nalanzu

[nalanzu]

[nalanzu]

Episode 25: Ende Des Weiss - To the Knights...

Okay, last episode of the core series, or the part of the show that the western fandom knew best. The comics and the radio dramas never were officially translated into English (to the best of my knowledge), and they were absolutely essential to the canonical storyline.

The episode opens with reports of nationwide riots that the police cannot control and Ken pointing out on a map where girl!Aya and Sakura are being held (how do they know again?). Yohji is in disbelief that someone can be resurrected (ok, maybe they're trying to resurrect a dead guy and not a demon but still). Birman points out that it doesn't matter if it's possible or not, that Esstset believes it and that's what's important.

Weiss fucks off to go derail a bunch of lunatics and a ritual while Birman protests that she cannot get them any backup. Weiss says they never have backup, how is this time any different. Birman is unhappy about this.

In the museum, there is a cheering audience for the resurrection ritual (why). Aya is recklessly rushing ahead in his quest to save his sister and his underage stalker. He's setting the pace for the rest of them, who are not happy about it. It is, however, not difficult for them to break in. Through the front door. Guys. GUYS.

As the ritual progresses, girl!Aya starts to wake up. Weiss continues to be sneaky for once and also continues to murder Esststet's agents. They devise a plan (now? NOW is when you figure out a plan?) and split up to carry it out. More Esstset agents get murdered. Omi finds gas masks and lasers on the floor, then trips and sets off an alarm. Good job, Omi. Yohji is wondering why Schwarz has skin in this game, incidentally, but he's thwarted by the alarm going off.

Aya literally charges five men shooting at him with machine guns who somehow fail to hit him with even a single bullet (WHY). Omi having realized he fucked up, sets off a bomb in the storage room he landed in. This has the effect of setting the building on fire, as the storage room was an armory with Many Explosives. Esstset is determined to continue the ritual.

Weiss interrupts in their typical dramatic fashion, with Aya giving the Dark Beasts speech and everything. Esstset is absolutely unimpressed. They're also psychic, as one of them throws Ken across the room with the power of his mind. Weapons stop just short of hitting them - wire, darts, everything. Esstset gloats that they've lived for centuries and weapons won't kill them as they start absolutely wrecking the place. Masonry crumbling, floors cracking open, the works.

Guys, this is not going to help your ritual continue, ok, if you destroy the building, how are you going to summon your dead soul?

Aya is undeterred by the raw power in front of him and distracts Esstset just enough for Ken to stab one of them in the back. This in turn lets him stab a second. The third and last member vanishes down a hidden hallway as Aya grabs his sister's once again unconscious body. No, wait, that was Sakura all along. Weiss is, uh, perplexed at this reveal.

The surviving member of Esstset is feeling some kind of way about their ritual getting fucked up (and possibly the other two members buying the farm), and starts screaming at Schwarz for not doing anything. At this point, he realizes that Schwarz has girl!Aya and that the ritual was being conduced with someone else.

Crawford boastfully declares that Schwarz will be the ones to wake girl!Aya (I don't think that was the point of the ritual but ok). Remaining Esstset member tries to break the room down around them, but Nagi has it under control and stops the crack in the floor. Esstset dude realizes he done fucked up, because Schwarz is stronger than he is.

Sakura is Not Impressed by the assassin clothes, and Weiss explains that they are in fact a team of assassins. However, Aya says, that's not the point, the point is that Sakura is doing dumb shit. Sakura says she wanted to help Aya. Aya once again does his little song and dance about being a murderer, and Yohji helpfully adds that murder is always wrong. Sakura again attempts to justify their behavior, as she still thinks they are fundamentally good people, but she just cries instead. Aya thanks Sakura for letting him see his sister and reveals that his name is actually Ran.

Meanwhile, Schwarz is now threatening the last member of Esstset, who is attempting to bribe them with powerful posistions in his New World Order. Crawford laughs him out of the room and says they have Other Priorities. Schwarz doesn't want order; they want utter chaos, survival of the fittest and the strongest, and they kill the last member of Esstset.

I feel like that escalated quickly, tbh. I don't recall they were quite so unhinged in the rest of the series, but I could be wrong.

As Crawford gloats that there is nothing to stop them from fucking shit up now, Weiss flings open the metaphorical door with a resounding You're Forgetting About Us. In Schwarz's defense, Weiss has really not been a threat to them at any point.

Aya demands his sister. Schuldig declines, as Schwarz also needs here, and the fight is on. Aya snarls that his sister is not to be used any more, and Sakura goes to drag her off the table and out of the building. Manx shows up just in time to shoot a gun out of Crawford's hand and help Sakura save the unconscious girl!Aya.

The building starts to collapse as Weiss squares off against Schwarz. With shots of the riots outside cut into the fight, Crawford monologues about the evil nature of humanity while facing Aya, Nagi throws Omi into a stone column hard enough to crack it, Farfarello slams Ken's head into another column over and over, and Aya screams that they have hope.

Crawford laughs at him, but Omi tears free of Nagi's grip to launch himself at Farfarello, who breaks Omi's ribs instead. Yohji is trying to choke Schuldig, Ken knocks Farfarello off Omi, and Omi goes right back to trying to murder Nagi. The building, which has been collapsing this whole time, finally falls right into Tokyo Bay. Sakura screams Aya's name from the road overlooking the bay, while girl!Aya wakes up in Manx's lap. I've got questions about muscle tone, but she gets out of the car with zero problems as Sakura says she has a story to tell.

Cut to the epilogue, with the flowershop. Girl!Aya is its only employee (Momoe not withstanding), and Sakura has cut her hair again. Manx and Birman lurk outside, keeping watch. We also see Tot in a field of flowers, and I honestly want to know who's looking out for her, because we all know she cannot hold a job or rent an apartment. QUESTIONS. I HAVE THEM. Maybe Kritiker scooped her up, IDK. The equipment in the flowershop basement is all covered with dustcloths, except for the beanbag sofa and a picture of our four florist assassins.

The final scene is a bunch of presumably muggers running away from our four boys in their assassin gear overreacting to petty street crime.

The implication is that Weiss survived and are no longer part of Kritiker. The subsequent movies, drama CDs, animated series, and comics will indicate that this is not in fact the case. It's not an inconsistent note for the series to end on, but it does rather seem to be saying that Weiss will always hang around to murder people for engaging in crime. This does beg some questions regarding why every member of Weiss feels compelled to continue to murder people to death instead of finding other ways to be productive members of society, but there would be a much less Beautifully Tragic show if they did that.

The series as a whole is very flawed, I cannot lie. It uses a number of actively harmful tropes and conceits while painting them in an aspirational light. There are honestly too many to list, but I think the worst offenders are the idea that one's emotions entitle one to someone else and that pain is an appropriate justification for being an asshole. There's quite a lot to be said about representation of women and how - nearly without exception - they are defined primarily and often only by their relationship to one of the male characters.

The show raises a number of very interesting questions about ethics and morality, and how to navigate justice when the official systems are ineffective. It asks - just barely - what justice really is. It then proceeds to spectacularly refuse to answer any of these questions and throws trauma porn centered on pretty boys at its viewers instead.

Weiss Kreuz teases worldbuilding with the shadowy organization Kritiker, and then refuses to explain how it works either. This is incredibly frustrating to me, personally, because I want to know how the details work. Weiss Kreuz just glosses over the details and gives the necessary information to its characters when it's salient, which keeps the story moving effectively but also provides a truly stunning number of places to apply fridge logic.

As a vanity project started by a popular voice actor, it became more popular than anyone - except, no doubt, said voice actor - expected, because it is very good at its emotions. Those emotional arcs, inconsistent though they were from episode to episode, plus the gorgeous character designs struck a chord with a very wide audience and then it just sort of became a self-sustaining phenomenon.

I had a lot of fun with this show as a baby fan, and over twenty years later I'm still having fun with it. There's surprisingly little that has become more problematic with age (look, I had issues with the age gaps and with the Tot romantic subplot the first time around), and it still provides a fertile environment for speculation and imagination. And, of course, for porn.

[nalanzu]

Episode 24: Zeremonio - Likenesses Passing

This episode, unlike most of the others, takes up some of its very limited runtime to give us some Last Time On Weiss Kreuz scenes. I'd like to point out that Weiss have a beanbag couch in their basement instead of real furniture, and that is absolutely the most true-to-life representation of a bunch of 20 year old men decorating their own space.

We open the episode with Weiss sending Momoe, the old lady who took care of the flowershop, into the countryside to be safe. As if she wasn't a Kritiker agent, come on. (To be fair, the show never says this explicitly, but there is literally no other explanation for her.) Weiss then thinks that they need to worry about themselves, since Schwarz is going to try to murder them to death at some point and will probably find out about the flowershop.

Guys, it's far too late for that and I do not know why you haven't been worried about that THIS WHOLE TIME. Yohji points out that if Schwarz really wants to find them, it doesn't matter where they hide. Yohji is the only sensible person here.

On the other side of - presumably - Tokyo Bay, Esstset has hoarded some art in a museum and they admire it as they go farther underground. There are glowing rocks underground, along with a fountain and some stone statues holding up the ceiling. Esstset gloats about meeting someone again as they can finally conduct their ritual.

In another room (building? city? IDK), girl!Aya's body is being Prepared with glittery IV fluid while Schwarz watches. And Sakura. Crawford says they're adjusting her DNA. I have Questions. Schuldig says they're going to sacrifice her to raise a demon, or at least that's what Esstset thinks is going to happen, but that Esstset is full of shit. And there's Nagi, somehow still alive despite getting a dramatic death scene a couple episodes back. He is also contemptuous of the demon thing.

Crawford and Schuldig explain the aging process incorrectly, attributing it to DNA misfires and not once mentioning telomeres, before saying that girl!Aya hasn't aged a day in the two years she's been comatose. She is therefore the fountain of youth, if they can figure out how to use her. Schuldig warns Sakura off of trying to tell Aya where his sister is, while Crawford tells him not to cause too much damage.

Kritiker has infiltrated this lab with a couple of agents in the ductwork and Birman outside in another bubblegum pink car. Why does every woman in this show drive a bubblegum pink car. More importantly, she points out that the two agents in the ducts are among the last few surviving members of Kritiker (and it was ten or so that have been murdered already, making this a VERY small organization) and would they please try not to die. Of course, Farfarello kills them both in the next 30 seconds. They've already told Birman where the lab is, which is great, but what's less great is that it takes her so long to start the car and get moving that Farfarello has time to leap on top of it for a dramatic sequence of Birman forcing him off her car.

Inside the lab, Schuldig has told Aya to stay put and that he's not going to forgive her for pointing a gun at him. Sakura is In Crisis, identifying with girl!Aya and crying. She then proceeds to climb out the window, but instead of escaping she goes down to girl!Aya's hospital bed. Weiss is at the flowershop, bitching about not having any business (the absolute least of your concerns, boys), and Birman shows up to tell them where girl!Aya is.

Weiss shows up at the lab, which has been rapidly emptied out. They search for Clues. They find girl!Aya stashed in a locker. Sakura, you lunatic. Weiss immediately gives up on looking for clues and just take girl!Aya back to their apartment. Aya, buddy, without IV fluids and an NG tube, she is going to die of dehydration in a matter of days.

In the museum, Esstset and Schwarz are having A Moment. Esstset thanks Schwarz for their preparatory work for the ritual and Schuldig accepts their thanks in the most creepy way possible. They all get a bit of a creepy moment. Esstset says they trust their Special Component is also being prepared, and Crawford says that they are taking Extra Care because of how Special she is.

Crawford is perfectly well aware that they have Sakura and not girl!Aya, and also that Sakura will not work for the ritual. Crawford swears the ritual will go off as planned. Esstset points out that the next time the stars will align will be in 800 years and Schwarz better not fuck it up.

Schwarz attempts to smack girl!Aya's location out of Sakura before they remember that Schuldig is literally psychic. (How did they not notice WHEN IT HAPPENED istg.) Schuldig finds the answer extremely easily, again prompting me to ask how the fuck they didn't notice the substitution when it happened.

In the flowershop basement, Omi and Birman are Researchng while Ken and Yohji are bickering. Literally all of Kritiker is unreachable. Aya defuses the tension by appearing just as Nagi rings the doorbell. Crawford wants to exchange the girls, Nagi says, and he gives them a time and place to make the trade.

Esstset is on some bullshit about Tibet being a magical place. And some secret society with green gloves. They found a Magic Text in Tibet, idk. This is the show's half-assed attempt to explain the actual demon summoning.

At the stated location, Aya meets Crawford. Sakura is there, but Aya has of course not brought his sister. Crawford tells Aya that Schuldig is going to the flowershop to fuck shit up then sets a crowd of goons on Aya. Whether they're in their right minds or not is unclear.

Weiss, having done something right, has set Ken and Yohji to guard the bed girl!Aya isn't actually in. Schuldig falls for the bait anyway. He is, however, not distressed to see girl!Aya not there. This is largely because Farfarello has found the basement, which is where Omi is hiding with girl!Aya and Birman.

Schuldig very handily overpowers both Ken and Yohji, leaving them alive so they can watch the chaos. Aya returns to the flowershop, having singlehandedly murdered all of the goons, to find Omi and Birman unconscious on the floor and his sister missing.

In the museum, Esstset has everything they need for The Ritual.

The plot is moving so fast in this episode that we have very little meat to chew on in the realm of character development. The only quibble I have here is that Schwarz keeps leaving Weiss alive for shits and giggles. One would think they would know better. Weiss is absolutely outmatched, every time, but they are also persistent and Schwarz only has to fuck up once.

[nalanzu]

Episode 23: Schraube - Everything for Love

Don't judge me. I'll spend my Sunday night how I want. Also, the title means "screw" (as in the fastener) and I don't think the writers were trying to make a multilingual dirty joke but I really can't say for sure.

We open on Sakura having grown her hair out and braided it just like girl!Aya. And she's done it on purpose. She's not sure why she's trying to look like her crush's sister, she says to herself, as she has flashbacks of Aya murdering a dude behind a concert stage. Her conclusion is that she's going to believe in Aya no matter what, becasue she's in love with him and oh my god, Sakura, no.

Time for an airport! Why are we in an airport? Ah, Esstset is in the airport and Crawford is quietly murdering undercover law enforcement officers with a gun in broad daylight how did no one notice that. Apparently there are a number of cops trying to track this Evil Organization and Schwarz has systematically murdered them all.

Back to Sakura, her classmates are teasing her about having grown her hair out for a boy. I'd like to point out that since we saw her last - four episodes ago - it's grown out at least five or six inches. Assuming a (very rapid) growth rate of half an inch a month, it's been close to a year? Since four episodes ago? Really?

