Weiß Kreuz (Knight Hunters)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Weiss Kreuz, White Cross

Japanese: Weiß kreuz　ヴァイス　クロイツ

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 25

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Apr 9, 1998 to Oct 1, 1998

Premiered: Spring 1998

Broadcast: Unknown

Producers: animate Film, Polygram Japan

Licensors: Media Blasters

Studios: Plum, Magic Bus

Source: Original

Genres: Action, Drama

Duration: 23 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 6.70¹ (scored by 7,463 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #5867²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #4962

Members: 19,115

Favorites: 144

Resources

AniDB

ANN

Synopsis

Aya, Youji, Ken, and Omi are the four young men who comprise Weiss Kreuz (WK), an assassin group that eliminates certain menaces to society. Each member has his own trademark fighting style. Aya is adept at fighting with a katana, Youji has mastered the art of strangulation via strings, Ken is lethal with his metal claws, while Omi specializes in a wide array of projectiles. Under the command of a mysterious man known only as "Persia", the WK is dispatched to take care of drug rings, terrorist factions, and the like. But as things go along, they discover that most, if not all, the bad elements they have dealt with are somehow connected to the Takatori family. The Takatori family is rich, powerful, and influential. It seems if the problem is to be nipped in the bud, the WK would have to put an end to one of Japan's most prominent clans.

(Source: AniDB)

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Background

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Weiß: An Assassin and White Shaman
Sequel:	Weiß Kreuz Glühen, Weiß Kreuz OVA

Kasahara, Hiroko
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Egami, Kiyoshi

Director

Oobari, Masami

Episode Director

Hiiro, Yukina

Episode Director, Storyboard

Yamaguchi, Mihiro

Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

	1: "Velvet Underworld" by Weiß (eps 1-15)
	2: "Piece of Heaven" by Weiß (eps 16-25)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Beautiful Alone" by Weiß (eps 1-15)
	2: "It's too Late" by Weiß (eps 16-25)

Reviews

Jul 14, 2021

jasdevinoah

Recommended

First of all, Weiss Kreuz is a completely terrible anime. It's a passion project created by the VA's, and it clearly shows every step of the way. That being said, this anime is so bad it's completely hilarious, like The Room.

Everything that happens in this anime is completely ridiculous. Nothing makes sense, emotions are muted when they don't need to be, people just casually die.

If you are watching the first episode and expecting a serious anime then you are sadly mistaken. This anime is absolutely ridiculous in every way. I watched it with a friend and as we watched we constantly tore this anime ... apart like a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.

Story:
Constantly ridiculous, and hilarious at every corner. The first episode a man dies from a van falling on him. Things get supernatural on occasion just because. People just die because the plot calls for it. It turns into an end of the world situation at one point.

Characters
Aya is supposed to be the cool guy but he just comes across as a sociopath half the time. Omi is supposed to be the ladies man at 17 years old, but all his relationships end in the worst ways and it makes me laugh really hard because it escalates. Yoji is supposed to seem like a cool ladies man but he's a disaster. He also is supposed to be 21 when he looks at least 30. Ken is a character in this show I guess sometimes.

Brad Crawford is my friends favorite and he's basically a mary sue with huge shoulders and he can predict this ridiculous plot with ease. Schuldig is a telepath but also he has "powers" that are not explained like ever. Farfarello doesn't even have a power he's just crazy. Nagi is a baby and like 15 and they have him kiss a 27 year old woman at a point because they forgot that she wasn't a fellow teen.

Sound:
So all of the voice actors are seasoned professionals, but this was a passion project, especially for Koyasu (Dio Brando's voice actor). Koyasu specifically who voices Aya and he's so serious about it, but again. Aya comes off as a ridiculous psycho. They also sing the ending songs because again, this is based off a boy band.

Art:
So like it's not the anime's fault that it's a 90's anime. Sometimes the art can be pretty but other times it can be a huge oof moment. For instance Yoji can be very cute sometimes, but other times his eyes are so spaced apart and his hair is super puffy. If you like these designs don't get used to them, legal disputes happened so the second season they look different. Yoji becomes a cowboy for instance

Enjoyment:
It's really funny if again you like anime that are really dumb like this. It's like really ridiculous and I would watch it for the sake of being bad. 10/10

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Apr 1, 2024

patkarunungan

Mixed Feelings

The original Weiß Kreuz was one of those anime I watched in my childhood. In this rewatch, I revisited this anime for nostalgia's sake and to watch a few episodes I missed.

Would I recommend it? It depends. If you like pretty boys even if the story is bad, this may satisfy you. I'm not saying that the story is so bad that you would be utterly mad (well, the sequels are egregiously bad). But they are not as good as I remembered.

The first episodes are episodic and therefore boring. The episodes focus on each individual Weiß.

