Weiss Kreusz (http://chomiji.livejournal.com/341340.html) saying: [...] wants Weiss Kreusz fic [...]

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

Also, there are some good series & character summaries out there - the first 8 entries here (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=puddingcat&keyword=I%27m%20getting%20into%20manga&filter=all) are some of the LJ ones.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

For some reason, I thought the sports drink turned people into furry lizards. Well, whatever. The crazy runs together after a while.

I have many favorite Weiss stories, but my main ship is Aya/Yohji. I love emungere's A/Y stories. I'll have to hunt around for my old recs. So many good options.

Do check out daeger's baby!Schwartz series. I absolutely adore the Evil Overlord.

[matt_doyle]

Weiss! Weiss was the first anime I watched in college, so I have all sorts of nostalgic love for it. What boggled me most about the bad animation was that sometimes, for one DVD's worth of episodes, it would improve... and then dive back into awful. I remember there was a disc in the middle that was unbelievably worse than all the others.

I also remember that I seemed to be the only person in the world who liked and mourned for Ouka.

Unfortunately, the only fanfic I can remember well enough to find is crackfic.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I like Ouka, but due to technical issues, I was watching the dub, so it was hard to take her plight too seriously when every damn time her name was said, the actor would struggle anew to pronounce it, and generally end up with something like, "Oh...Aah... Ow-ooo-gah!"

[matt_doyle]

Ouch. Yeah, I can see how that would have an effect.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

The dub is uniformly terrible, but Omi's voice actor is in my heart forever, both for the ridiculous/funny lines he has in the dub outtakes, and the fact he had Omi/Nagi fanart on his website for a while. Bless.

If you saw the dub outtakes (and you really, really should) it's pretty obvious they had low to no preparation/coaching on the damn dub.

[sanada.livejournal.com]

Seconding mami_san's fics. They're clever and snarky and sexy and fun. Also long. I've converted them to ebooks, haha.

But my absolute favorite Weiss (or, rather, Schwarz) fic is incomplete and has been deleted since 2002 or so. Even half done, it's a freaking novel. You can still read it on the Wayback Machine: The Color of Joy. (http://web.archive.org/web/20040612102427/http://www.sionnachdhubh.com/Fanfiction/color_of_joy/colorofjoy1.htm) Unfortunately, the author appears to be completely out of fandom (or has simply managed to elude my stalking for ten years...)

[wordkink.livejournal.com]

I appear only to say, BWHAHAHAHAHAHAAA.

[lauand.livejournal.com]

Here via chomiji:

Farfarello, whose psychic power is being totally batshit and hating nuns. They have meetings in Nagi's bedroom, which is in outer space.

XDDDDDDD!!! OMG, yours is one of the most accurate descriptions of an anime ever.

(Except, the girl's name is rather "dead", which makes it all even better)

I love the moon, the wind, the angst, the moon, the wind, the clichés, the moon, the wind...

For better or worse, I'm a Schwarz fangirl, so I can't be too varied in the recs.

I'd strongly suggest mami-san fanfiction, she's even made me like a Schuldig/Aya fic and that's quite the feat. My personal favourites are SNAFU and Paralyzer, though, because I ship Crawford/Schuldig like whoa.

http://www.angelfire.com/anime4/patternsofblood/mamifics.html

Emungere's Inertia Arc is part of a 30_lemons challenge, but she's an extraordinary author so she can make it a story of porn with plot, which is my favourite genre out there. It's Schuldig/Yohji.

http://archiveofourown.org/works/231546


I'm also quite in love with Eidolon's Tree "Trilogy", even if there's a couple of melodramatics moments not everybody is able to believe. Again Crawford/Schuldig:

http://contrary-perfection.net/


And with KD Sarge's "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained" and sequels (Aya/Yohji, Crawford/Schuldig):

http://downtime-mayhem.livejournal.com/tag/wk

And I could flood you with names of interesting authors, but I suppose I better limit the recs in case you're more inclined to other ships or don't want to feel overwhelmed with an excess of information.

