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Previous episodes:
#1 - Lockvogel: DW, LJ
#2 - Fort Laufen: DW, LJ

As per usual, spoilers, fangirling, lots of pictures. Also, not sure if you guys knew (or cared), but I'm reviewing all of this while the sound is muted so I can, uh, pay some attention. Imagine trying to write something awesome and then I get distracted because OHAI SCHULDIG so yeah.

So as I mentioned before, at the end of Fort Laufen, this episode is all about Yohji, what with what he used to do before Weiss and all that stuff. I'll be referring back to this episode a few more times once Schreient is introduced and that episode with Neu happens. Let me just tell you that all the Asuka and Neu and Yohji stuff is not happy at all once you learn about all of it, so uh yeah.

Anyway! Our episode opens with a look at some buildings. Skyscrapers, of course, since there's little else in Tokyo. It changes from a view of some buildings to a woman in heavy make up screaming, "No!" because some guy is wielding a chainsaw and eww, that's going to be really messy since that'll basically chew through her flesh and throw it all over the damn place, plus she'll feel all of it and I hate chainsaws. You can blame Resident Evil 4 for that. He's presumably laughing at her attempts to try to call for help. The guy with the chainsaw nears her, all I PAID FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEN FOR THIS, and I'm not sure if he's referring to her company or the chainsaw, but just before the chainsaw bares down on her, we cut to a shot of a bridge.

Weiss Kreuz does this a lot, get used to it. Besides, I'd rather look at bridges than see some woman's flesh get torn through via chainsaw. You're welcome.


aww what are you doing, that's supposed to be Paradies! Which is the German word for "paradise", thanks for ruining that for me, title card.

So the cops are pulling the body of this woman out of the Bay and this reminds me of a Law and Order: SVU episode, what with the dead bodies being fished out of rivers and all that. I'm going to assume she died by drowning and not by chainsaw because there's not one mark on her. She's fully intact, in fact. I guess the chainsaw was just for show or something.

No no no, brain, do not go there with a chainsaw. Ever. That's like something out of Rosenkreuz.

So Persia's all YOU HAVE A MISSION, THIS CHICK WAS FOUND IN YAGISAWA BAY AND THERE ARE NUMEROUS WOUNDS ON HER BUT NONE ARE FROM A CHAINSAW THANK GOD. We find out she works for Riot (though some people also call it Liott, but it's supposed to be "Riot"), and Yohji's all OMG WHAT and Manx just kind of side-eyes him a bit. We are shown footage of a bunch of hot chicks clad in bikinis by a poolside and some Stereotypical Old, Fat, and Rich dude lapping it all up. The women are held prisioner, basically, and they're not being paid for their services and oh yeah it's also a drug den. They're also basically human trafficking, buying/kidnapping women no one will miss or notice gone and using them as sex slaves basically.

Yeah Riot is not a happy place to be, especially when they're drugging the girls to the point where they lose their minds and are basically rag dolls. Some of them are sold off for experimentation and yes, the bad guys in this series are sick fucks. Just wait until you learn about Rosenkreuz, this would be right up their alley.

So Yohji has some sepia flashes of a woman and her name is Murase Asuka. I'll tell you more about her later on in this episode.

Persia names the targets, tells them to kill the sick fucks, and blah blah blah Hunters of the Night deny these sick fucks their tomorrows. Manx tells them that two of the three targets are hard to track down since they're always flying all over the damn place. Yohji basically asks for this to be a solo mission for him, because it's rather personal, everyone (except Aya and Manx) is all WHAT and then it fades to black...

...to yet another building. This one glows so it must be important. We go from a building to some girl who's clad only in underwear, sleeping on a bed. We see glimpses of another girl, too, covered in a sheet, so she must be naked or something. Emerging from his den of sin and women is Yohji. The music at this point is all lighthearted and kind of silly to boot, which is the complete opposite mood of the mission and stuff. Maybe it's a good thing I have the Foo Fighters on. Yohji's got on a fake moustache he quickly removes because he looks better without it, and crawls out of bed. Fear not, Yohji has underwear on. It's called Modesty Boxers.

