Review of 'Weiss' manga, by Katchan
Title: Weiss: An Assassin and White Shaman
Author: Tsuchiya Kyouko
Publisher: Wings Comics
Volumes: Two
ISBN: 4-403-66020-7 (volume 1)
         : 4-403-66021-5 (volume 2)


     Kept hearing about this 'Weiss Kreuz' on various mailing lists and from lots of happily squealing fangirls.  Friend of mine in Japan squealed about it, too, and since she has never steered me wrong (despite her attempts to indoctrinate me into CLAMP fandom), I asked her to send me some.  A week or so later I got two volumes of Weiss manga in
the mail.

     Interesting, I said to myself.  It's very pretty on the outside. Nice glossy covers, nice heavy feel to the books -- they're both about 18.5x26 cm, both about a hundred pages.   It's got some German written on the covers, and had I any remote knowledge of any German, I'd love to
have translated it.  Regardless...

     Sat down with a cup of tea, two cats, and volume one, and opened
it up.  Very nice art in the first few pages... Make that the first third of the volume -- nothing but glossy pages of art of the boys in various poses, together or separate, in various styles and media. They're all very easy on the eyes.   Nevertheless, I wanted to know why people rave about this series, so I moved to the manga section of the volume, which is in black-and-white.  Was quickly disappointed as the story seemed to start in the middle of an arc, with jumps back and forth in time via flashbacks, and no explanations.

     So I soon figure out that Aya (whose real name is Ran) has a major emotional problem related to the real Aya (can't spoil everything), Ken is the leader and has a temper, Omi has some sort of psychic ability, nothing seems to bother Youji except poor Omi falling down semi-conscious, and all the women involved with Weiss seem to be
stereotypical James Bond types, except the real Aya, who's a stereotypically sweet little airheaded thing.

     Moved on to volume two.  This time, a couple of nice pull-out posters, and the same third of a volume of glossy art -- this time also depicting the baddies, of whom we see very little in volume one.  Turns out their collective name is 'Schwartz', and, ironically, they wear all white.  In this volume, we find out that Youji is a terrible flirt and doesn't seem to worry about gender, and that despite his demeanour, he does have a terrible tragedy in his past about some androgynous thing called 'Asuka' (I swear, despite the name I thought she was a boy until Omi mentioned 'that girl'.   When I looked back at the picture, I could see lines that were meant to delineate breasts, though no indication in the clothing that there were any).

     Moving on -- I got to see the infamous flower shop that the boys run, got to see some of the Schwartz boys, and realised that the manga tells me next to absolutely nothing of the why of any of the characters, and I'm told that two volumes is all that's going to be run of the manga.

    Knowing nothing at the time about the band that runs around Japan pretending to be the Weiss boys, I nevertheless got the distinct impression that Weiss was set up very much like the Monkees were, so
long ago -- no point to it, just four very pretty boys that are put together because they look nice that way.  The very careful character designs at the back of volume two scream 'Please, doujinshi artists, draw us properly!' The apparently inadvertent pairings -- Ken and Aya constantly clashing, Youji and Omi having a semi-love/hate relationship
-- are just too obvious.

     I'm told that the anime is much better, that there are explanations for the boys' emotional problems, and that the history and overall story are much more complete -- that's next on my anime-searching agenda.  I would have to say that for 1143 and 933 yen each for volumes one and two respectively, you're getting a lot of very lovely art but little else.  But if art is what you're looking for, the books are definitely worth it.  The good thing about glossy pages is that if you're fast, saliva doesn't soak in.