Knight Hunters Vol. #1 (of 5)

Review Date: Wednesday, February 06, 2002
Release Date: Tuesday, January 08, 2002



What They Say
When the moon rises, the boys of Knight Hunters are the most vicious assassins the world has ever seen. During the day, they remain disguised as elegant florists with an eye for beauty. Led by the somber and silent Aya, the team consists of Ken, a wide eyed former athlete, Omi, a young computer specialist, and Yohiji, a suave ladies man. Their four tragic pasts give them the passion to fight!

The Review!
Overall Rating: 3.1
(on a scale of 1-5)

-Technical Ratings-
Sound: 5
Picture: 5
Menu: 4
Presentation: 4
Goodies: 4
Overall: 4.4

-Content Ratings-
Animation: 2
Sound: 3
Plot: 1
English Acting: 1
Music: 2
Entertainment: 1
Overall: 1.7

-Intro-

What do you get when you get four pretty-boy florists, trap them in a cabin in the woods and hand them all a poisoned sports drink? I don’t know but it sounds like a set up for a really bad joke. Well, if this series is someone’s idea of a joke, it’s bad too. I want my soul back, because this disc ripped it right out of my body!

-Technical Review-

For sound and picture quality Media Blasters does a good job. The video looked very good on my set up and the sound was clear and without distortions. The menu itself uses static images and music. It responds quickly to your selections. The keepcase has a dark gothic look to it, which was a bit strange since the series itself wasn’t really gothic. It contains all the information including number of episodes, number of languages, rating, region coding, volume number and running time. It is missing the number of channels used by the soundtrack, but I’m assuming it’s a stereo mix. It also doesn’t tell you what extras you get. So here you go. You get some character design sketches that cover the four boys in their "normal clothes" and their working clothes. But the real highlight was in the dub outtakes. These were actually better than the show. It included some genuine mistakes from the actors and just alternate dialogue that was pretty funny. My favorite outtake was a countdown done in Spanish. If only the rest of the series had been as entertaining. It’s another solid technical release from Media Blasters. Good Job!

-Content Review-

When Ladycat saw that we were gonna watch Weis Kreuz she said, "Oh yeah, I remember getting some questions about this. It’s supposed to be pretty good." Well, whoever misled her is a mean, mean person. So far this show is not "pretty good" or even good, or even… (sigh). I promised myself that I wouldn’t rant about it too much. Must remain calm. (lets out breath). O.K. Let’s do the recap thing.


We’ve got five episodes on this disc so you’ll be able to tell pretty quickly if you will enjoy this or not. The story revolves around four young pretty boys. By day they are fun loving florists. By night they are dangerous killers who stop at nothing to kill evil doers. I’m not joking here, that is seriously the premise. And this series takes itself pretty seriously as well. The villains are really nasty and deserve the violent ends they get. Anyway the first episode sets up the whole premise with our four boys stopping another group of assassins. The next four episodes focus on a particular member of the group. The last two are connected and focus on the same boy, Ken. So if you like flowers and pretty boys killing wicked people then check this out… at your own risk.

The animation is just below average. It doesn’t look like this show had a large budget, and instead of doing some interesting things with that, they kinda just fall flat. The character designs are pretty typical of your pretty boys and girls. Since this takes place in modern times and in the "real" world there isn’t anything that’s too much of a stretch. My biggest issues were the fact that characters would go through weird spurts where they just don’t look like themselves. In one episode in particular, a girl in the flash back is shown, and then shown again a bit later in a new flashback and she looks totally different. It was hard to tell that it was the same character. Speaking of flashbacks, these first 5 episodes overuse the technique. One episode (the second to last one, I think) flashed to the same scene about 4 times. I GET THE PICTURE!!! Sorry I’m getting all riled up again.

The sound wasn’t anything stunning, but it wasn’t anything horrible either. Like I mentioned there isn’t anything wild and wacky design-wise in the animation so most of the sounds are ones you’d find in the real world. It’s a pretty normal sounding track.

Let’s talk about the English dub. Wow. This really was a bad one. Lots of miss casting and just generally bored sounding performances. I’m not sure if the four mains were trying to sound cool or maybe mysterious but they just sounded disinterested. There are some laughable moments in the dub and it just added fuel to the fire here. This is one of those that you must listen to the Japanese acting. It is much better than the English (but it didn’t seem to help the show very much). I found the fact the English dub was poor strange after I viewed the outtakes. It seemed like the actors were having a bit of fun with the roles, or maybe they were trying to retain their sanity.

The opening theme is actually pretty good. It’s typical J-pop but it works with the visuals in the opening credit sequence and works within the show too. The end theme is nice, but nothing really exciting. The big issue here is the score. It’s just plain bad in parts. If you aren’t making fun of the English dub, just take a listen to some of the "wacky" background music and try not to laugh. It’s about as good as something from Scooby Doo. Bad, bad, bad composer! A bad score had hurt a good series, but if the series is already treading water, it’s like delivering the deathblow. Wham!

That leaves us with the plot doesn’t it? Well, so far this series is a bunch of cliches and story ideas that have been done better and with more originality in other series and movies (live action and animated). The whole idea that these four boys get orders from a mysterious man and back up info from a mysterious lady just smacked of that old 70’s television staple, Charlie’s Angels. That’s right, we got "Charlie" on the big screen, but in shadow so all you hear is his voice. And then that makes the lady, "Bosley"! Each of our boys has a stereotype for a personality. But when each episode tries to delve deeper into the character (through the annoying overused flashbacks) it just flails around and bores you. I actually found the female "love interests" to be more interesting than our main guys. Some of the girls would have made great subjects for series about them. But no. Sorry. We got the florist/assassins. If these guys turn out to be idol singers as well… Anyway, my biggest problem with this series so far is that it is sooooo cheesy, and yet it takes itself so damn seriously. This would have been perfect for a hilarious comedy poking fun at the pretty boy genre and instead this becomes a parody without the knowledge that it is one. Of course there is the off chance that this is a parody. If it is, someone please tell me :-)

So where does that leave us entertainment-wise? I’ll put it this way. Each episode felt like it lasted about an hour and a half. There is a chance that the next disc is better. Maybe things will stop being so cheesy or maybe the cheese will remain, but it won’t be so serious and become more self-mocking. I can only hope. I’ll leave with a little story about my reviewing experience of this disc. On the final night I ended up watching the last 3 episodes at once. Bad move. About half way through the middle one I looked over at Ladycat. Her eyes had glazed over and I realized that her soul had left her body in a desperate bid to escape. It was then that I realized my soul was trying to escape as well. I reached for the remote but it was too late. My soul left the room and was watching Hand Maid May on my computer with Ladycat’s soul. I wish my body could have joined them. The moral of the story is, if you savor your soul, avoid Weis Kreuz. :-)

Roman J. Martel
Tell me what you think! E-mail me at...
roman@animeondvd.com

Features
Japanese Language,English Language,English Subtitles

Review Equipment
Phillips Flatscreen (27 Inch)Sony DVP-NS300