The overall plot is not apparent, only that Weiß Kreuz ...

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Sep 23, 2021

Zanryu1337

Not Recommended

If you would have to summarize Weiß Kreuz very short, it would be: all style, no substance.

Weiß Kreuz suffers from a variety of things. And most can be traced to its origin. Being the thought-child of one of the Voice Actors, it clearly shows in the lack of quality in general. I don't want to lash out on him, but the writers didn't really know what they did with this. And the two biggest flaws, in my opinion, are the lack of direction and the lack of vision for the whole story.

The episodes follow a monster of the week style approach with an over-arcing narrative. ... In the first episodes everything is connected to a bad guy, but he didn't do much except committing crimes all the time. And not like petty crimes. This is full blown: hosting a death-match casino, kidnapping people for hunting and kidnapping people to extract their organs, to name a few things. Not to mention that he becomes the prime minister and then throws the country into martial law just to find 4 people. He also lacks any kind of backstory, sympathy or insight into his character, making him flat, unappealing and in general one-dimensional.

While this problem affects primarily the enemies, especially the last bad guys, the main cast isn't deeply written either. We have revenge-for-sister boy, revenge-for-partner boy, revenge-for-failed-sports-career boy and revenge-for-lost-childhood boy. Until like 20 episodes in, I was always forgetting that some of those characters are the main cast, as they tend to stay so underdeveloped. And its the failure to these characters that drags the whole thing down ultimately.

The tertiary cast also feels the same. While mostly they only get one or two episodes, as per format, they mostly tend have a connection with the main cast and go into peril or die, just so the main cast reacts to this.

Now while writing this I realise an additional flaw. The cast only reacts in the whole series. They never act upon anything. Their boss says: "Kill this dude. He is bad." And the main cast goes: "OK." or "Why should we?". Sometimes a few of the cast left the episode in total, because of disinterest and not because they see a personal dilemma in doing so.

This reaction theme not only tends to go through the whole thing, but also in specific moments, where the cast just starts to scream because something happened. When this happened it always left a weird taste behind because it sometimes felt so random. This appears most prominently when one of the main cast cries about a girl he knew for a very short time gets killed. The audience knew her for at most 15 minutes and it is just weird when the main cast then displays such a hard reaction. They partially go into a depression because of certain deaths. Which is totally fine and understandable. But here comes the most prominent problem.

Due to the aforementioned lack of vision certain important topics are, at most, only scraped at, when the main cast discusses or experience them. This goes for the depression after losing a loved one, consultation of raping/kidnapping victims and, most importantly, the hardship of being an assassin. All these things happen in the series and in real-life, but the series always fails to make a statement to these things. The only real thing you can sense from those scene is: "When you do them, people hunt you for it."

While it seems that I really disliked the story and the characters, I mostly feel uninterested by them. Nothing about them is iconic, fun or interesting in general. These unappealing features were most prominent to me, when i dreaded to further watch this series albeit I wanted to finish it just to write this review to end my relationship with it. But there is one more thing.

The art. The animation in Weiß Kreuz is dreadful. MAL encapsulates it perfectly with the 2 scoring. While some would argue that the art looks fine for an 80s anime, it is from 1998. The artwork is mostly static with shifts and partly repeated zooms. This is most notable in the action sequences which have little to no choreography as there is at most 1 active character on screen. Weirdly timed cuts and the one-sidedness of the angles makes the action hard to follow at times. Additionally, most notable in the second half, the artwork is partly completely off-model, creating hideous still images which linger for 2 to 10 seconds.

The only good parts of the animation and the still poses which the series over-utilized to an extend that it became boring again.
This is also why I noticed it at the beginning. This series is all about style with no substance. The characters lack interest, the story is very detached from reality, especially when psychic powers become a common occurrence and the art is offensively lazy for an 1998 anime.

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Poll: Weiß Kreuz Episode 25 Discussion Mike_the_Great - Jun 22, 2013	3 replies	by patkarunungan »» Feb 14, 9:41 PM
Poll: Weiß Kreuz Episode 24 Discussion Mike_the_Great - Jun 22, 2013	3 replies	by patkarunungan »» Feb 14, 8:08 PM
Poll: Weiß Kreuz Episode 23 Discussion Mike_the_Great - Jun 21, 2013	2 replies	by patkarunungan »» Feb 14, 3:23 AM
Poll: Weiß Kreuz Episode 22 Discussion Mike_the_Great - Jun 21, 2013	4 replies	by patkarunungan »» Feb 14, 2:55 AM
Poll: Weiß Kreuz Episode 21 Discussion Mike_the_Great - Jun 21, 2013	6 replies	by patkarunungan »» Feb 13, 4:51 PM

Weiß Kreuz

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Weiß Kreuz

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