The flowershop is still there, and Sakura lurks outside it, only to be noticed by Schwarz. Also by Omi, who tells her that Aya's not there because he's on a business trip while Schuldig and Farfarello lurk down the street, unnoticed in a VERY flashy car, and plot her kidnapping. We also learn that Schuldig can't block out other people's minds, which is fascinating and deserving of further exploration that we are not going to get.

Sakura and Omi have some tea and Sakura wants to know why they all work at a flowershop. Omi, who is on a hair trigger, is way more distressed by this innocent question than he should be. He tries to deflect by asking if Sakura wants to talk about something else. This backfires spectacularly as Sakura tells him she saw Aya murder a dude with a sword. She also falls all over herself trying to justify literal murder, and asks Omi to tell her more about Aya to soothe her conscience.

Omi tries to deflect again by telling Sakura that Aya's sister is missing and he is rather Distraught about it. Sakura nods understandingly, and then leaves. I - how is this a reasonable progression for a conversation? Aya returns and Omi confesses that he told her that girl!Aya is missing. I am 100% certain that Sakura knew this in-universe and also that the viewer knows that she knows this, so I'm not sure why Omi is so upset about it. He also confesses that Sakura caught Aya on a mission. Aya says not to worry, he'll take care of it.

Ken and Yohji take this opportunity to return and bitch about someone setting a car on fire. Ken, hilariously, thinks this is a sign of the deterioration of modern society, an attitude more common in the elderly and middle-aged than someone who is literally twenty. This moaning about how It Didn't Used To Be Like This (how would you know, Ken) is interrupted by Manx bringing them a message.

Oh, it was Kritiker agents getting murdered by Esstset, not undercover cops. I now have questions about the structure of Kritiker and what's up with the flashy assassin teams if they have actual trained agents lying around. Manx tells Weiss to be careful and leaves.

Cut to Sakura hanging out on a bridge obsessing over Aya. Schuldig psychics at her and gets her to follow him willingly by claiming to be a friend of Aya's. He then says he'll take her to girl!Aya. Sakura rightly has suspicions, which Schuldig deflects in the MOST half-assed manner. Sakura goes with him anyway.

Schuldig does in fact take Sakura to girl!Aya and makes the hilarious claim that he has not once in his life told a lie. I vaguely want to go back and check all his appearances to make sure, but if nothing else, this man has been extremely creative with the truth. Sakura, despite her suspicions, somehow thinks Schuldig is just going to let her go. He then tells her that keeping girl!Aya away from Aya is going to keep girl!Aya safe, and also that Aya is a legit assassin. He wants her to talk Aya out of his revenge mission.

We now see Omi talking to one of Sakura's classmates, who's told him that she's missing. Omi tells everyone else. Ken appears with Birman, who has a mission for them - Esstset. She describes them as a fanatical religious group and Weiss is supposed to take them out. Yes, the group that systematically rooted out a bunch of trained Kritiker agents. Kritiker thinks their best shot at killing these people is a bunch of emo twenty-year olds in leather coats. I absolutely hate that they're right.

Schuldig is explaining to Sakura that she's going to scare him into giving up his murdery ways with a gun. Sakura thinks he's not a friend of Aya's at all (whatever gave you that idea, Sakura).

Weiss has found Esstset's private jet and decided that their best bet is a literal frontal assault. Crawford and Farfarello have something to say about that, and Esstset get into a car and drive off while Weiss is stalled. No, wait.

Aya was missing and - did he have a rocket launcher? How did he create an explosion in the path of Esstset's car? Why is Sakura in THAT car? Because she is, and she is also pointing a gun at Aya. Are there two different cars here? This is very unclear.

In any case, Aya and Sakura are facing off against each other. Aya drops his sword. Schuldig forces Sakura to keep pointing the gun at him anyway as she tries to tell him where girl!Aya is. She pulls the trigger. She misses. Yohji has used this time to get in the way and yank the gun out of her hand with a wire. The other three square off against Crawford and Farfarello, sirens blare, and Schwarz + Sakura (and presumably Esstset?) flee the scene.

Weiss also get moving before the cops show up to ruin their night any further, but I feel they aren't moving nearly quickly enough. It's not like Kritiker is goign to keep them out of jail. Also, Aya waves his sword around dramatically, but there are no helicopters around for him to throw it at this time. And scene.

I would really like to explore this bit about Schuldig always hearing voices - his exact words are sometimes he doesn't know which thoughts are his and which aren't. This should make him the unstable one, not Farfarello, honestly, or at least he should be a hell of a lot more erratic than he is. I am honestly annoyed that we're not going to go into that.

I would also like the show to explore Sakura's attitude toward Aya - not even the fact that she saw him stab a man to death is getting her to budge on her crush and that is fucked up, but I'm pretty sure the narrative thinks that's aspirational. And inspirational. And all I can think is that this is how women end up in the shittiest of relationships, because they ignore all the red flags in the name of love.

[nalanzu]

Episode 22: Miteid - Final Reconciliation

The title card is misspelled again, and should read "Mitleid."

Do we remember Schwarz's room of stars? The one with no walls, floor, or ceiling where they all stand around looking dramatic in the dark? This is how this episode provides the exposition and reminder that Esstset wants girl!Aya delivered to them for their ritual because she has an extraordinary physical body. Schwarz plots to take girl!Aya from Schreient.

Omi is searching a map for Schreient's lab, using literally nothing but the map, while Ken is the peanut gallery. There is much sympathy for Aya's concern over his missing sister and Yohji moping over Neu's death. That he caused. While he lets his cigaretts burn low and the ash fall onto the carpet. Yohji, that's gross, and also it's going to start a house fire.

Meanwhile, the remaining members of Schreient are still looking sadly at Takatori Masafumi. We get some flashbacks of Masafumi and the ladies of Schreient essentially being a harem, which is vaguely disturbing. Given the context of who created this show (men) as a vanity project, and the level of gender inequality evident in Japan in the 90s (no, I will not cite my sources, feel free to do as much research as you like), the presence of Schreient as The Token Women isn't surprising. It's also not surprising and yet somehow still disappointing that they are all literally in love with the same man, who created them as a team.

I digress.

Tot and her cognitive impairments remember that Neu is dead and runs out of the room crying. She goes right past Schwarz, standing at the bottom of some truly glorious stairs. Nagi follows her. Hell and Schön haggle with Schwarz over girl!Aya while Nagi hits on Tot and also causes the wind to lift up her skirt. Farfarello thinks knives are the best way to get girl!Aya. Crawford tries to pretend he's being reasonable and that they should team up to murder Weiss.

Omi is still looking for Schreient's lab by looking at a map AND NOTHING ELSE, when they get a message from Hell to come get girl!Aya before they kill her. Aya is 100% willing to go right into the trap, knowing it is a trap. He also stands dramatically in front of a VERY large full moon. Everyone else gives up and poses too, since Aya is going to Aya and if they go with him he might not die.

All of them are remarkably cheerful, considering all of their recent trauma.

There is zero stealth, as Yohji takes care of the tripwires and mines surrounding the lab in the middle of the forest by setting them all off. We then pretend that Weiss is sneaky as they zipline over an electrified barbed wire fence, just so we can get another shot of dramatic Aya in his trenchcoat in front of the moon.

Weiss finds the security cameras and decide to split up. Yohji is going to be The Distraction. Aya tells him he has a death wish and to cut it out, but they let him be the distraction anyway. He stumbles upon Nagi hitting on Tot again before he manages to make any noise. I have some questions about consent here as the two of them start making out but ok. Hilariously, Yohji hears the two of them making foreshadowy plans for the future after they finish their current mission and is all sad about the fact that he must now destroy someone else's relationship.

Crawford, on the other hand, is having none of Nagi's bullshit and reminds him that Schwarz has goals and a mission and Nagi needs to keep it in his pants until they've succeeded. Nagi is Wavering.

Aya finds the Masafumi tank. He does not give a shit about Masafumi in the tank, just whether or not Hell will tell him where his sister is as Schön and Tot sneak up on him from behind. This splitting up thing does not appear to be working out well for Weiss.

Aya vs. 3 members of Schreient goes about as well as it did last time, with the added bonus of Nagi creeping on Tot from the shadows. Aya is still laser focused on girl!Aya, and Hell taunts him that she'll bring girl!Aya downstairs just to murder her in front of Aya. Aya's takeaway, while Schön is strangling him to death, is that his sister is upstairs. Ken appears to solve the strangling problem, but this doesn't solve the outnumbered problem. Yohji and Omi, however, appear to turn the tide in Weiss's favor.

Nagi leaps into the fight to protect Tot, much to Yohji's consternation, and Schön discovers the rest of Schwarz kidnapping girl!Aya. I do not know why they did not see this coming. Apparently Schwarz has also promised to resurrect Masafumi, but they destroy the tank instead. Which, again, Schreient should have seen coming.

Weiss literally just stands and watches as Schwarz taunts Schreient and then murders both Schön and Tot. Nagi and Tot get a sweet deathbed goodbye, then Nagi loses his shit and causes an earthquake. Aya is stopped from going after his sister as the building collapses. Schwarz makes a strategic retreat, Hell and Masafumi's body are crushed by falling rocks, and Nagi kisses a corpse.

There is literally nothing left of the building when Nagi is done with it. The rest of Schwarz has a helicopter and has concluded that there's no stopping them now. Weiss, however, has survived the collapsing building uninjured (I am not even going to ask how they pulled that off), while Yohji has some sympathy for Nagi's attempt to save Tot. Both of them appear to be dead in the rubble, punctuated by a spectacular thunderstorm - oh, Tot stands up when everyone is gone. Not dead after all.

This does feel as though it is moving toward the climax (which it is, there are only two three episodes left), so someone does know something about pacing.

The first time I watched this, I had some questions about Tot's obvious cognitive impairment (she is VERY childlike) and the romantic storyline that involved her without acknowledging that impairment. It also mirrors in a weird way the age gap between Aya and Sakura; even though Nagi is in many ways still a child himself, there's still that older male/younger female dynamic that was very popular in Japan up through the 90s (again, I will not cite my sources, go forth and learn) and still clings to the cultural zeitgeist.

I don't have too many other thoughts on the development of that particular relationship, other than it was quite rushed. However, given the time constraints of the format and the rush toward the show's finale, there wasnt really the space to give any character more development than they got. This is the type of rushed and incomplete storytelling that often makes for really great fic. This is not what this fandom delivered; there was a metric fuck ton of Aya/Yohji porn and not much else, if I recall correctly, which is a pity. There was really a lot to explore with this premise that canon touched on without going into much depth.

[nalanzu]

Episode 21: Trane - Memories

Really, you would think I had better things to do with my time. Also, the title card is misspelled; it should be Träne.

We open on a very naked Yohji getting woken by his one-night-stand, which turns out to be a nightmare of Asuka/Neu murdering him to death. He then pensively stares into the distance while I am reminded how common smoking was in Japan at that time period and also how damn much I hate the smell of cigarette smoke.

Meanwhile, in the Evil Base, girl!Aya lies comatose, while Takatori Masafumi floats in a tank under the mournful gaze of Schreient. Schuldig appears to taunt them about it and thinks they should use the body in their Kundalini experiment.

There really is a plethora of four-member assassin groups in this show, which is honestly not surprising given the pronunciation of the number four.

There are also a number of people who've been murdered by having their spines ripped out. Kritiker, ever on the ball, notice immediately and set Weiss after them. Of course, there is no target; Weiss has to investigate and figure it out. The only clue they get - from Birman, not holo-Persia - is that this involves Kundalini Energy, which she explains as the potent energy at the base of the spine. That, and that a four-woman group has been spotted.

Weiss sets off to go find Schreient, with Aya and Omi lurking in the hallways and Ken and Yohji breaking into a computer lab (this seems like the wrong division of labor tbh but ok). Schreient finds Weiss instead, with Neu going right for Yohji. He is Distressed. Neu does not give a fuck and kicks the shit out of him while Ken is off being Distracted by Tot.

Yohji finally manages to end the fight by hugging Yohji from behind while Ken makes a Dramatic Re-entry through a broken window and Aya is utterly useless. Schreient attempts to escape in a bubblegum pink VW bug (I forgot they had one of those, wtaf) and - thanks to one of Omi's darts - runs right over Neu in the process. They leave her behind and have a brief conversation about how annoying and/or hott Schwarz is while showing zero regard for their teammate.

Weiss has inexplicably delivered both Yohji and Neu to Yohji's bedroom instead of to a hospital, where they patch each other up and Ken assumes they are fucking like rabbits. Omi brings dinner and asks what "the doctor" said, so maybe they went to a hospital after all. Ken and Omi fuck off to do "research" while Neu might or might not have some of her memories as Asuka.

This episode, incidentally, is better animated than the previous two.

Oh, and Aya breaks into Yohji's room and demands Neu tell him where his sister is. Read the room, Aya.

Ken and Omi are getting nowhere in looking for information in Omi's bedroom with no apparent sources and no further clues. Omi concludes they're going to have to make Kritiker do some of the legwork and that a better use of their time would be to have Opinions on Yohji's ex-partner-turned-brainwashed-assassin.

They are interrupted by the sound of Aya attempting to literally shake information out of Neu. It does not go well. Yohji tells Aya he will ask, ok, and Aya reluctantly backs off. The following morning, Yohji has concluded that his teammates are not to be trusted and fucked off with Neu.

In the undisclosed location where Esstset lurks evilly plotting world domination, they discuss how girl!Aya has exactly the right body for their plans. They do not elaborate on these plans other than they involve a ritual, and literally cackle out loud.

Yohji and Neu are clothes shopping, which is not going to help them find girl!Aya, and Yohji has dressed Neu in VERY feminine clothing. I feel I should point out that Asuka did not dress in that particular style, which makes me wonder if Yohji had Opinions about his partner's tomboyish style. Neu also wants to sit in the shadowy corner in the dark, not by the window like Asuka used to enjoy, and Yohji takes a beat before deciding that expecting Neu to be Asuka isn't going to be helpful and he should appreciate her for who she is. It's a weirdly healthy attitude for this show.

In the flowershop basement, Omi and Ken have researched a list of labs potentially being used for the Kundalini experiment (and honestly, how did Kritiker make that leap? While having no other information? A girl has Questions) and found nothing. Aya is less concerned with the stalled investigation and more worried about where Yohji and the potential lead on his sister are. Ken and Omi try to cover for him. This is a fail. It is not helped by Yohji flat-out refusing to rell Aya where Neu is.

Aya's attitude and the tension of the situation are also not helped by Yohji smugly pointing out that if Neu hasn't got any memories she can't very well tell them where girl!Aya is. Ken thinks Neu may be lying, which gets him a punch to the face. Yohji storms off, which leads the other three to wonder whether or not he's actually quitting Weiss.