I remember indelicateink asking for recs, I could dig up the link of that post, she gathered tons of recs from people. Just let me know if you're interested.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Schuldig = Guilty, so I take it there's lots to analyse regarding the Black group, too ^^

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

It was so bad! I never understood why it had so much success, so many posters in manga shops (though the posters were much prettier than the actual show), so many fanfics.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Ah, my anime first love, how deeply embarrassing you are in hindsight!

The only fic I will admit to having written for it at this point is the G&S parody and the Sunday in the Park with George filk.

It still does make me happy that Team Evil really *was* keeping the main characters around for entertainment value, and that the good guys never managed to turn the tables or even really figure out what the tables were. Not a trope one sees often.

[raeraesama.livejournal.com]

Weiss Kreuz is the series that got me into m/m fiction, haha.

My ultimate favorite fanfic that resulted in me drawing plenty of Yohji/Schuldich fanart is the Harmonics Arc. The first one is called Something Me in You, I believe. You might have to use the Wayback Machine to find it...its a rather old fanfic, and I believe the authors site is gone.

[shati.livejournal.com]

This is a non-fic rec, but some of the dub outtakes (especially the dub VAs' reactions to script developments) are my favorite thing about WK's existence.

[shati.livejournal.com]

The classic falling truck scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFKS4jI-GTM&feature=related

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

The first 38 seconds were hilarious. I was laughing so much that my housemate had to ask what was going on from the next room. I think I have everything I need to from this series now. :D

[gratiela.livejournal.com]

*de-lurking*

This sounds fabulously cracky, quite possibly the thing I need to see right now!
Thank you for the rec!

[chomiji]

lady_ganesh recently did a pair of WK/Saiyuki crossover fics with Hakkai and Crawford as rock gods and Schuldig and Gojyo as the groupies who are following them across Europe. I acutally enjoyed them quite a bit despite the fact that I have never actually been able to make myself do anything about Weiss Kreuz: Can't Stop Won't Stop and its sequel Yes Yes Yes.

Also, helliongoddess suggests 7veils' WK fic. I know and will vouch for phae's writing from Saiyuki fandom.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks!

[two-point.livejournal.com]

There's just no going back for you now, you do realize this?

So many good stories already referenced here; WK is my comfort fic. I suggest anything by ahpookishere but I'd collect her grocery lists if she'd let me.

[angharadd.livejournal.com]

Haha, that was one of my first fandoms! It's hilariously bad, but then, it also has its poignant moments (or, at least, what seemed poignant to a teenaged me, I wouldn't dare rewatch it lest I ruin whatever fond memories of it I might have) - I liked Botan from episode 18 (I think?), who shamelessly flirted with Aya and was the only decent guy in the whole series.

Also, the spin-off/prequel audiodramas have a transgender character who's more well-adjusted than the rest of the cast, as far as I remember.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I first watched WK years and years ago on a badly-copied VHS tape featuring badly-translated subtitles (by fans who thought they were adhering to the original Japanese, apparently), which contributed to it being so bad it was good.

[marici.livejournal.com]

There was this amazing id vortex fic that Petronia recced in the distant past... Schwartz centric, with Aya joining them and becoming his, um, whore-for-diamonds, slutty, sulky, bitchy bottom alter-ego, with a lot of Schuldig PoV narrative. It was strikingly entertaining, though I'd be hard pressed to call it "good" in any normal sense.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Here are my recs on LJ. daegaer is indeed an excellent author, and her giant-ass Mars/Fenndom-ish AU mars_assassins is one of my all-time favorites.

If you're in the market for fanart, error256 is amazing, and sometimes even worksafe. Weiss has a pretty substantial Russian-speaking fandom, and they seem pretty awesome. Someone translated You'll Never Tan in this Town Again for me, so I'll self-rec that one, because it's gen and funny and I'm still ridiculously flattered it got translated.