Koyasu Takehito tries his hand at writing (and acting) in his bishounen-filled version of Bubblegum Crisis. Well, at least his intentions were in the right frame of mind, but Weiss Kreuz is the classic story of a cool idea gone horribly wrong.

As I've probably made clear by now, this show has a cool premise; who doesn't like dark heroes whom tend flower shops during the day? Then you meet the characters, and that's when the troubles begin. None of the four, eerily androgynous members of Weiss are interesting; they're a team of self-loathing pretty-boys. I use the word "team" lightly because none of them seem to have that group aesthetic that makes a team function well. One cannot hope to sympathize or associate themselves with these men. How they fight crime and not kill each other boggles the mind.

Oh, and speaking of mind-boggling, here we have a story with no idea what it wants out of the series. Events happen in the most impossible ways, stupefying clichés and baffling coincidences; it's so frustrating just trying to figure all this out. This is a series that doesn't know what it wants to be. When it tries to have substance, it pulls out plots and subplots that insult the viewers' intelligence. And any sense of style is brought down by overused cels, blatant stills and horrible special effects. Is this too much to ask of a series made in 1998?

As a final note, in spite it all, Weiss Kreuz does manage to make its way into anime history. Never before has there been an anime that consists of twenty-five episodes of intense staring.