Aya, in a rare moment of empathy that is COMPLETELY AT ODDS WITH HIS BEHAVIOR IN THE REST OF THE EPISODE points out that Yohji's main reason for being part of Weiss was the death of his partner, while Aya's main motivation was the wellbeing of his sister, and they are therefore two sides of the same coin. ISTG Aya is the most inconsistently written character on this entire show.

Cut to Yohji, who is making an attempt to shake Neu's memories loose by bringing her to where Asuka died. PTSD flashbacks ftw, apparently. It seems to work, as Neu tells him where the lab is and also that girl!Aya is there. Ken and Omi's reaction is relief. Aya is somehow suspicious.

Weiss break into the basement, where the actual lab is supposed to be, by which I mean Omi hacks into the electronic lock and bitches that no one else is useful at all. The rest of Schreient appear, cackling, and explain that Weiss has fallen into their trap and also that girl!Aya isn't there. The floor caves in, dumping Ken and Omi down a level. Aya, uncharacteristically, gets the shit kicked out of him in a matter of seconds. When Yohji rushes to his rescue, Neu stands in the way and gloats about how he fell for her act.

Oh, and Omi has been poisoned by whatever weird shit the military was experimenting on before Schreient got their hands on the lab. I do not think this will have any lasting repercussions, as this show does not know the meaning of continuity.

There's a LOT of the other three members of Schreient beating on Aya, Ken freaking out over an unconscious Omi, and Neu forcefully telling Yohji over and over again how pathetic and gross it is that he kept calling her Asuka when she's really in love with Takatori Masufumi. Yohji responds to this by strangling Neu to death.

Cut to Yohji driving against a sparkly background, interspersed with scenes of the lab on fire and all of Weiss in the woods outside as well as Yohji being Lonely. We are, however, not going to see any further consequences, because that's not how this show works. It's trauma after trauma with no processing and very little repercussion.

I think the viewer is supposed to wonder whether or not Yohji is going to leave Weiss, which is a reasonable question to ask from a Watsonian perspective. From the Doylist perspective, from which the viewer should be operating, we know he's not going anywhere. But he will be very sad about it.

It occurs to me that Yohji's shockingly healthy attitude toward the differences between Neu and Asuka were in fact their own type of foreshadowing. It also occurs to me that the episode repeatedly harping on the Kundalini Experiment and its explanation of Potent Life Force had zero bearing on anything and just took up screen time that could have been better used for further character development. It had literally no impact on the plot whatsoever.

[nalanzu]

Episode 20: Recht - Arrow to Justice

Yes, we're doing another one. Once again, age gaps are a thing when a student outside a school says a professor hit on her. This very popular trope is interrupted by someone with a gun - no wait, multiple guns - and an agenda. Chaos ensues. Apparently dude was recently acquitted of murder charges, thanks to Schwarz. Crawford feels this was a waste of their talents. I like Crawford.

Weiss is having some Opinions about Schreient and their unexpected survival. Aya is Distracted, which the rest of Weiss assumes is because of Sakura. Meanwhile, Omi has been pounced on by a hot college freshman who wants a ride to the courthouse to meet her detective cop father. Omi and the freshman - Midori - do not know each other.

Shenanigans ensue. Omi is strongarmed into watching Midori's father go into the courtroom to be The Representative Of Justice. One might point out that Midori and her father having essentially kidnapped this random boy is representative of the same blindness to boundaries that is endemic to Weiss Kreuz The Series as a whole, but since the only thing stopping Omi from leaving is his conflict avoidance, I find it kind of funny. You can just leave, Omi, no one is literally forcing you to do anything. You are a Trained Assassin. And yet, here you sit. Awkwardly. Listening to a grown man tell you how a suspect bit him while being arrested.

As the defendant walks into the courtroom, Midori's detective father tells Omi that the defendant murdered six women. There are eyewitnesses and physical evidence. The defendant decides to take this opportunity to threaten the detective and is somehow not thrown out of the courtroom for it.

The trial does not go well for the prosecution, as The Creepy Defense Lawyer systematically discredits the witness using psychic abilities. Omi is the only one to find this odd. No, wait, Midori's father tells Omi outside the courtroom that Lawyer Kinugawa wins cases because all the key witnesses disappear or commit suicide. The fact that he's telling this to a - and I cannot stress this enough - a RANDOM TEENAGER leads me to infer that he has been screaming about this from the rooftops and no one is listening. To be fair, it does sound insane.

Despite his claim of physical evidence and multiple witnesses, the detective is now depressed because the one witness seen on screen was apparently the linchpin of the entire case. Omi and Midori bond over her father's drunk ass before Omi goes home to investigate. Omi, with Ken's useless company, begins to uncover A Case. (The amount of handy coincidence in this series is off the charts. The level of appalling that is Omi's eyesore of an outfit is also off the charts.)

Omi then proceeds to break into Kinugawa's place of work and also into his file cabinet. Kinugawa catches him. Omi handily dispatches a pair of goons. Kinugawa decides he's not going to be able to beat Omi to death and wants a verbal solution instead. Omi gets taken into - why is there a room with a domed glass roof and a glass bridge with no rails over what looks like a pit extending the entire length of a skyscraper? Who designed this? Who signed off on it? Did JISHA not inspect this building?????

...I digress.

Omi meets Kinugawa in the middle of the bridge (what do you mean, self-preservation instincts), where Kinugawa points at the glass roof. It represents heaven, he says, whereas if one looks down, the glass walls and the glass bridge show one the abyss of hell. Omi does not handle the heights well and nearly falls off the bridge. Kinugawa catches him.

Kinugawa reads Omi's mind and tells him he's seen many deaths. He then offers to answer any questions Omi has. Omi, with not even a hint of subtlety, jumps immediately to accusing the lawyer of murder. Kinugaway, essentially, says, "Yeah, because that's how you win the case, and winning the case is literally my job." Omi points out that this means criminals walk free. Kinugawa counters with it isn't their right to decide who lives and dies, which hits Omi The Assassin right where it hurts. Kinugawa points out that murderers are also human and there are extenuating cirumstances - essentially pointing out that one should have compassion.

If Kinugawa were trying to point out the flaws of the legal system and champion actual rehabilitation instead of retribution and punishment, I think I would be on his side. There's a lot to say about prison systems and recidivism and how incarceration is not a constructive method for reducing future crime, but that's more than I want to get into right now. Also, Kinugawa is saying none of it; he's just saying that it's really not that bad if he murders witnesses to get his clients off because hey, they're people too. He demands to know if Omi thinks crime should automatically equal death, no matter what.

Later, Esstset and Kinugawa have a conversation in which they all gloat over the evil nature of humanity and rejoice in Kinugawa's continued efforts to free evil murderers. Crawford accuses Kinugawa of murder and points out that there is in fact physical evidence. Said physical evidence then walks in the door courtesy of Kinugawa's goons, and the news then shows that all charges against the defendant were dropped after the witness died of a random heart attack and the key piece of evidence vanished. Again, Weiss appear to be the only people finding this suspicious.

Meanwhile, Omi is having an existential crisis and trauma-dumping on Ken and Aya as he parrots Kinugawa word for word - criminals have families too, they must have a reason for their evil crimes, who are Weiss to decide who lives and dies, etc. Aya tells him they are murderers and that this is dumb - they ARE the arbiters of justice. Yohji appears out of nowhere to claim that they too will be judged. Ken calls them all a necessary evil.

I would like to point out that Aya is mighty sanguine about his status as a murderer after he spent all of the last episode whining about it.

Meanwhile, the defendant has gotten his hands on his trusty Piece Of Key Evidence and used it to beat the detective to death. Midori is carted off in an ambulance. Omi decides to commit murder, only helped along a little by Birman and Virtual Persia.

Kinugawa, his goons, and the defendant are gloating as Weiss cuts the power and slices all four of them dramatically open. Omi gets the lawyer, in the thematically appropriate bridge room. From a distance. With his darts. This time, Omi is determined to play god and embrace his identity as a killer. Kinugawa points out that Omi may need his services as a lawyer at some point and really should not murder him to death. Omi knocks him off the bridge. (Seriously, who signed off on that room.)

Omi then leaves flowers in Midori's hotel room and fucks off.

I'm less distressed about this episode than the previous one, honestly; they tried to touch on the subject of the criminal justice system a little, as well as its flaws and failings. A very little. I really wish it hadn't fallen quite so hard on the side of moving people away from compassion - yes, people who do terrible things should be judged for those terrible things and should make restitution. No, causing harm should not be tolerated. However, when the person pointing out that people who do terrible things are still people and have been pushed to do these things for a reason is also the person cackling about how evil people are, it's disheartening. The first part of that statement is not wrong. It doesn't excuse perpetrating harm, but it creates a place from which to try to repair damage. This show, however, is not going to tackle complex subjects with any amount of nuance even when it brought them up to begin with. It is going to go straight for the amygdala and the tragedy of pretty boys doing dark deeds.

It was also a bit jarring to see Omi be the one to struggle with his identity as a killer while Aya was so cavalier about it, when their attitudes were 100% the polar opposite one episode ago.

[nalanzu]

Episode 19: Sehen - prelude to insanity

So 21 months later in the Real World but like, a week later in Weiss Time, we open on a crying girl who falls to her knees screaming. We then cut to a teenage boy listening to music, who also starts screaming as he loses his mind and flings himself from a second floor window.

I cannot in all honesty quibble with the episode title card's claim that seeing is the first step to losing one's goddamn mind.

Moving on, the flowershop delivery van is bringing arrangements to a theater. Incidentally, Aya knows way too much about being backstage, and Omi is far too cheerful about his claim that the warren of hallways and doors backstage mean that a fire breaking out would murder everyone in the building to death. I don't remember this episode ending in arson, and now I'm annoyed that this isn't foreshadowing.

Inside the theater, they find Sakura. You remember, the teenage girl, the high school student, the one that bears an eerie resemblance to Aya's little sister, Aya. (Who was kidnapped recently, as we recall.) Omi, that little rat bastard, immediately finds somewhere else to be with the air of doing Aya a favor.

Sakura tells Aya how she was trying to see him, repeatedly, but he was never at the shop when she went. Aya, facing the other way, says he wasn't avoiding her, and also tries to avoid agreeing to meet with her.

In a Dark Basement, a mad scientist type sits typing music into a computer. He is of course approached by Schwarz - Crawford. The two of them have some evil banter about how the composer's music will capture everyone who hears it instead of just half, before having a bit of a tiff as Crawford refers to the music as an experiment and the composer snaps that it's "sound art." Y'all are both just psychopaths.

It's the next scene where I feel the episode starts to veer off the rails - Omi and Yohji are discussing the relationship (or lack thereof) between Aya and Sakura. Omi is shipping them hard, because Sakura has some Very Big Feelings and it's rude of Aya to ignore them. Yohji, on the other hand, feels it's perfectly reasonable for Aya to be worried about his missing sister and also that Omi needs to find someone to bang instead. He points at a random high school girl wearing headphones, who - surprise surprise - starts screaming before running into traffic.

Very handy for them to see This Episode's Plot Device in person. To be fair, depending on how many people are listening to this particular CD, it is perhaps not statistically unlikely. On the other hand, one would think if it were that many people, someone besides Kritiker would sit up and take notice.

Back at the flowershop, our four assassins share some weirdly light-hearted banter about dead teenagers, including Ken teasing Yohji for not being able to understand a woman's heart and Yohji pointing out, again, that he does not want to fuck children. It is at this point, with spectacular timing, that Sakura walks into the shop and the entire team encourages Aya to go have a romantic rendezvous with the jailbait. Literally all of them. When he clearly wants nothing to do with her.

The Aya and Sakura conversation involves Sakura pushing Aya as to how he's related to girl!Aya, and when he reveals that it's his little sister, Sakura tells Aya she's in love with him. Aya very clearly tells Sakura that he does not return her feelings. Repeatedly. Sakura points out that he entrusted her with his sister, and wonders if she was just conveniently there or if it was because she looks like his sister, and also she thinks he's up to something besides the flowershop work. It's a clumsy monologue, clearly hinting at Sakura seeing Behind The Veil, so to speak. (This is, in fact, foreshadowing.) Aya attempts to shut it down multiple times before literally getting up and leaving. However, he throws out this gem before walking out the door: "I don't deserve to be loved by anyone."

There. There is so much to unpack here and we're only halfway through the episode.

Meanwhile, Omi is sadly watching from across the street. Omi is a bit of a creeper. Sakura, however, thinks Omi is an appropriate confidant and apparently relays the entire conversation.

After the commercial break, we apparently have a bit of a timeskip ahead to Yohji, Ken, and Omi in the flowershop talking about how Sakura hasn't been around "since then." Yohji and Omi think Aya was a cold asshole. Ken says he understands where Aya is coming from. In theory, one could infer that Ken was having a bit of empathy. I strongly suspect, however, that this is not actually the case, because it is not Dramatic enough.

Meanwhile, the news is playing a story about a suddenly violent individual. The viewer, of course, immediately understands that the composer in cahoots with Schwarz has finished his next piece. Weiss, on the other hand, are shocked and appalled. The news mentions that hundred(s?) of young people have been running amok. Ken, our adorable Captain Obvious, realizes it is Not A Coincidence.

We have cut back to Sakura, who is failing at track and field. Because she is Sad. Also, Aya is stalking her, via the very conspicuous flowershop delivery scooter. JFC.

Omi, having remembered the one screaming girl had headphones in, is apparently the only person to put togther the clue that all the people going berserk were listening to music. IDK how, but he is. He decides they need a copy of the CD, so instead of BUYING ONE, they go stalk one of the victims' families and steal it.

Then, in a stunning display of self-preservation and good judgment, Omi PLAYS THE CD where they can all hear it. Aya and Omi are unaffected. Ken and Yohji shortly begin to scream. Omi, with nothing more than a 90s computer, figures out how the music works on the brain. (I cannot help but feel that one would need a lot more information, a lot more equipment, and a wider pool of test subjects to make this determination.) Am also not sure how Omi determines there's no permanent brain damage to Ken and Yohji, but here we are.

Birman appears to give Weiss their mission, as they have been Investigating and know who composed the music. This may or may not have been down to some very basic detective work, given that these are CDs that are literally sold in stores. Birman tells Weiss they have to murder the composer before he plays his new song in front of 50,000 people. Meanwhile, I wonder if anyone has ever heard of soundcheck.

Weiss do make a very dramatic group in their Assassin Clothes at the venue. Backstage. In suspiciously empty hallways that suddenly produce Schreient. Shenanigans ensue. Said shenanigans, however, do have a banger soundtrack. Seriously, the music in this show is so good. Nothing ELSE is, ok, but goddamn.

