My aesthetic: Cheesy late '90s anime

[yuuago]

Deciding to rewatch Weiss Kreuz for the Nth time was a very good idea.

I love it, love it, love it, in all its cheesy badly-animated late 90s glory. I still remember all the words to "Velvet Underworld", even.

... 'Scuse me a moment, I'm just plain overwhelmed with nostalgia.

While I'm thinking about it - I remember I used to hear people saying the first episode was pretty blah, didn't have much to do with the plot ("...plot"), and was skipable. Well, maybe that's true. But I've always been rather fond of it. Representative of the rest of the series? Nah. Enjoyable? For me, yes! Somehow. I don't know. I've never claimed to have good taste.

I wonder who'll turn out to be my favourite this time. Last time I did a re-watch, I fell in love with Ken and Omi. This time, who knows. Maybe I'll end up obsessed with Ran again. (Probably not. He appealed to me a lot in high school. Now... not so much. Though I will confess to wishing that I had his hideous orange sweater. It looks comfy.)

Confession: After I bought the DVD, I threw my VHS fansubs out. It was a hard decision, you guys. So hard. But as much as I loved squinting at fuzzy fansubs, it was time to let it go. To everything there is a season etc etc etc. ...I kept the tape with the OAVs, though, since there isn't a disc for it. WHY ISN'T THERE A DVD RELEASE FOR THAT, I WANT TO KNOW. I WOULD BUY IT. SO HARD. THE OAVS WERE SO GOOD. Well, um. "Good". I mean. In comparison to the rest of the series. Uh. Well.

I can hardly wait to rewatch this entire awful, cheesy, delightfully ridiculous series.

Comments

[kalloway]

(from my Network page)

I rewatched Weiss earlier in the year and really fell for Ken. I found a lot of the interpersonal relationships in the series to be different than what I'd remembered...

And then I watched Gluhen for the first time. Are you going to add that onto your rewatch?

[yuuago]

Hi! o/

Time can have a way of changing one's perception of things, to be sure. :D Last time I watched through it, it was only a few years ago (five years, maybe?) but no doubt there will be a lot of things I forgot.

Hmmm... Gluhen is included on the DVD set I bought, so you know what, I'll probably watch that too! I've never seen it. Well - I think I watched the first episode, when it first came out, and I was disappointed because it wasn't what I wanted it to be. But maybe my perception of it will be different this time.

[kalloway]

I had last seen it closer to a decade ago, so yeah... coming at it from a very different place!

I had put off Gluhen because so many people had said it was terrible and I ended up rather enjoying it. It was still over-the-top Weiss and it had a much stronger/coherent narrative than the first series, which I thought was pretty cool. And yeah, there's some wall-banging moments, but it's Weiss, with the florist assassins and weird psychics and it's gonna do things that don't necessarily make a lot of sense but are very Weiss, upon further reflection.

[yuuago]

Hmmm, "different but still very Weiss" sounds like something I can work with. Maybe I'll end up liking it, then! Hopefully. Especially since my tolerance for "that is ridiculous, what" is pretty broad. ;p

[the_rck]

Gluhen is definitely more coherent than Kapitel. There are some things that it does that I wish it hadn't done. I can see those things as extensions of previous canon (from what I gather the drama CDs set up a lot of it), but I don't like them. There's a reason that, when I write for WK, I tend to diverge from canon before Gluhen.

I might feel differently if I had come to WK after Gluhen. I know a lot of people who did who are really enthusiastic about Gluhen because it didn't break any of their fanon/headcanon assumptions. It is better than Kapitel in some ways, in terms of being more coherent and having more of a through line for the various characters. It's still OTT ridiculous, of course. There are still parts of the story that don't hold up to any sort of scrutiny, but that's Weiss Kreuz.

It was, though, pretty widely hated in the English speaking fandom when it first came out and not just because the characters were redesigned (though there was a massive fuss over that). People were particularly unhappy with the final episode. Side B resolved some of that, I believe, but there was a great deal of tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth.

I'll be curious to know what you think if you do watch it.

[dhampyresa]

What even is Weiss Kreuz, man

[yuuago]

Delicious crack.

(Actually is this a question, or is it agreement, because honestly even as a long time fan sometimes I ask myself "What even is Weiss Kreuz" because it is RIDICULOUS)

[dhampyresa]

This is a question. I've never watched it, but everything I hear about it is whacked.

[yuuago]

I'm trying to think of a good way to summarize it but. Like. I don't even know. It is truly ridiculous. Um.... Okay.

WEISS are florists by day, assassins by night, fighting against SCHWARZ, a group of evil psychic assassins hired by an organization that wants to take over the world. And there's a mysterious chick who's been in a coma for years but never ages a day. And everyone wants REVENGE!!!

Everything is cracktastic and badly-animated and everyone makes terrible fashion choices. The plot is... well, there is a plot, it's just full of holes and doesn't always make sense.

It was Koyasu Takehito's vanity project. I hear he had a hand in the anime writing, apparently. It shows (Not in a good way).

It's... a canon very close to my heart, even though it's terribad, and because it's so ridiculous, I usually don't feel comfortable recommending it these days, because it really is a "SO BAD IT'S GOOD" canon. But you know, now that I think of it, it might be the kind of cracky shenanigans that you would enjoy. Possibly.

[dhampyresa]

WEISS vs SCHWARTZ? I see what you did there.

Thanks for the summary.

[hokuton_punch]

Man, I need to do a rewatch - but the trouble is I want to rewatch it WITH someone, to share the pain joy, and not many people can be lured in to watching Weiss Kreuz these days. BUT MAN. ALL THAT NOSTALGIA, ALL THOSE SCHWARZ FEELINGS, ALL THE LAUGHTER.