So this place looks like paradise and how can this place be a den of weirdo shit going on? Because it's to trick you, of course. Yohji's wandering around like he doesn't have a care in the world, and in the process finds the Staff Only area. Oh, sorry, "STAF ONLY" area. Someone did not use a dictionary or even basic spellcheck when making that sign. He acts all nonchalant in front of it, making sure no one's looking, before he goes inside. Throwing his robe to the floor, he reveals he's in a black jumpsuit. Because we have to do this all Mission Impossible style, of course. It's not a recon mission unless tight jumpsuits are used. That's how you know. So he wanders around and runs into a room because he thinks he's been spotted, but it was only two waiters talking to each other. Yohji finds a girl all tied up, tells her to be quiet, which she fails at, and he frees her. She spits because her life sucks or some shit. Yohji asks her if she works there, to which she replies, "I screwed up."

Well that doesn't really answer the question, but okay.

"I tried to run away," she says, "but the minute I got outside the cops nabbed me."
"The cops?" Yohji asks with such disbelief. After all, the cops are the good guys! They're only the good guys on TV, Yohji, there are plenty of corrupt cops, and the ones here are on Riot's payroll, so they're also smarmy bastards. She asks what he's doing here, asks if he's a thief.
"In a manner of speaking." All you're doing is stealing the schedules of the Head Smarmy Bastards, it's not like you're stealing the Imperial Crown of Japan or some shit. Or trying to break into the Diet building. Or you're trying to silently assassinate Takatori in his office.

(Have fun with the last one!)

Yohji tries to leave, but she's all NO TAKE ME WITH YOU and he's all LOLNO and she's all IF YOU DON'T I WILL SCREAM AND THEY WILL TAZE YOU, BRO. Since the last thing Yohji wants is for corrupt police men to touch him with electricity--he's not into kinky shit like that--he reluctantly agrees. He can't say no to a pretty girl, he's Yohji. So they're walking and she leads him right to where he needs to be, aptly named "manager room". It's locked, so Yohji gets a bump key and breaks right in. In the dark. The girl turns the lights on, which freaks him out. Aha, there's what he's looking for, a computer! He hooks up a CD burner or some shit (that's what it looks like) and burns the schedule onto it. Which apparently takes five hundred years. Computers weren't that fast back then.

So the girl assumes Yohji is with the tax bureau because "people in this line of business wouldn't be paying their taxes" and he's such a taxing man. Yes, because people with the tax bureau dress like ninjas and come sneaking into buildings undercover. Right. Sure. Whatever you say. She picks up an ugly statue thing, which triggers an alarm, and Yohji's all DAMMIT IT'S ONLY AT FIFTY PERCENT THIS WILL TAKE FOREVER WHY DID YOU DO THAT

Well it's actually at seventy percent, but. A guard comes rushing in and the girl dispatches of him quickly with a kick to the neck. Yohji's willing the computer to complete the CD burning, which it does, and then they fight their way through the place because that's what they do. In a montage no less! So Guy In Shadow is all WHERE ARE THEY WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T KNOW YOU USELESS BASTARD RAGE and then Indian Guy from Predator comes and says he'll take care of it. (I don't know the guy's name, but he's called "the Indian Guy from Predator" by Persia in the outtakes, so.) The elevator Yohji and the girl allegedly took opens and they shoot into it, only to find it's empty. Lol. Yohji goes driving (literally, in a car) behind them and they are chased because, you know, they're getting away! They're chased by some guy on a motorbike, who goes flying when Yohji rams into him.

And then the gun fight starts, and in this really overly dramatic way Yohji reacts to being shot. The girl's all O_O OH NOES and they go driving into a store front.

EYECATCHER and it's of Yohji.

They're in the subway or the sewers or some shit, I don't even know. Maki's helping support his weight and we get another flashback in sepia of Yohji's partner-in-crime, Asuka. She's yelling at him to hang on, they're almost there, and he tells her to run, to leave him there. She'll get away if she's alone. She kisses him on the cheek and starts running when a bunch of guys shoot at her and she gets hit. Yohji screams, she apparently dies, and Yohji has a shitfit.