Schreient is foiled by some dart-assisted metal grates while Weiss rushes to stab a guy to death on a stage in front of, again, fifty thousand spectators. As he is not yet on stage, our Villain of the Week decides he will protect himself from the oncoming assassins (and how does he know they're coming...?) by playing his new song. Of course, it has a Dramatic Effect on everyone around him. Not, however, on Weiss, as they are wearing earplugs. Clever boys.

I was not kidding about Stab To Death, by the way. Aya gets the kill this week.

He is, of course, for maximum effect, witnessed by Sakura. He is remarkably sanguine about the fact that this random teenager knows he's a murderer and doubles down on the reason he can't return her feelings being that he does not deserve to be loved. This concludes the episode.

There are a few themes I want to explore here; the sound-as-a-weapon is a solid B plot (and it IS the B plot), although it's not particularly well fleshed out. I love a good non-traditional mass murder method, and this one is usually pretty fun. The extremely convenient timing of Kritiker's investigation and Weiss basically stumbling into the solution to the mystery are quite clunky and contrived, but that's partly a flaw of the medium itself and partly because the majority of the screentime and emotional weight of this episode have been given over the the main plotline.

Aya and Sakura, both of whom need a good smack upside the head with a brick.

Sakura has been pushing and pushing at Aya while he clearly says he's not interested. She's been imposing on Weiss in general and Aya specifically since her introduction, and the narrative continues to paint her in a sympathetic light. Much of this sympathy is generated by the rest of Weiss cheerleading the relationship on because of the intensity of Sakura's emotions. At no point does any character seem to understand that Sakura's feelings do not entitle her to any part of Aya and that she needs to put it back in her pants or that this clear and obvious harassment is in fact not acceptable behavior.

I don't say this to bash Sakura, who is acting very much like a teenager. I do side-eye the writers. Sakura is clearly an audience stand-in with whom we are meant to sympathize; we are meant to feel her pain when Aya rejects her. And that's valid! It's not inappropriate for her to shoot her shot... once. It's the fact that she does not take no for an answer that crosses a line. It's that Aya's FRIENDS seem to think that Sakura's feelings entitle her to his time and his person, and how they have zero concept of a boundary. No means no, guys, and doing something your friend expressly says he does not want because you think it's for his own good is incredibly fucked up. This is bad and they should feel bad. The narrative, however, thinks they are absolutely correct in this course of action, as evidenced by the reasoning behind Aya's refusal of Sakura's feelings.

Aya, on the other hand, is playing the victim. He does terrible things, and then very publicly expresses self-hatred in an obviously manipulative bid for sympathy. "I don't deserve to be loved." My dude, if you truly feel this way, there are two course of action which need to be taken. Yes, both of them. One is therapy. The other is to stop murdering people to death.

By painting the rest of Weiss as correct for continuing to push Sakura at Aya, this specific storyline is furthering some very harmful ideas - that emotions entitle one to someone else, that ignoring someone's stated wishes in order to "help" them is the right thing to do, and that being flamboyantly upset about a problem you have created is somehow the mark of a tragic hero.

Apparently Weiss has no concept of a healthy boundary.

.....and somehow I still love this terrible show. FML.

[nalanzu]

my dog also does this

he thinks he's being so smooth with his little face on my leg. i SEE you, villain

[nalanzu]

Weiss Kreuz Episode 18: Schuld

We open the episode on a candle that refuses to be extinguished and some creepy music; it's time for Farfarello's backstory. He cuts himself, surrounded by more candles. I'm not sure how I feel about this particular aspect of his personality now, honestly.

At the flowershop, there is a rare lull in customers. Ken is chilling with a magazine outside, only be surprised by a middle-aged lady who has a limited budget but wants a lot of flowers. She's very friendly about it, talking about how things are way cheaper in the countryside where she's from. Ken gives her a discount just for fun, and she gives him a hug.

Turns out the lady works for a church, and Ken goes with her to arrange them. She just started working there, and she invites the cute florist to come and visit. We learn that Ken is not comfortable with churches, and the lady bribes him with dessert and hugs him again.

Farfarello is missing from the usual Schwarz conglomeration, as the rest of them hang out doing god knows what, and we determine that he's gone to pick a fight with god. Crawford says that everyone needs a little spiritual guidance now and again, which. I can see I'm going to have a lot of opinions about these themes.

Farfarello has decided to go harass a priest and ask why it is that a kind and loving god would allow suffering and torture; he is not satisfied with the priest's answer that this is how people are tested. Honestly, I'm not satisfied with this answer either. Farfarello wants to know why war exists, especially in god's name, and the priest says that god works in mysterious ways. Farfarello is displeased with this as well and I'm finding him a lot more sympathetic than I did twenty years ago. These are perfectly reasonable questions that are not getting reasonable answers. To be fair, I have also not managed to find satisfying answers to these questions in two decades, so I shouldn't expect them out of this show.

Farfarello moves on to looking at a statue of Mary and snapping that he's desecrating the divine gift of his body - why is there no judgment, no reaction? Back to the priest, he produces a pitcher of acid and says he's going to bless the priest with holy water. It's a test, he explains.

I - clearly Farfarello is Not Well in a number of ways. There is obviously disordered thinking, and it's tied into spirituality and religion. (If I remember correctly, there is some childhood trauma, which I think is what comes out in this episode.) That having been said, he is not asking unreasonable questions when he wants to know what kind of god allows and encourages violent and harmful behavior. There is no satisfying explanation here for why people need to be tested, and the Works In Mysterious Ways explanation has never, ever been satisfying to me - it refuses to explain and instead demands that one just accepts. Farfarello isn't wrong to be upset about it.

Taking on the role of the god that he has complicated feelings about and imposing suffering on others is not a course of action that I find reasonable or desirable. The way Farfarello is coping is not constructive, and it puts him in a role with which he has clearly expressed unhappiness. But I don't lack sympathy.

Also we're only five minutes into the episode and I've already written too much, lol

At the flowershop, Ken and Omi are reading the paper (seriously, do they get ALL OF THEIR INFORMATION from the paper, I can't even with this) and see that a number of religious leaders have recently been assaulted with acid. Ken immediately fucks off to check on his new friend. Who is fine. Though she is also reading the same paper, and now wants to talk to Jay. Ken wants to know who the fuck Jay is, which is reasonable, but she tells him to go home.

Kritiker finally notices the pattern of crimes occurring in churches and summons all of Weiss early in the morning to go deal with it. They've identified Farfarello as the culprit, which has triggered Omi's traumatic memories of Ouka getting shot. As an aside, Yohji's outfit is a godawful red vest and he has not escaped the second season clothing curse.

Weiss starts to go stake out churches to see if Farfarello will show up to murder priests, except for Omi, who is doing some kind of research online. Omi finds Ken's new friend - Ruth - and that she has posted online looking for a "Jay," who seems to bear a passing resemblance to Farfarello. He and Yohji panic, as this will make Ruth a target.

I can't help but think of the timing here; the notice has to have been up for a while, and the only thing that has changed is that now Omi (and Weiss) assume a connection between Farfarello and Ruth. There is also that she has now met Ken, but Farfarello is not involved in any of this and none of it affects him in any way. There is no reason that Ken meeting Ruth or Omi finding her posted ad should have any sort of measurable effect on whether or not Farfarello finds her or the ad. Absolutely none. But this is Weiss, so it creates a sense of urgency in which Ken must race off with this new information before it is too late, and he is going to be right to do so.

Farfarello either sleeps hanging upside down in a straitjacket for funsies or Schwarz puts him there - ah, Schwarz does that to him to punish him. We don't know what they're punishing him FOR, specifically; it's not unreasonable to assume they don't want him torturing clergymen to death, but they also didn't seem particularly worried about it in the earlier scene. They also take pains to show him Ruth's online ad - why would they do that if they were cranky about him being all murdery?

In any case, Ken appears at the church and wants to know why Ruth is trying to goad the recent serial murderer of priests. Ruth admits that she knows damn good and well who's doing it and why, refuses to explain herself, and kicks Ken out again. Ken and Omi decide to stalk her; she reminds Ken of his mother, and we all know why Omi is there.

The timing, honestly, could be either Crawford or Schuldig being Psychic and choosing chaos; I don't know if we're supposed to assume that they noticed Weiss' involvement in this case or what, but it is at no point explicitly stated. I'm just going to make this assumption. Farfarello, meanwhile, has gone to see what Ruth has to say.

Ruth hugs Farfarello and they talk about an anniversary. Ken and Omi try to save Ruth, who says she needs no such thing because Jay isn't going to hurt her. Farfarello takes her hostage and shrugs off both Omi's dart and Ken's assault - he very handily takes both of them down and then grabs Ruth's unconscious body and hauls her off.

Farfarello's candle-lit room from the start of the episode was apparently a church on a cliff and he's dragged Ruth there. She tells him he's good at heart and to ask for god's forgiveness, but Farfarello has an entirely different agenda. He was one of several children who were Ruth's Sunday School students, and believed to his core when she told him god was good and would take care of him. His family, however, was murdered and he found the body - Farfarello internalized the experience as a betrayal of his core spiritual belief. God failed to fulfill his part of the contract by protecting Farfarello's loved ones and Farfarello wants Ruth as the agent of god to explain why and/or take responsibility for it.

Ruth's response is typically Christian, in which she says that Farfarello has done terrible things since his tragedy and must pray for forgiveness; they clearly have extremely different priorities in this conversation. Farfarello is focused on the initial breach of contract, while Ruth is focused on the fault within Farfarello because there is clearly no fault with god who works in mysterious ways and may inflict suffering for no good reason and his followers are just supposed to smile and love him harder in response.

(This episode is pushing a number of my personal buttons, I completely forgot it existed, and I do not have the spoons to maneuver around the buttons.)

Ken and Omi have somehow tracked Farfarello and Ruth, followed by Aya and Yohji. The elder two members of Weiss are blocked by Crawford while Ken and Omi run inside. We learn that Farfarello does not feel physical pain, which explains why Omi's darts don't bother him. Ken has been punched in the stomach so many times today that I begin to worry about internal bleeding.

Ruth stops Farfarello from stabbing Ken in the face and he snaps at her to stop calling him Jay; he has a new name. She steps between Ken and Farfarello as he stabs downward and tells Farfarello that he's the one who murdered his own family. Apparently she was Farfarello's biological mother and he was adopted, Farfarello found out, and lost his shit.

Look, the fact that he was a sociopath as a child does not mean he's asking the wrong questions about religion and spirituality.

Farfarello, however, has now had his core identity as a poor little victim (his words, not mine) taken away. He's distracted enough that Ken and Omi are able to knock him against the vat of acid. Schuldig appears in a Jeep to drive both Farfarello and Crawford away in the absolute most dramatic and weirdly timed exit in this series so far, as if the fight is over, which it is not, but ok.

Ken and Omi, late to the party, hear Ruth tell them that Farfarello was her kid with her literal dying breath. In Schuldig's back seat, Crawford and Schuldig tell him he's lucky to be alive with how badly he was hurt (WHERE WAS HE HURT) and Farfarello gives us a smirk at the idea of resurrection. This is only going to strengthen his god complex, which I feel Crawford and Schuldig are perfectly well aware of.

This is not an episode that I can have unreservedly positive feelings about; I have my own complicated relationship with religion and spirituality and less than ideal childhood experiences (none of which involved murder, to be fair). This type of storyline is never going to be one that I can evaluate fairly on its own merits without considerable emotional effort. Within the context of this show, however, it's not necessarily one of the weaker episodes.

We do learn something of Farfarello's state of mind in this, and about his psychological history. He's never been entirely stable, apparently. We also learn that the power dynamics in Schwarz are, uh. They're something. I would have sympathy for restraining Farfarello if he is posing a danger to himself or other members of Schwarz, but he was restrained (and hung upside down! the fuck!) as a punishment, which is another matter entirely and definitely a mark in the Schwarz Is Evil column.

I would have liked to have gotten a little more of Omi's emotional state, since Farfarello killed his cousin/girlfriend right in front of him. This show doesn't really do that, as we know, so it wasn't ever going to be on the table. I can still want it, though.

I feel like the show is trying to present Ruth's position, both on a personal level as having had an illegitimate child, and as a representative for the Christian church (which denomination? fuck if I know and I don't think the writers do either), as the closest to morally upright. Her sin was in having a child out of wedlock, and she has atoned for that by her continued spiritual devotion. Her repetitions of pray for forgiveness strike me as an attempt to portray her efforts toward redemption. Farfarello, on the other hand, is wrong through and through, with his questions and his taking on the role of god and his quest to punish the guilty.

This is not how I see it, not even a little.

There are some parallels to be drawn, I think, between Weiss punishing the guilty and Farfarello punishing the guilty. The point at which the viewer is supposed to sympathize with Weiss but not with Farfarello comes from, I think, where the authority for that punishment comes from. Weiss takes orders from Kritiker, while Farfarello has chosen to take on the role of the divine. This brings us to the question of how and why it is appropriate for Kritiker to take on that authority and where that may lie with regard to ethics and morality. We do not have time for that conversation right now.

I think Farfarello is a more complex character than I had previously given him credit for being, and I think he's a more complex character than the writers give him credit for being. (A weird statement, yes, but here we are.) I think there's quite a bit to untangle regarding Farfarello's tendency toward blackout rages and violence and his attitude toward spirituality, which are linked but do not have a causal relationship.

…I have come to the conclusion that I do have positive feelings about this episode, not for what is on the screen, but for the questions that I now want to ask, lol

[nalanzu]

Weiss Kreuz Episode 17: Kritiker

Opening on a peaceful ocean scene, the quiet tone is not going to last. Botan is stalking Aya as he stands in the cemetery and silently promises to find his sister.

The streets of Tokyo are full of people, laughing and talking, and then one of them spontaneously combusts. The rest of his friend group also spontaneously combusts as a mysterious cloaked figure walks by. At the flowershop, Sakura watches three members of Weiss prepare to open the shop while Aya is nowhere to be found. They feel bad for her, since Aya is being all Aya-ish.

At the cemetery, Botan returns the locker key to Aya and tells him that Sakura has been visiting the shop on the regular. He wants Aya back in Weiss and back at the flowershop. Aya tells him he's not part of Weiss any more, which is not how I remember the conversation going last episode. Botan says they have somewhere to be. Aya tells him to fuck off (not, technically, in so many words), he's not interested in a date. Botan lights a cigarette and Aya, frustrated that he is being shut down at every turn, snaps that there's no smoking in his car.

It's actually kind of cute. I do enjoy watching Botan piss Aya off, I really, really do.

In the assassin basement, there's video (and audio!) of Persia's shadowy figure giving Weiss a mission. None of them give a shit about the spontaneous combustion happening to innocent victims as they're all too busy having heart attacks at seeing a dead man giving them orders again. Birman just stares at them all losing their shit - especially Omi - and Manx finally arrives in her signature red outfit to tell them that it's a computer simulation. That was mean, Kritiker, to show them that without warning. Especially, I repeat, Omi.

Manx explains she thought the little stunt would get their attention. She's not wrong, as Weiss is so distracted by the digital ghost that they just assume they're all going to take the mission. Manx also explains that she's peacing out and they're in Birman's hands - she worked for Persia and since he's gone she is now Done.

In Aya's car, Botan has refused to disembark and is explaining A Potential Mission to Aya. With a marked lack of both patience and enthusiasm, Aya repeats he's not in Weiss, but Botan is determined to get him engaged in a conversation regarding Estset. He tries to use Aya's sister as bait again, but this time Aya's not having it. Botan quite reasonably points out that Aya has zero resources; Aya's method of trying to investigate involves harassing the hospital staff, who have enough work to do without his pestering them.

Botan, on the other hand, has taken to harassing pediatric patients. He's also had an old lady posing as a patient and conducting an inquiry for the last week. The report is on a floppy disk (oh, wow) and they go over the results together in Aya's car. Botan thinks this will get Aya's cooperation.

In the assassin basement, Yohji has also shockingly done some investigating. He's produced a VHS tape (!! oh man, I forgot this was still prime VHS era) with high-quality footage of the burning man. Omi has found an identical individual in each video, arm raised, with some kind of nozzle coming out of their sleeve. Omi switches to an infrared view (HOW?) and they can see the accelerant spray toward the victims. Positing that it must be some kind of extra flammable liquid, the three members of Weiss resign themselves to being a three-man team.

Back to Aya, he's losing patience with Botan's paper airplanes. Botan explains that his daughter loves them as they stalk the employee they felt was most suspicious from the spy's report. Botan continues to give Aya shit, telling him that using Sakura to replace his sister isn't fair to Sakura even if they look remarkably similar. Aya accuses him of trying to irritate him on purpose, and Botan says that he is absolutely trying to piss Aya off because his sister isn't the only victim and Aya needs to stop being so myopic and selfish with his skill set.

The spat is interrupted by the hospital employee in question appearing. Aya demonstrates his utter lack of chill (honstly, Botan, I don't know where you got the idea that Aya is at all calm and collected) by pouncing on the suspect and punching him in the face. The suspect confesses IMMEDIATELY that he left the emergency exit unlocked after he was bribed to do it by some kind of weird woman. Aya wants to know who the woman was and where his sister has got off to, and the suspect snaps that he has no fucking clue and why isn't Aya harassing the police about this.

The suspect takes things one step too far and then says maybe Aya will find his sister's corpse. Botan has to pull Aya off the suspect before Aya strangles him after beating him into the ground. They have learned nothing useful after all, Aya assumes, and the two of them start beating the shit out of each other as the suspect runs off. Botan tells Aya that if he acts out of anger, he's nothing more than a common criminal. You may recognize this as the same tactic that has been used on Yohji and by Yohji on Ken.

An adorable photograph of a little girl falls out of Botan's pocket as they stagger back to the car. They really did come THIS CLOSE to seriously injuring each other, and there's a very chemistry-filled bit of the two of them bickering again. In the car, it comes out that the adorable daughter is missing and Botan's wife was murdered, and Botan thinks that maybe he can find his daughter some day as part of Kritiker.

Why is there a radio in Aya's car that is tuned SPECIFICALLY TO WEISS bullshit? Because there is. There's a screen. There is a map. …it may also be Botan's laptop, come to think of it. In any case, Omi sends the information regarding the case to them, and asks Aya to show up and help.

We cut to the criminal of the week, an extremist group wanting to corrupt the youth, or set them on fire, or something, I don't know, it's very over the top and bullshit. Schwarz is psychically nudging them from the shadows to commit mass murder in service to their vision of a new world. Nagi is openly dubious about the entire process.

Aya has followed Botan's directions to where the extremist group is ready to go set some shit on fire, and they see the group preparing to move. Botan says he's going to stall them until Weiss gets there, and Aya is like, The fuck you are. Botan feels that the two of them are similar, except that Botan's motivation doesn't end with his own blood and he wants to keep everyone safe. (Can I make a motion to kick Aya out of Weiss and instate Botan instead?) He then gets out of the car.

Aya, why the fuck did you GO THERE if you weren't planning on doing anything? You know damn good and well you're going to get out your leather trenchcoat, the one you will inexplicably have with you for no fucking good reason, and go murder some dudes. Stop being such a damn wet blanket about it.

Botan's method of stalling the extremists is slashing their tires, which gets him shot at. It takes Aya an annoyingly long time to decide to get off his ass and help the friend actively in danger in front of him, but he does. He uses a pipe in lieu of a sword, and the confrontation ends with Aya shot in the leg. Botan jumps in front of him to take the next several dozen bullets and also a face full of accelerant. Goddamn, Botan.

The rest of Weiss appears - oh, THAT'S where Aya's trenchcoat was, Yohji had it - and the murdering may now continue. The dramatic nature of Weiss' interference leads to the accelerant getting sprayed on its own tank and it explodes as Weiss flees. I now want to know how many city blocks burned down around them. I also have some questions about which muscles and ligaments, specifically, were damaged in Aya's leg, whether the bullet hit bone, and how many stitches and how much physical therapy he's going to need to walk again. (The answer, of course, is "it was just a minor flesh wound' and "none," respectively, because this show has less accuracy for the medical side of things than a 50s sex ed pamphlet.)

Aya has been shamed into rejoining Weiss by Botan's sacrifice, possibly. The episode ends on Aya back in the cemetery musing that he will continue to believe in Botan (and why was this not a slash pairing with any life???), which implies that he's back to working with Weiss, but we've been fooled by this before. Maybe we'll find out next episode. Maybe they'll do this dance again.

I will tell you what rewatching this show is doing for me; I do like Yohji and Omi about as much as I did last time, and I still definitely have the softest of spots for Ken, but oh my god I want to beat Aya with the flat of his own sword. That man is obstinate and obnoxious, and the narrative keeps treating him as if he is - ok, the narrative is giving him Main Character Syndrome, which is potentially not entirely fair since he is in fact a main character. THE main character, really, since he's Koyasu's baby and Koyasu was the driving force behind the entire show.

Said show is not, however, doing a bang-up job of explaining to us why we should be chasing Aya so hard within the narrative itself and I don't care how many helicopters he shot at with a machine gun.

[nalanzu]

Weiss Kreuz Episode 16: Schatten

We are REALLY due for a breather after the nonstop frenetic pace of high drama in the last several episodes. What we get is goats in the Swiss (?) mountains and three old people in a castle discussing, in Japanese, how Takatori of the Japanese Division fucked shit up but good as he was unreasonably ambitious. The Japanese Division needs reinforcements and it shall have them.

This show does not know the meaning of the word "pace."

We get Yohji walking arm-in-arm with a pretty woman, with Omi giving us a voiceover asking how he's been doing since Weiss dissolved.There is definitely the sense that some times has passed, although it could be days, weeks or months. It's hard to say with this show and how it treats time. Yohji immediately abandons his date upon seeing a woman with Asuka's face (as you will recall, his dead partner's name was Asuka). After he catches up to her, she takes off her sunglasses and he realizes it's not the same face after all. Despite initial accusations of the new lady - Kyoko - resembling an old friend, Yohji and Kyoko end up on a date. She wants to take him somewhere quiet.

Aya is the next one to get a check-in, as Omi wonders how the beach is treating him. I'm sorry, the words Aya and beach do not belong in the same sentence. I think my brain just glitched.

Omi is distracted from his letter-writing by his classmates discussing a serial kidnapper/murderer who tortures all his pretty young victims and has been stepping up the pace of his crimes. The girls in his class feel unsafe going out alone, which demonstrates once again that the writers are men. Women always feel like this, regardless of stories of serial kidnappers.

In any case, Omi feels the need to point out to Aya that bad shit still happens but since there is no Weiss any more, it's not his job to worry about it. Omi also asks about his sister, who has been transferred to another hospital, and gives him an update on how much Sakura misses him. Which is a lot. Stop trying to write this into a romance, ok, it is creepy AF.

The next morning, a classmate runs into shout that one of the girls in their class was kidnapped. The class dissolves into chaos, as they determine that they can't do anything to help. Omi doesn't like this. He asks for Ken's advice. Ken, who is coaching seven year olds to play soccer, says they're not Weiss and it's not their job, but he does notice someone spying on him from the trees.

Back to Yohji and his date, he can't help but marvel how much Kyoko resembles Asuka. She has vague memories of something like being close to a man like Yohji while Yohji notices there's a car following them to an abandoned cabin in the mountains. What woman goes to an abandoned cabin in the mountains on a first date so help me. Fucking male writers istg. The car has followed them all the way up, by the way, and the male driver stares at them.

After dinner and (presumably) sex, Yohji hangs out on the balcony and is nearly strangled with his own wire by a surviving member of Schreient. They only reason he survives is the stalker flinging a paper airplane at them. Kyoko aka Neu flees and he chases her.

Aya's turn to check in, and we see that his sister has been kidnapped. Her bed has been slashed in the shape of a cross. No blood, though, so presumably she wasn't in it while it was disfigured.

The cycle moves on to Ken, telling his rugrats that yes, they do in fact need to keep practicing. The basics are important, he tells them, and then they nearly get run over by a mack truck crashing past the guard rail. The driver is dead, strangled, and Ken remembers Schoen's whip. He immediately assumes he is the target as the rain begins to fall over his crushed soccer ball. Aw, Ken.

Omi walks through the rain wearing a truly awful brown sleeveless shirt and puffy green shorts while mentally picturing the kidnap victims. He arrives in the flowershop basement only to find everyone else already there in a stunning coincidence. Ken points out that he and Yohji were both attacked, and Yohji came back to pick up his weapon.

Aya refuses to tell anyone else why he's there, and Omi immediately assumes something has happened to his sister or he wouldn't be. Yohji blames Schreient. There is a bit of bickering, interrupted by the stalker from earlier dramatically walking down the stairs and announcing that the dark beasts have taken up a vendetta against Weiss again. Following him is a woman, not Manx, but with the same sense of dramatic business wear.

The Possibly Not A Stalker tells them that a huge worldwide organization is starting to cause problems in Japan. Weiss, perfectly reasonably, wants to know who the fuck he is; his codename is Botan. (The only non-cat codename so far. I feel like I remember him ending up dead.) The lady is Birman.

Apparently Kritiker has been searching for Weiss since Persia's death, because they want to reinstate the group. The kidnappings, Botan and Birman say, are only the start. I say that if Kritiker couldn't find their own damn operatives, I have a number of misgivings regarding their competency as an organization overall. In addition, I have Questions about the timing of all of them appearing in the basement simultaneously. I can buy Botan and Birman having followed Yohji and maybe noticing someone else wander in and maybe waiting to see if the rest of them showed up, but like, all four of them deciding within the same hour to go back to the flowershop? Really? REALLY?

I wish this show would hang a lantern on some of the harder to swallow point points, but it just skates right over them as if the viewer isn't going to notice. To be entirely fair, I may not have noticed many things that are currently bothering me when I watched it the first time. But seriously, Kritiker really couldn't find them? At all? Except Yohji? And now here they all are???

Weiss protests that they're not Weiss any more and this is therefore not their circus and also not their monkeys. Manx appears to tell Weiss that it is in fact their circus and the name of the circus is Estset. She has, by the way, switched out her red suit for a purple one and her ankle socks for thigh-high stockings, but she is STILL WEARING SOCKS WITH SANDALS.

Brief aside, by the way, all of Weiss has switched up their outfits. Omi's crop-top floofy vest and cargo shorts are absolutely awful, as is Ken's forest green bowling shirt with white sleeves and a white collar. Yohji has a perfectly decent tan jacket that I don't think I remember him keeping, while Aya is now in black head to toe. Aya and his sexy v-neck shirt comprise literally the only upgraded look in the room, who approved the rest of these designs.

Manx tells them that Kritiker is trying to figure out WTF is going on with Estset and that they are involved with the kidnappings, with Schreient, and probably also with kidnapping Aya's sister. As he will absolutely do anything that involves his sister, Aya is 100% on board with the idea of a new mission. The rest of them are pretty twitchy about it. It only takes a few seconds for all of them to go for a walk in their assassin outfits (which they were stashing where, exactly?), the other three catching up with Aya.

We've been getting brief flashes of the sort-of-crucified kidnap victims on a stage in what looks like a ritual sacrifice, by the way, and now they are surrounded by masked people in robes with candles talking about the return or summoning of something or other in order to make the pitiful humans pay. Weiss interrupts this sacred ceremony just before the kidnap victims can be set on fire, but the kidnappers have lighters as well as candles and nearly manage to burn their victims to death anyway.

None of those victims are Aya's sister. He does check. Weiss assassinates their targets in true dramatic fashion, still in the rain. Ken desperately wanted to disappear, to leave Weiss behind, by the way, while Yohji is more or less resigned and Omi is almost fervent in his desire to punish the wicked. Aya, as we all know, is composed almost entirely of a ball of obsession and whether or not he's part of a team of assassins is entirely dependent on his sister.

I have some concerns about Omi's mental state, honestly. He is VERY enthusiastic in what the show would like us to think is a frenzy of righteous passion and the pursuit of justice, but I also think that the snap decisions Weiss is used to making have the potential to not be the right decisions. The constant exposure to the apparent failing of the criminal justice system and acting as a tool to rectify that situation also seems emotionally distressing and draining, but Omi is almost happy. Definite cause for concern.

The Get The Band Back Together episode is, honestly, not particularly compelling for me. I felt that it relied heavily on circumstance and coincidence in order to achieve its goals, and neither the episode nor the characters did much work in returning to something resembling the status quo. I didn't hate seeing what the Weiss members were up to when they went back to being their own people, but I also don't think we learned anything about any of the characters.

The most surprising part of that particular interlude was Aya working construction; given that all he knows how to make is flower arrangements and corpses, it's not entirely shocking that he would end up doing what's generally regarded as low-skill manual labor, but I really would have guessed he'd go for something a little more outwardly romantic or dramatic. He's a very melodramatic kind of person. But, of course, he lives purely for his sister, so it tracks that he would do the absolute first thing that would net him income in the general vicinity of the hospital in which she's being treated.

Yohji's dates, Ken's soccer coaching, and Omi's classes don't really tell us anything new about the characters. We're checking in with them to see that they are exactly where we left them, with no growth or development. These segments don't get much room to breathe, either, with the frenetic pace established over the last several episodes not letting up in the slightest as it pushes our protagonists back together.