Here's where the major spoilers happen, so if you don't want to read them, scroll past until you reach end spoilers.
Asuka is not dead. She later gets picked up, sold to Riot, and used as a prostitute. They inject her with a shitload of drugs she gets addicted to, and loses her memory. She's then sold to some laboratory to be experimented on and she has no memory of anything, she is a literal blank slate. You'll meet the guy who bought her in a few episodes.

END SPOILERS

Yohji passes out, and we are brought back to reality, where Yohji's waking up from being passed out, and the girl asks, "Asuka?"
"You're..." She does resemble Asuka somewhat, but she says, "Maki."
"I'm..."
"Yohji, right? It says so on your underwear. You're such a little kid!"
I guess in case he gets lost or forgets who he is, it's written on his underwear? I don't know.

And then Maki proceeds to tell us that she was a juvenile delinquent and got involved in shit she shouldn't have and blah blah blah. She's fixed up his wound using cloth from her skirt, and Yohji's all, "you'd be a great nurse!"
"Nah, I never graduated junior high!" She kind of got kidnapped before that. Yohji reassures her that she's better than those scum fuckers at Riot and that he has no right to look down on her because he's basically the same. "You have a soul," she says. "I can see it in your eyes."
"And you're not trash."

And all Yohji can think of is Asuka, so he starts talking about her. "She was violent, short-tempered, and passionate."
Well that kind of sounds like a certain redhead I know, save for the short-tempered part. You'll meet him later, I promise. We met his teammate last review, so.

He explains that he and Asuka were looking for a runaway girl, so they snuck into Riot, but she was already dead by the time they got there, and Asuka died when they tried getting out of there.
"You loved her."
"Who knows? But when I look at you, I see her face."
"So she looked like me?"
"No, not at all."

fff.

Scene change to Omi in PJs answering the phone, "Hello, this is the Koneko no Sumu Ie..."
"Are you are friend of Yohji's?"
Omi doesn't know how to respond except with WHO IS THIS?

Meanwhile, Yohji and Maki are trying to evade the Riot bastards, and Yohji tells her run off without him, she gives him a kiss on the cheek, she ends up getting killed and Yohji is now traumatised and good job, Yohji. She's dead now. Yohji tries to run to her, but he's too injured, so he passes out. He seems to pass out a lot in this episode, like how Schuldig is constantly getting knocked out and beaten up in the Schwarz drama CDs.

SCENE CHANGE TO Omi typing on a keyboard and opening up the schedule Yohji took. Apparently they're getting the fuckers tonight, and apparently Maki isn't dead. Indian Guy from Predator is beating her with a shinai, the president guy decides to off her, but not before sticking his cigar in some EXTREMELY UNPLEASANT PLACES.

And it's storming out, of course. Aya, Ken, and Omi are all lined up and ready to go when Yohji comes out of nowhere to go kick some ass. Indian Guy from Predator is typing when Ken decides to Shining Finger him and puts his head through the CRT monitor. Omi dispatches a shitload of people with some darts, and Aya slices and dices. Yohji goes into a room and sees what they did to Maki and goes, uh, apeshit. The president and his assistant are in bed together and Aya barges in, killing the assistant. Yohji strangles the president by stringing him up by the throat. Poor guy gets to die in his underwear in front of everyone. How embarrassing. Yohji makes Maki presentable and leaves a flower, because it's only proper to do so. And then he leaves.

There wasn't really much to nitpick in this episode (which is probably a good thing), and it's nice that we get a glimpse into a past that isn't Aya's. I don't watch this episode often or most of Weiss Kreuz often because I am only here for Schwarz, but it's nice to revisit the whole thing every once in a while, because then you pick up things you didn't notice before, like all the exposition concerning Yohji that I will talk to you guys about when I do Gluhen.

This is, you know, a rather average episode, so there's really not that much to say about it.

This entry was originally posted at http://sailorvfan10.dreamwidth.org/171868.html. Comment wherever is most convenient.

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Date: 2012-01-31 11:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mark-asphodel.livejournal.com
This is, you know, a rather average episode, so there's really not that much to say about it.

The plot's fine, but this was the ep. where the over-used recycled rehash animation started to drive me nuts. And given that we're only three eps in...

That said, I remember this one better than a lot of the rest, possibly because of Yohji.

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