It occurs to me to wonder, incidentally, what the purpose of having Schreient go after Yohji and Ken was; in the Doylist sense, both men needed an external motivation to return to the flowershop or we don't really have a show (kidnapping Aya's sister did have an actual purpose, as I recall, but that's a plot point for later). In the Watsonian sense, why give these allegedly dangerous men a reason to get the gang back together? Why cause trouble for them when all it's going to do is put them exactly where they're not wanted, namely under Kritiker's control again? Takatori was fucked by his ambition, yes, but also because he pushed Weiss into a corner and they killed him for it. The fuck are you doing, poking the bear?

I also want to know how the hell they got out of the burning building. And then apparently fucked off into the night leaving no trace of themselves behind and no way to be found despite all staying in the general vicinity of where they were to begin with. But mostly, honestly, how they got out of the burning building this time. And last time.

[nalanzu]

Weiss Kreuz Episode 15: Duell

I honestly only have very fuzzy memories of most of this series and most of the specifics that I remembered came from the first five episodes, so it's been An Experience going back to it.

The show wants to remind us that Takatori fired the police commissioner and instituted martial law the same day the election was held to vote him in as prime minister, because shit moves real fucking fast in this version of Japan. Posters of Weiss with their faces have been scattered all over the city, naming them as terrorists. Weiss has stolen army uniforms and are on their way to assassinate the prime minster as their Last Mission.

Pretty ballsy of them to declare it's their Last Mission 15 episodes into a 25 episode series, but here we are.

The streets are remarkably quiet, no doubt because there's a curfew on. We see Sakura running through the street as she witnesses someone arrested for the terrible crime of being outside. A newscaster tells us that the SD (the special forces providing, uh, security) are on guard against the recent spate of terrorism but that other political parties have some. Um. They're having some doubts about this insanity. The newscaster is arrested ON THE AIR as the writers pull out every stop that exists and some that don't to drive home exactly how evil Aya's nemesis is.

The man himself gloats at Persia, as the two of them have a private conversation away from the prying eyes of the SD personnel bodyguarding Takatori. He's pretty stoked that the existence of Weiss let him enable emergency measures to enact martial law and does not give a shit whether or not the SD catches them. I would like to point out that Weiss actually did fuckall nothing, and all they are is a convenient scapegoat. Takatori could have picked literally anyone, but he's decided that he wants to play silly buggers with his little brother's band of assassins to satisfy a grudge. This will, of course, lead to his downfall in true dramatic fashion.

But we're not there yet. We're at Persia threatening his brother with a gun. How he managed to get it past literally all the guards I have no idea and we are not going to question it. Takatori is unfazed.

Weiss, meanwhile, is making their way inside. Somehow their gloriously unmilitary haircuts are arousing zero suspicion. As they get closer to Takatori, Persia and Takatori argue ethics. Persia maintains that his use of agents to murder criminals who escape the justice system is in fact ethical, whereas Takatori straight-up kills people for no reason and also drove his wife to suicide, which is clearly Very Different and not cool. It is a very sloppy argument and makes very little sense from a debate standpoint, but it's hitting emotional buttons, so we'll let that go.

There's a bit where Takatori tries to go for a gun in his desk and then pretends he just wanted a cigarette, which is equally ludicrous. I am very entertained but also oh my fucking god, this kind of shit is why people don't take anime seriously. Persia has gotten up on a high horse, declaring that he must end the threat of his brother with his own two hands as reparation for all the damage Takatori caused that he didn't prevent. Uh. Sure. Ok. We'll just go with that. (Autonomy is not a concept here...?)

Omi hacks into the security system from outside on the lawn as the other three members set some cars on fire with more enthusiasm than French protestors and start assaulting the guards. The biometric system lets them in with Yohji's handprint, as Omi has successfully broken into said system, but I can't help but feel that there were a shit ton of guards with perfectly good hands and presumable access RIGHT THERE and it would have been much less effort to just use one of them. Come on, guys.

We take a short break to visit Schwarz hanging out in house arrest, until Crawford psychically twigs to Weiss' arrival. They take out their guards with dramatic use of their psychic abilities, which in Nagi's case involves flipping a light switch from across the room. Farfarello apparently was holding needles in his throat, which. Um. (He always was my least favorite member of Schwarz.)

It is now, apparently, time for a revelation regarding Takatori's wife. Persia maintains that she committed suicide to escape an unhappy marriage and accuses Takatori of sacrificing his own son. Takatori counters with a flat denial that he ever abandoned one of his children, because he knows perfectly well his brother fucked his wife and Omi/Mamoru was the result. Hey, Ouka was Omi's cousin and not his sister, that's right. That makes their love affair slightly less creepy.

It's a little more creepy that Persia turned his own kid into a murderer, honestly. Takatori, in the midst of his rant about adultery and guilt, shoots Persia with the OTHER gun he has under the desk. His gloating is interrupted by Weiss mowing down the special forces, what with their sword and wire and claws and darts clearly outclassing handguns and actual military training for precisely this sort of situation. Also the fires Weiss set are spreading to tanks of explosive materials, which does mitigate the stretched suspension of disbelief a little. There's a bit of cognitive dissonance as the special forces refer to Weiss as The Terrorists without a hint of irony, so maybe ALL of them weren't in on the fact that Takatori was behind the curtain the whole time.

Takatori leaves his office by one door just as Weiss gets there by another door, much like an episode of 3 Stooges, except that Weiss finds Persia dead on the floor and Aya has to explain that Persia is Omi's uncle. Oh, hey, he's not quite dead despite the alleged sucking chest wound that is not bleeding in the slightest, and he tells them that executing Takatori is their final mission. Takatori has been behind literally every mission they've had since the start of the show, Persia says, and now they're ALL personally involved.

This is really, really feeding into Aya's maladaptive coping mechanisms, istg. Speaking of which, Sakura broke curfew to go creep on Aya's comatose sister. She's hanging out in the dark hospital room looking sad. Presumably this reminds us that there are still personal stakes for at least one member of Weiss.

There's a flashback in which Persia was apparently standing outside in the rain in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time to see his brother run sister!Aya over with the car and flag his brother down to ask what the fuck. I have Questions, ok, so so so many questions about the timing of this incident. I also have questions about why the fuck Takatori explains that the fact that he embezzled a fuck ton of money for illegal shit will now be blamed on Aya's father to Persia. The man that set up all of this shit has to be smarter than that, but apparently the show can't figure out any other way to get this vital information to the viewers.

Persia finally dies. Omi cries. Weiss has changed into their assassin outfits and are incredibly confident for four guys without ranged weapons staring down a bunch of guys with machine guns.

Takatori has now come to let Schwarz out of their house arrest so they can to murder Weiss. Crawford tells him that their contract has been terminated as per their agreement; Takatori got what he wanted and also he accused them of being spies, sorry, they're not going to bodyguard him. Also, they'd like to end the world, please and thank you and goodbye.

Omi has got past the machine guns to confront Takatori. "Why did you kill Uncle Shuichi, Daddy? Why did you kill Ouka, Daddy?" Takatori says Omi has no right to call him that and keeps running. They keep coming across members of Weiss as they go down the hall and the SD bodyguards are dropping like flies. Again, despite their machine guns and training and there is high drama and then there is come on, guys, this is getting even more ridiculous than the last episode and I didn't think they could top that but here we are. Why do the soldiers even HAVE GUNS? Do the guns have no bullets? HOW ARE THEY MISSING MEN RUNNING RIGHT AT THEM?

Oh, right, also the building is on fire. Entirely on fire. The fire department is on the way.

Meanwhile, inside said burning building, Aya and Takatori are having an actual sword fight (where the fuck did he get a sword) and Aya shouts that his name is Fujimiya Ran, Takatori has killed his family, prepare to die. Again, the room is on fire, literally on fire as they fight to a standstill.

Takatori will now escape via helicopter because they're on the roof? Since when? Aya stabs him through the heart just before Takatori can be lifted out of harm's way. Very dramatic. He gets his revenge. The rest of Weiss is on the roof of the BURNING BUILDING surrounded by flames.

Guys. GUYS. Can we talk about smoke inhalation. This is AT LEAST the second time they've all been in a building that burned down. Third time for Ken. THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES FOR GENERAL HEALTH HERE. OH MY GOD. (Would you like a brief lesson? No? Too bad, because here it is: the hot air and contaminants in it can cause swelling in the throat and lungs, which is not conducive to the process of breathing. Said contaminants can also actively poison someone, depending on what they are, and buildings have a number of components that are in fact toxic when inhaled. Carbon monoxide is a common one, and it's particularly nasty as it binds to hemoglobin in place of oxygen and then does not let the fuck go, but there are several others. Particulate matter in the air can penetrate deep into the lungs and create short-term and long-term health issues. This is aside from the fact that the fire sucks the oxygen out of the air near it, ok, meaning that standing too close to too large of a fire can and will cause suffocation even in the absence of burns. In addition, it can often take a few hours for symptoms to show up, and if the victim isn't already at the hospital being monitored when they get all ARDS-y, their prognosis is much, much poorer.) Also, do we remember that 3/4 of Weiss was literally shot two episodes ago? No? BECAUSE I DO.

We close out the episode on Sakura sitting next to the comatose sister!Aya. Trying to be sad and poignant but I am kind of done with it.

I begin to see why I had no memory of these events. I will say this for the show; it absolutely embraces its absurdity. It plays it completely straight. There is not a single hint of tongue-in-cheek levity or fourth-wall-breaking. It is COMMITTED to its melodrama. I'm not sure if it's AWARE of how ridiculous it is (I feel like it must be? On some level? Because florist assassins? And yet there is no evidence of this), but it is unrelenting in its attempts to rip out the viewer's heartstrings.

I have to say I have some respect for that dedication. Despite how much yelling I'm doing about the medical aspects. And other things.

[nalanzu]

Weiss Kreuz Episode 14: Fliehen

When we left off, we were at the cliffhangeriest of cliffhangers - Aya was about to get stabbed through the face, while the rest of the team was in the process of losing a fight with multiple helicopters and rocket launchers. Persia was of the opinion that adding a man with a pointy stick would solve the second problem.

The episode would also like to remind us that Takatori did in fact murder Aya's family and Aya knows it. Also that Aya pierced his own ear with his sister's brand-new earring. Very metal of him. Oh, and that Aya has learned that Crawford is psychic.

Well, that's an ominous title for the episode, isn't it.

Weiss is pinned down not only by a helicopter but also multiple men in SUVs. They scatter, Ken managing to run just fine on that leg that was allegedly broken last episode. Meanwhile, Aya dodges at the last second. The high drama of the fight continues. Aya and Crawford have a fist-fight, which seems like a poor choice on Crawford's part.

Despite having multiple actual machine guns firing at them, somehow Omi is the only one who ends up with a bullet under his skin. Only one bullet, even. It's still not great. We get a dramatically silent moment as everyone stops firing while Omi twitches and concludes he can't move and is about to die.

Crawford finally gives us his team name, as Aya concludes that he cannot give up. Persia snatches Aya off the street, and Crawford makes the executive decision that they're just done with him now and don't need to chase him. Persia tells Aya that his buddies need his help, and Aya tells him to fuck off. Persia insists they go have a look-see at how shit's going and see if Aya still feels the same way.

The other three are still doing very poorly, although Yohji has managed to steal a jeep, run down three men shooting straight at him and missing entirely, and also light a cigarette while doing stunt driving. He thinks he could probably escape on his own, but that would make him an asshole, so he just drives straight into the machine gun fire. Predictably, bullets hit the engine and the windshield - but miss Yohji, how lucky for him - and he crashes.

Yohji is saved from the helicopter strike by a surface to air rocket; Ken has somehow managed to steal a missile launcher. He missed the helicopter, but did create a splendid distraction. He then discards the missile launcher, as his position has now been revealed, and manages to literally dodge bullets as he jumps into Yohji's crashed car that somehow still runs and shoves Yohji into the passenger seat. They're off to collect Omi and continue to manage not to collect bullets. Honestly, these special forces guys have the shittiest aim.

While stunt driving, Ken has an existential crisis about being a failure. He also dodges missiles. Persia also arrives on the scene, with Aya in the back seat, as we cut to a very dramatic shot of the upside down jeep and the rest of Weiss motionless on the ground. There is a literal firing squad lined up to take them out as Aya watches from Persia's back seat, which is the highest of drama.

What this does, of course, is set them all up to be mowed down by Aya's machine gun fire as he appears, standing on top of Persia's car. He grabs another machine gun and aims for the helicopter. Misses. Steals a jeep. And finally nails the helicopter with a rocket launcher. The rest of the special forces flee.

The sun rises over a badly injured Ken being supported by Omi, while Yohji hangs off Aya's shoulder. Persia and Manx know that the Real Battle must still be fought, but Persia is still police commissioner until Takatori can maneuver him out of the position and they aren't out of options yet. They drive off, leaving Weiss standing on the battlefield.

Let me pause for a second, because I honestly need to laugh hysterically at how goddamn OP Aya was in that scene. It is a Big Damn Hero moment - all of them except Omi, honestly, got a pretty decent Big Damn Hero moment - and while it was happening I was absolutely into it. The second I start thinking about it afterwards, it becomes completely absurd. To be fair, this more or less encapsulates the action film genre as a whole, so I can't really complain that the creative team is out of pocket here.

I do, however, want to know who the fuck taught Aya to fire a machine gun and a missile launcher.

MOVING ON. We have reached Election Day. Of course, Takatori has won. Because this is how drama works. Persia packs up his office (he also has that same picture, by the way, of his brother's family). Manx hurries him out of the office, and we cut to the flowershop. The only one there is Momoe, who looks at the SWAT team rushing into the building and gives them a pitch-perfect dotty old lady routine. The SWAT team heads for the basement, finding no one, and concludes that the four-story building is otherwise empty. They shoot up the walls of the basement for no good reason, and honestly, this kind of breaks my suspension of disbelief a little. There is paperwork for this and I know in my heart they're not doing it.

Continuing to move on, let me reiterate that it is Election Day. It's morning. The vote has been finalized, Takatori has been sworn into office, and he has fired his brother and publicly named him as the leader of the terrorist group Weiss. Shit is moving REAL FUCKING FAST. This also kind of breaks my suspension of disbelief. Takatori is starting his term of office with an apology for his brother's actions and mobilized his private army again.

Manx is surprised that shit is moving so quickly. This is literally the only reasonable reaction. We know damn good and well Takatori will move as quickly as he can, because that's what we've seen him do, but there should be structures in place that keep shit moving more slowly. Bureaucracy fucking exists, ok. She thinks they should head for Kritiker's Secret Hideout.

Their movements are hindered by the fact that Takatori has imposed martial law on all of Tokyo (!!!!!!! the fuck? THAT IS NOT HOW SHIT WORKS) in order to hunt down the alleged terrorists. Takatori also thinks now is a great time to get rid of Schwarz, who he accuses of being spies for Estset. He thinks he doesn't need them any more, as he has what he wants. Crawford is content to sit back and watch him fuck up.

We finally see where Weiss got off to, which is the sewers. They worry about Momoe, know (somehow? did he call them? Does someone still have a working cell phone?) that Persia and Manx are safe, and think that Japan is fucked. Also, all of them appear uninjured, in direct contradiction to the earlier scenes. (Aya was literally the only one who did not get shot at least once, ok, AND YET. Do they not have holes in them? Were they not in explosions? This shit fucks you up! There are CONSEQUENCES!! I know we have to do shit in the name of drama, but OH MY GOD.)

Aya is incredibly vindicated that his personal nemesis is now the Big Bad for the rest of his team and threatening the Entire Country. I… feel like this is really not healthy for Aya's continued personal development. The man is going to develop a superiority complex. More of a superiority complex. In any case, the rest of Weiss decides they're going to help Aya take on the prime minster. And the literal army.

Persia, before heading for a safehouse, has vone to visit his sister-in-law's grave. She married Takatori and - for some reason - committed suicide. The episode doesn't tell us why (it may or may not be related to Omi's kidnapping and subsequent disappearance, but the show is not going to tell us this). Manx is trying to get Persia to go to the safehouse, and he has ANOTHER errand to run. He decides he needs to leave her behind, for her own safety, unconscious and out in the open. What the actual fuck.

Do y'all remember kidney girl? Aya does. I don't know that he's actually talked to her since their It's Not A Date, but he sneaks onto her balcony and asks her to use the money in a lockbox to transfer his sister to a different hospital. (This is honestly a mark of desperation; Sakura doesn't have the legal authority to do that as there is no paperwork to support it, she's underage, and there is literally nothing stopping her from taking the money and running.) Instead of a very reasonable What The Fuck Is Going On, we just get Sakura The Ingenue with a wide-eyed hopeful smile telling Aya she's sure he'll be back to collect his key and everything will be fine.

I'm not sure what, exactly, Persia thinks he's going to accomplish by driving his car right up to Parliament, but he does. And gets out of the car, wanting to talk to his brother. Somehow, the trigger-happy special forces do not shoot him.

Setting up another cliffhanger is further special forces personnel driving around with wanted posters of the members of Weiss (it's kind of hilarious to me that at least some of them must have been the ones who set the bombs, right, because we know Takatori was using them in that capacity, and now they're holding amateur flyers to seek out men they know damn good and well are not actually terrorists; I would honestly fucking LOVE to get an internal perspective from some of these guys, and feel like there is absolutely potential for a story here). Omi lets himself be seen and then flees on foot down an alley in order to draw one jeep-ful of men into a trap.

Weiss gets a win by eliminating four soldiers and stealing their clothes. Yohji, buddy, I feel like you should hide your hair under that hat. It's a dead give-away. Not that the rest of them have anything resembling military haircuts, but oh my god, Yohji. They have concluded that they are going on their Last Mission.

I can only assume they think they're going to sneak into the building with their Very Clever Disguises and murder Takatori, which is the shittiest plan ever istg. I don't think there is the slightest bit of critical thinking on the part of literally anyone here; not the characters, not the writers.

I swore I wasn't going to do this, but I am already in my head rationalizing the fact that Takatori moved so fucking fast and Weiss not being injured by telling myself that more time than like, literally A DAY must have passed; it has to have been weeks. Martial law wouldn't have been instituted quite so fast, except that then what's the rationale for locking down ALL OF TOKYO (?!?!?!!!) if no further bombings have taken place, so there must have been more bombings carried out in the meantime we just didn't see it on screen and you see how I am now just MAKING THINGS UP ENTIRELY so this makes some sort of sense.

Why the fuck is it still so incredibly entertaining????

[nalanzu]

Weiss Kreuze Episode 13: Bruch

So we've reached the halfway point of the series. We get a brief recap of Omi's family drama, and from the title the heavy drama isn't slowing down any time soon.

We do get the lovely sight of Takatori beating the shit out of Schuldig and Farfarello with a golf club for killing his daughter. Crawford redirects his rage to Weiss, which works incredibly well despite Schuldig having literally fired the gun.

The cases of the week aren't going to stop either, as we see a para-military type by a burning warehouse followed by a news report of a military base being broken into. Weiss, however, is more worried about the fact that there is a telepathic assassin who knows who they are. Ken and Yohji think it's time to fuck off into the sunset. Aya, of course, is still hellbent on revenge and will hear no talk of breaking up the team.

Omi and Persia have a conversation in a lovely cemetery off the bay, in front of Ouka's grave. Omi has come to the conclusion that Aya is right and Takatori must be stopped. They're interrupted by the man himself also showing up to pay his respects to his late daughter, but before we get the fallout of Takatori potentially recognizing Omi, we're going to rturn to the case of the week.

On the news, the stolen military weapons have been used to commit acts of domestic terrorism, which have been signed Weiss. Our heroes, of course, are furious that their name has been slandered. Not that anyone outside Kritiker knows who Weiss is, but they're still pissed about it. They do, of course, recognize that it's Takatori's assassins who are behind these shenanigans, and Kritiker takes the very reasonable step of not sending Weiss directly into the very obvious trap. Weiss does not appreciate this concern, especially Aya, who just wants to murder Takatori Reiji and will straight-up leave Weiss and Kritiker to do it.

Just in case it's not already clear, we get to see a soot-stained Schuldig cackling at news of the bombings. He doesn't want to reveal their identities to the public, either, he wants to play with them and so does Farfarello.

Manx and Persia think they're being watched, as the election approaches, and Persia - the police commissioner - arrives for a meeting with Takatori - vice prime minister. Takatori wants Persia to deal with this rogue group, Weiss, who is rampaging around the city. Or, he says smugly, is there some reason the commissioner doesn't wish to address the issue? They are playing very ridiculous cat-and-mouse. Persia's counter is a military special forces group that Takatori had formed while he was apparently in charge of the defense force (I - I'm not sure how politics work but I don't think this is it). It has gone AWOL. They clumsily dance around the idea that this AWOL special forces unit is Takatori's secret army before Takatori asks what he really wants to know, which is who Omi was. All he gets out of it is that he's Ouka's friend, an obvious lie.

Omi, in the basement, is trying to figure out what to do about the terrorists. Aya is cranky and accuses him of spying. Omi is also cranky and lets it slip that Persia is his uncle. More Omi family drama incoming, my friends.

Aya, who has zero chill, immediately runs off to threaten Persia for the terrible crime of being a Takatori and not letting Aya murder his nemesis. He gets a gun to his temple, courtesy of Manx, and demands to be sent out on a mission immediately. Not only does he have no sense of chill, he has no sense of strategy or timing. When he doesn't get what he wants, he threatens to take his toys and go home, by which I mean he threatens to quit Weiss. Persia reminds him that the only reason his sister's medical bills are being paid are because Kritiker, his employer, is paying them. Aya's only answer for this is that he's not going to take orders from a Takatori. Oh, Aya.

This entire conversation, by the way, was observed by a shady government-type in a suit and sunglasses.

The next terrorist attack involves more explosives, killing multiple people. Persia still doesn't want to send Weiss into an obvious trap. Manx points out, quite reasonably, that they can't just keep doing nothing, even if their opponent is military special forces. I can't help but feel that there's a middle ground between Do Nothing and Send Weiss To Handle The Terrorists. I'm pretty sure that middle ground is Collect Information And Develop A Plan. Nobody on the show agrees with me, though, and they're just going to point Weiss at the problem and say, Fix it.

Aya, meanwhile, is having flashbacks of the day his sister was run over and being told that she would almost certainly be braindead and comatose forever. I have some thoughts about quality of life here. we get a dramatic scene of Aya folding an earring into her hand, while he wears the other one of the pair. Back in their assassin basement, Omi has tracked the location of the terrorists probably, and everyone but Aya is set to go kill some dudes. Omi tells them Aya has quit the group, although he really has no solid basis for this.

Instead of going straight to the dramatic fight, we get another flashback to the night sister!Aya was hit by a car and a scene of them at a festival. It kills the pace entirely. Just kills it. Kills the pace and the mood. We learn that the two of them found their parents dead on the floor at home, suffocated by gas, and Aya notices the gas and a tiny bomb right before the house explodes. Aya, trapped in the wreckage, watches as his sister is run over after she escaped the house. We also learn that Aya's father was suspected of having participated in an embezzlement scheme, so the gas leak is possibly suicide, according to the papers. Ah, the plot is thicker than we have been led to believe.

Aya, of course, is absolutely convinced that his parents were murdered. There is a cute bit with the earrings, which sister!Aya bought at the festival, and Aya vows revenge. He gives his sister the one earring, which she has apparently been holding for years (what hospital staff member is going to leave the earring in her hand? omfgggggggggg), and puts the other one on. Did he just pierce his ear with the earring? The fuck, Aya.

We finally get back to the present, where Weiss attempts to sneak into the very obvious trap and is immediately caught by the terrorists with a giant floodlight. Good job, guys. Aya, for his part, sees Takatori's car driving down the road and leaps on top of said car. He attempts to stab Takatori through the roof of the car, with his sword, and all he is going to do is ruin the damn sword. Takatori isn't even IN the car, it's Crawford being smarmy.

So we've got 3/4 of Weiss running away from rocket launchers and Aya facing off against Crawford's gun and Farfarello's knives. Manx, in a car with Persia, thinks the fact that Aya isn't with the group is affecting their performance. Guys, I do not think that's the problem. That is really, really not the problem. Persia is also aware that his brother knows about his little side project courtesy of the spy from earlier.

With the kind of dramatic timing we expect from this show, Takatori calls Persia to gloat about almost certainly being elected Prime Minister in the election the next day (weren't there noises being made a couple episodes back about supporters he absolutely needed to win the election being murdered by Weiss? istg), but also to say that he knows who's behind the terrorist group, Weiss. He threatens Persia with Consequences as soon as he wins the election.

I feel that, with reasonable people, this would just be giving Persia warning and enabling him to prepare and develop a strategy. We have seen, however, that despite apparently successfully running a paramilitary shadow organization of spies and assassins, Persia has zero concept of strategy and he's not going to do anything useful with this information. As expected, Persia concludes that the best course of action is to go find Aya. Just. No. A prettyboy ball of rage with a pointy stick and no sense of perspective is not going to solve your problems, Persia.

Also, several episodes back, we had a whole-ass scene with A Kritiker Agent who had been set to watching Masafumi who turned up mutated and dead. This clearly indicated that YOU HAVE MORE PEOPLE THAN WEISS. Why the fuck are you not mobilizing them? Why?

Aya, meanwhile, is getting his butt kicked by Crawford's ability to see where he's going to strike and just step out of the way. It's pretty funny, honestly, although Crawford is incredibly smug about the whole thing. Crawford tells Aya it's pretty sad that he can't see the future. Aya snarls that you're not supposed to see the future, you're supposed to make it. To be fair, that's a pretty good line.

Weiss is not doing well facing off against rocket launchers and helicopters, what with not having any ranged weapons except for Omi's darts, and Ken may or may not have a broken leg. We end the episode on Farfarello pointing a stabby weapon at Aya's face.

Honestly, for all of my bitching, this is a pretty fun episode. Nobody is acting reasonably. Nobody. The actions one would expect to be taken given the circumstances that must exist due to what's been laid out in the plot are not taken. There is a hyperfocus on the men in Weiss despite the fact that Kritiker has been stated to be a larger organization. Nobody understands that information is a valuable commodity. It's incredibly juvenile storytelling as it gets into details that were previously only implied and absolutely fails to create any sort of cohesive or believable narrative.

I have no idea why it's still somehow a lot of fun. Honestly, it's entirely possible that I just like yelling at the television that the problem they actually have is not the problem they think they have and either way Aya is 100% not the solution.

[nalanzu]

Weiss Kreuz Episode 12: Abschied

We ended the last episode on Omi finding and assassinating his biological brother, after said brother unrepentantly insisted that hunting humans for sport was justified if it achieved a desirable end, namely the election of their father to public office. There's been a lot of heavy drama in the last several episodes, and we're about due for a breather. We're not going to get it.

We open on Weiss in the flowershop, as Ouka is beginning to worry about Omi and all the weird shit that happens around him. Given that they were just kidnapped and shot at before the shenanigans at the party happened, one cannot blame her. The peanut gallery, AKA Yohji and Ken, think this is a security breach and also not fun to watch. Aya is uncharacteristically lenient and tells his teammates to leave them alone.

Not only is Ouka hanging around the flowershop, she's also joining Omi on deliveries. They're very cute, talking about Takatori as if he's a decent human being. Ouka invites Omi to dinner, and tells him that her father is very excited to meet him. She keeps squeezing Omi's broken ribs, which I should not be amused by, but here we are. She has a date at the movies planned. She is once again not taking a no for an answer.

Omi mutters to himself out loud that she's very pushy, as he walks back to the bike, and Schuldig gives him some shit for it. Schuldig also ostentatiously reads Omi's mind, and tells him he's a hypocrite because he's killed his brothers. Schuldig really gets under Omi's skin, by calling him a bloodthirsty murderer who isn't fit to touch Ouka and then laughing at him. Omi reacts like an adolescent, namely by threatening Schuldig with a dart. Schuldig finds this hilarious.

The rest of Weiss finds it a bit weird that Omi came home and locked himself in his room. There are comments about Young Men In Love and the conversation does not go to the dirty place it should when they're making those comments. Omi, however, is having nightmares about killing his biological relatives. Not sure why this is worse than killing anyone else, as he didn't grow up with them, but it's bothering Omi a lot.

Oh my god Ouka has an adorable poodle. She gets accosted by Schuldig while walking said dog, and recognizes him as the one who kidnapped Omi. Schuldig introduces himself as a bodyguard, and Ouka calls bullshit. Schuldig tells her Omi's original name and that Omi is actually her brother. Ouka reasonably tells him he's a liar, but Schuldig demonstrates his telepathy and tells her to ask her parents for the truth. He just likes throwing wrenches in things, doesn't he.

Ouka asks her mother about her father's hypothetical third son, and her mother responds just as Schuldig said she would by denying all knowledge of such a person. Ouka says she'll ask Takatori, and her mother caves. She pulls out an undamaged version of the picture Omi found in the burning house, in which she's holding a baby Omi, and confirms that Omi is Mamoru is Ouka's brother, and then says she was so surprised when Ouka showed up with him. Was she not going to tell her daughter that she was related to her new boyfriend? What the actual fuck.

Ouka runs off to talk to Omi, who isn't in the front of the shop, and then tells Yohji that she doesn't want to talk to him after all. Yohji decides he needs to meddle, and sends Omi chasing after Ouka. They're trying very hard to set up a tragic love affair, what with Omi falling hard for Ouka and his guilt about the fact that he has signed up to be a murderer, but the fact that they're using the secret siblings trope to do it means it isn't landing for me.

I'm also not convinced I should find it funny that Omi's worst fear is that Ouka finds out he's a member of Weiss, a group of prettyboy assassins who have been killing people for years, but that the actual truth of the matter is that they are allegedly half-siblings. There are a lot of things I keep finding funny that I think are supposed to be poignant or dramatic or tragic, though it's not limited to this show. I'm fairly sure the writers are aiming for a sense of noble tragedy here. I'm also fairly sure they've missed.

In any case, Omi has gone to talk to Persia about his love life. He wants to know why Persia hid his past and why he was sent to kill his brothers. Persia tells him that Takatori has been using the position he already has to enact control over Japan with the help of a secret organization, Estset. There are apparently MANY secret organizations in his version of Japan. (Were the 90s the decade of conspiracy theories? Or was it just Weiss Kreuz and X-Files?) Persia opines that Takatori forced his sons to help him, and tells Omi that even though it's difficult, sometimes you just have to kill people you're related to for the greater good.

Omi pulls the absolute most teenage line anyone has ever pulled and shouts that Persia doesn't understand how he feels. This is also a glorious set-up for the next dramatic reveal, in which Persia's identity is finally shared with Omi and the audience. "I do understand how you feel, because I'm Takatori Reiji's younger brother."

I mean, that is definitely a great Gotcha line.

Omi rallies pretty quickly and demands to know why Persia isn't out there doing the murdering himself, then. Oh, Omi. This is how the world works. Powerful and rich men get other people to do their shit for them. Omi isn't having it, either, as Persia explains that he doesn't have the strength to to what Omi does, and Omi spits back that Persia just doesn't want the blood on his hands. He also wants to know why Takatori didn't pay the ransom for him when he was kidnapped, which, hey, that's a reasonable question that's been bothering him for several episodes now. Persia is a lying liar and says he doesn't know.

Back to Takatori's assassins, Nagi is psychically typing and researching on the internet. Schuldig, oddly, is apparently able to share his gift. He also says minds taste like honey, which is weird AF. We're not sure what they're up to at this point, but it's probably not great.

Back to Omi and the date, into the theater he goes looking for Ouka. She stares at him from behind, as Schuldig pops up behind her. Back at the flowershop, someone has sent the rest of Weiss a message that Omi is a spy and to meet them at a specific place to learn more. They wonder who could have hacked their systems, demonstrating that they have no fucking clue how email works. To be fair, they're all GenX, so it does track. (Omi, the baby Millennial, is the one who knows tech. Which also tracks.) Ken, just stop talking.

Aya decides they don't have enough time to clear the meeting with Manx. Yohji jokes that if Omi was a spy, he's doing a great job, but they're trying to reach Omi to tell him about the shenanigans before said meeting. Back at the theater, Schuldig tells Ouka about Omi's murdery other job. He exaggerates just slightly, telling her that Omi was there to kill her father. She is skeptical, as she should be. Schuldig says he'll prove it.

Because they play right into his hands, the rest of Weiss is on their way. Schuldig says Weiss is trying to assassinate Ouka. She is, of course, tied up in his back seat. He sends Omi to the meeting place that was given to Weiss.

It's foggy and dark when they all arrive. Ouka, tied to a tree, screams for help. Weiss goes to help her. Omi immediately assumes they're there to kill her. I really feel this speaks as to a fundamental lack of trust between these people; Omi was ready at the drop of a hat to threaten his teammates when he found out his biological brother was their target, and he is absolutely willing to believe right now that his teammates and friends are going to murder his girlfriend because she found out their secret. Schuldig is fanning these flames, to be fair, and there's always the possibility that he's affecting Omi's judgment.

Aya hears Schuldig, though, and goes after him. Farfarello launches himself at Ken, and Yohji drags Omi into the dubious shelter of a tinfoil umbrella when Schuldig starts shooting at him. How the gun does not end the fight immediately I have no idea, but Weiss distracts Farfarello and Schuldig while Omi goes for Ouka and gets her away from the tree. She's upset, and tells him that they're siblings. Poor Omi. Her father is Takatori Reiji, he realizes.

While Omi and Ouka fall apart, Schuldig and Farfarello keep fighting Weiss. Omi decides that he and Ouka can still love each other and ease each other's loneliness, just as siblings. And not lovers. I don't think that's how feelings work, generally, but hey. It's pretty cute. He then says they'll be together forever, sealing her death warrant as Schuldig shoots her in the back literally the second he finishes speaking. She dies dramatically in his arms after he desperately kisses her. What was that about siblings, Omi? What was it?

The requisite rain required to punctuate such a Tragic Moment begins to fall. Weiss looks hot and brooding in their assassin outfits. Omi screams, clutching the body of his sister/lover. End episode.

I know there are definitely worse things I've seen and enjoyed. This one really revels in its melodrama; there are highs and lows - mostly lows - as it tries to pulverize the hearts of its viewers into dust with how Painful And Tragic the events are for the four very pretty male protagonists. Sometimes this lands better than other times, but now that we've gotten halfway through the show, it's beginning to feel a touch repetitive.

One might make an argument for Ouka being an entry for the Women In Refrigerators column, and it's hard to dispute that she dies specifically and only to cause Omi grief and pain. With pitch-perfect comedic - I mean tragic - timing, even. The point at which she differs slightly is that we do see a little more of her as a character. She is, to be fair, entirely focused on Omi. We don't get a lot of her internal emotional journey or her motivations, although there's a glimpse of that when we hear about her growing up without a stable paternal presence in her life, but the emotional development we've seen for her is roughly on par with what we get from the show's protagonists. She does have a clearly defined personality. She's not quite a woman-shaped cutout who does nothing more than die for male angst.

On her own, Ouka is a perfectly reasonable entry in the Weiss canon of characters. Taken alongside Schreient, Asuka, Maki, and sister!Aya (Yuriko escaped to a presumably happy life in Australia, so she doesn't make this list), the women of Weiss paint a rather bleak picture of female representation. There are very few positive outcomes for women, in this show, though most of the early one-off characters involved in the case of the week ended up with dead boyfriends rather than stuffed into the fridge themselves.

As far as Omi goes, it's A Lot. The reveal that he's related to Persia who is related to Aya's nemesis is A Lot, and it's not necessarily handled badly (aside from the well-timed rain, and the well-timed gunshot, and the absolutely cringe-inducing foreshadowing) but it's not really handled well, either. All the subtlety of a ton of bricks, this show, as I am once again struck by how thoughtful many fanworks were in comparison. (I said many. Not all. Not even most. I know what this fandom was like.)

As far as vanity projects go, though, hey. I'm still having a lot of fun revisiting it.

[nalanzu]

Weiss Kreuz Episode 11: Abkunft

Starting out strong with sunset over the bay, Omi is thinking about Hirofumi and how there is now a conflict between Weiss and his family, and how his family members are criminals. Ouka, who missed the important parts, is trying to apologize for putting Omi in a sticky situation. Omi tells her to leave him alone.

Meanwhile, Aya broods and Omi goes to talk to him. This is not the right place for emotional support, but luckily for Omi, what he wants is for Aya to explain why Takatori is his rage button. No, wait, Omi also wants to know what this means for Omi himself and his relationship with Aya. Characteristically, Aya tells him, more or less, to fuck off.

Takatori Sr. is pissed because politicians who he sees as vital to getting him elected were murdered and he wants Hirofumi to find the men responsible and murder them right back. Hirofumi is more concerned about the fact that his baby brother has appeared, but Takatori Sr. is INFURIATED at just the sound of the name Mamoru.

Hirofumi goes to start setting up a political event prior to the election, attempting to get back into his father's good graces. Weiss, of course, has been hired to do the floral arrangements. Aya, stressed by recent events, is starting to lose what self-control he has and starts stalking Hirofumi. Ken is the voice of reason, because Ken has noticed Crawford and the telepath lurking nearby. Ken and Yohji are pissed that Omi let Hirofumi get away, but concerned because Omi is related to the target. Aya does not give a fuck, because his only priority is dead Takatori men.

While this is happening, Omi is in a classroom, because I had apparently forgotten that he is not only in high school but somehow managing not to get dropped or expelled for the number of classes that he must be missing between his full-time job as a florist and his full-time job as an assassin and when the fuck did he get a motorcycle? Ouka wants a ride on said motorcycle, and hops up behind him. Also hits on him.

The two of them end up at an art gallery, because Ouka likes the paintings and since they cheer her up, she thought it might help Omi, too. She's lonely, because she doesn't think she has close friends. Omi says he does have close friends, which Ouka assumes are the rest of Weiss. Sweetie, no, okay, these men are not close friends, I don't care what the narrative is trying to tell you, these men are not emotionally supportive of each other.

Apparently Ouka's mother owns or runs a restaurant, and Ouka brings Omi there to be fed. Ouka's mother is the queen of TMI, telling Omi without a sliver of hesitation that Ouka's father is a married man she had an affair with, and perhaps this is why Ouka acts out so much at school. Oh my fucking god, there are no functional adults in this show.

We do learn that Ouka has some kind of relationship with her politician father, which, honestly, there is literally only one reason for this. If I didn't know already, I would know.

Daddy issues aside, Ouka thinks her mother might be a better candidate to get Omi to open up about what's bothering him. Respectfully, ma'am, I disagree, as your mother has already demonstrated she has no sense of personal boundaries or what is appropriate to bring up in conversation with near-strangers. Ouka's mother just says Ouka is useless, which Omi somehow finds endearing. What Omi does get from Ouka's mother is tea and a fortune-cookie statement about solving your own problems, because no one else is going to do it for you.

At the end of the date, Omi gets an invitation to Ouka's party and a promise to be introduced to her father. Omi sees Aya driving, and decides to stalk him. He does so successfully, following Aya all the way to the hospital, where Aya is telling his comatose sister that he's going to get his revenge. Omi pounces on him at the car, and demands an explanation. His guess, which is my favorite thing to happen this episode, is that coma girl is Aya's girlfriend.

We finally learn that Takatori Reiji is the one responsible for the coma and that this is Aya's sister. Brief flashback to the katana being thrown at the helicopter, and Aya manfully does not murder Omi, his teammate and alleged friend, for being the son of his nemesis. Ken and Yohji aren't entirely useless when it comes to investigation after all, and have figured out where Hirofumi is going to be. They're not sure what they're going to do about the target, and Aya interrupts the conversation to say that Omi has to pick a side.

A very miserable Omi is collected by a very dressed up Ouka, who looks fantastic in her red dress. Hirofumi appears, pissed AF that Omi is there. The Takatori assassin team is also in attendance as Ouka gets greeted and hit on by various men.

Also in attendance, Manx and Persia. They're chatting with Takatori about the upcoming election, or at least listening to the conversation on the topic. For half a minute, the show fakes out the viewers that Persia is Ouka's father, but reveals that he's the police commissioner instead as he fucks off to talk to another politician. No, Ouka's father is Takatori, of course.

I'm fairly sure I'm not supposed to find it hilarious that Ouka is introducing her father to her boyfriend, who is also apparently her half-brother. Hirofumi ruins everything by making off with Omi, and the plot thickens. He wants to know what the fuck Omi is involved with, why he's with people who tried to kill Hirofumi, and who these people are.

Omi's counter is that arranging for human prey seems like the wrong end of the moral conflict, but Hirofumi thinks the ends justify the means and Omi is naive. Omi is absolutely sure Hirofumi is in the wrong and should give himself up to the police for his crimes. Hirofumi is unrepentant, and Omi has concluded that Hirofumi is a garbage adult. This is also hilarious but I don't think I'm supposed to be laughing at it. Also laughing at it is Schuldig the telepathic Takatori assassin, which I think is a pretty solid indication that I'm not reacting the way the writers think is appropriate. Schuldig does say he can make everything go smoothly.

Schuldig has yet to meet the block of irrational obstinate rage that is Fujimiya Aya.

Ouka fails to find Omi, but she does find a drunk ex-boyfriend and an opportunity to be sexually assaulted. In public? At her own father's party? Despite the venue, Omi is the one who appears like an avenging angel to defeat the drunk guy by ducking and letting him punch a wall. There is a very incest-y kiss as Ouka pours her heart out to Omi and begs him to think of her romantically. He does it, too, and kisses her back.

Weiss' track record with women is hilariously awful, but the icing on the bad decision sundae is Schuldig kidnapping Omi and leaping off the balcony like a man-sized grasshopper. Manx witnesses this and calls Weiss to go deal with it. Before they get there, Hirofumi beats the shit out of Omi with a stick. Schuldig hides in the shadows and cackles at Weiss thinking they're being sneaky.

Omi repudiates Hirofumi as his brother, which is somehow Extremely Significant to Weiss. They jump in, ready to assassinate, but Schuldig gets in the way. Being telepathic makes him real good at dodging, which he does long enough to distract Weiss before bounding off. Aya cuts Omi down from the ceiling and declares that he has rescued him because Omi is not a Takatori, he's Tsukiyono Omi.

Someone needs to explain to me how Omi with his multiple presumably broken ribs and potential internal bleeding (as evidenced by the blood from the mouth, although he might have just bitten the inside of his lips) managed to not only figure out where Hirofumi was driving off to but get there ahead of him. There is a dramatic crossbow shot through the windshield and glittering tears flung into the air as Omi repudiates the name of Takatori. The rest of Weiss, incidentally, is nowhere to be seen.

It's very heavy-handed, the drama in this segment. Very, VERY heavy-handed. Subtlety is not a word that anyone involved in this show is familiar with. As far as the concept goes, it's pretty solid. The execution is not helped by the limitations of the run-time.

Despite the show's efforts to paint itself as morally gray, particularly with Aya's rigid insistence that committing crimes and committing immoral and unethical acts is their burden to carry in order to serve the greater good, there's definitely a very black-and-white mentality to it. Commitment is all or nothing; Omi is either a Takatori or he isn't, members of Kritiker can choose between Persia is 100% right or death, and characters are either psychopathic villains or innocent victims. The only characters who are allowed some modicum of grace for perpetrating terrible deeds are Weiss, because their motivations are painted as pure. Every other non-victim is driven by ambition, greed, lust. There's no room for the quiet desperation of just trying to survive.

The key point to why I find this frustrating is that the show doesn't think it has such a binary approach. It thinks it has nuance. It thinks it's writing good men supporting each other making difficult choices over and over and over again, but it's writing people thrown together through circumstance who seem like they would run far away from each other if they could. I want it to engage more with the emotions and motivations of the characters, but all we get is the high drama of men crying briefly and prettily before returning to a cheerful facade.