Class Warfare and Evil Druidical Football!
With a subject line like that, I can only be talking about one thing - Weiss Kreuz: Side B!
He has an angsty flashback of his first footballer boyfriend David dying, his boyfriend's brother weeping that surely David never knew he'd been doped, the team doctor was knocked off the day of David's fatal match, all mixed up with Nana telling him that the overall McGuffin of the series the "orphan drug" is involved. Poor Ken sullenly listens to his teammates saying that no footballer in the history of ever has really been drugged without their knowledge and consent, no matter what they pretend. Not surprisingly, Ken freaks out and disagrees. "I David would never do something like that! I David always thought of the team! Kase Jonathan told me I David hadn't --"
Michel looks worried. Chloe looks like he's been handed a wonderful way of torturing Ken further. Aya ignores everyone and thinks that the McGuffin Drug isn't really the sort of thing athletes would normally dope themselves with. Chloe niggles away at Ken a bit more, and Ken snaps he's not a beginner, but he'd like two of the team as interpreters when he goes to visit Jonathan. "The English sometimes speak too quickly for me," he says with a bitchy handwave, slamming the door.
Everyone: Chloe!
Chloe: Hey, I just call it how I see it. His Engrish sucks.
Aya: *looks vaguely murderous*
Outside, alone in the cold and dark, Ken finds a sad and lonely football and muses on the use of the pathetic fallacy in modern manga. Inside, Aya's all, Leave Ken alone, you insensitive bastards.
Chloe: Wait, I can make another crack about you two and your command of the English language and culture!
Aya's expression: How about I crack you open with my inscrutable Oriental martial arts, you racist fucker?
Then they all prepare - they train, read, look mysterious and spy on Ken, whose preparations are mainly curling up in the foetal position around his sad and lonely football.
Two days later. Salisbury.
Jonathan O'Brian (David's brother) opens the door to find Ken, Chloe and Yuki all cheery and happy. Yuki, like all Americans, is wearing a backwards baseball cap and is chewing gum. He screeches "I'm your biggest fan!" hysterically. Ha ha! Yuki's a grumpy little shit, and this is like watching Nagi pretend to be Omi on a sugar high.
Jonathan: Er. C'mon in, you multi-cultural group of wierdos. This strangely-dressed woman is my sadly widowed sister-in-law, Sarah.
Chloe: *pounces* Well, hel-lo there! I'm straight.
He drags her off to the kitchen to make tea, leaving the other three to look bewildered (Jonathan) and sceptical (Yuki and Ken). They remember their covers.
Yuki: Ken, my darling brother! I wanna see David's room!
Ken: Now, now, that can't be!
Yuki: But I wanna see David's room!
Jonathan: Whuh?
Chloe (thinks): Golden raspberry. No hope. [No, really. That's what he thinks]
In the kitchen: Sarah and Chloe are making tea in a cafetiere.
In David's bedroom: Ken looks nostalgic.
Back at the ranch: Nana plans to cook some more. Aya plans his escape. Michel thinks about Free's manly height and big broad manly chest and high elven cheekbones. Like, a lot.
Back in the kitchen: Sarah prepares scones and fairy cakes and clotted cream and fresh-churned butter and strawberry jam and fruit cake and a roasted swan for everyone while Chloe molests her.
Chloe: Hey, d'you like the flowers? They're just like the flowers your disgraced dead junkie husband always got you, right? I researched it specially!
Sarah: Boo-hoo!
Chloe: Aww, c'mere and I'll give you a hug. Women. So emotional.
Back in David's room:
Yuki: *grabs photos* Hey, cool! Here's David with Jonathan! And here's David with . . . what are you doing in this picture, Ken?
Ken: Gimme! All football teams take those kind of pictures. In the showers.
Jonathan: Allow me to change the subject.
Ken: Oh, thank Christ. Let's engage in manly talk about football with no homoerotic overtones at all.
Jonathan: Suits me. You have really pretty eyes.
Yuki: *searches room like whoa*
Jonathan: I think there are a few things you need to know about Great Britain. The class structures erect high hurdles.
Ken: Class structures?
Daegaer: Class structures?
Jonathan: Yes, it may only be in people's heads, but it's very strongly engrained. People pay attention to accent, where someone's from. For example, the usual "newscaster English" is the "Queen's English" that the noble classes speak.
Ken: *looks pissed off* *thinks* Chloe uses that -- Krypton and Michel too . . .
Jonathan: The working classes use "Cockney". You two use "American English", by the way.
Yuki: *glares* *thinks* Is that a sin?
Jonathan: Then there are people like us, who speak a different English than the English. My brother and I are from Wales and speak "Welsh". "Welsh" and "Queen's English" are very different, so we don't use it too often any more.
Ken: Er.
Daegaer: 0.o
Ken muses on this infodump, remembering how hard it was for David in Japan, how it's difficult to be in another country and be different from everyone else and how much he'd like to kick Chloe's face in. Meanwhile Yuki finds a gun in David's desk and takes an impression of its muzzle with his gum. They quickly take their leave, with Chloe jubilant because he's charmed a sample of David's medicine from Sarah. Yuki hates them all and swears he'll never act like a kid again. Ken is angsty. And has really pretty eyes.
The final chapter has a pretty cover picture of the table in David's room, with a bunch of flowers put in front of a photo of David and Ken. It's very sweet. The we turn the page to find Jonathan shredding the flowers and looking at the picture while thinking, "We'll soon have our dearest wish. Thanks, brother. you haven't died in vain . . ."
Back at the assassin-ranch, Ken's still not talking to anyone. They watch Jonathan give a press conference at which he eulogises David and blames everything on the dead doctor who has played with the team's lives and sullied the sport. David's not a fallen hero! He's still a hero to his team! They'll win the cup final for him tomorrow! The assassins look bored and switch the TV off. Hey, it's been a few pages since Chloe tormented Ken!
Chloe: *smirks* If David did know, is that why he shot the doctor?
Ken: *looks grim*
Yuki: The gun in David's room matches the bullet in the doctor, it's definitely the murder weapon.
Aya's expression: Oh, shit.
Chloe's expression: Hee hee!
Ken's expression: Well, sanity's overrated, I've always found.
Ken: *flees outside to the cold and dark* *starts messing round with the sad and lonely football* *hears footsteps*
Ken: *super cheerful* Everything sorted? So, who do I kill? The manager? The team owner? Or --
Aya: Make a decision, Ken! Kryptonbrand isn't Weiss. You won't be told here you should simply execute the targets without thinking.
Ken: *goes steadily scarier and more psycho* Hey, know what? I was a pretty good player! The youngest goalie in the J-League's history! I loved football since I was a kid. I thought I'd accomplished everything. Until I was betrayed by my best friend, ha ha!
Aya: Kase, right?
Ken: Oh, you remember? Yep, Kase stabbed me in the back and I lost my whole life. When I killed him he said he'd always envied me, he'd always hated me. I never understood that before, but I do now, since I started here. *big scary smile* You've got something that you can't achieve, right before your eyes. It makes you crazy. Jonathan and David felt the same. Just because they're not English, their cards are marked. But now finally they can --
Aya: Er, Ken . . .
Ken: *has romantic flashback of David saying "My honour is nothing. The glory of the team is all!"* *freaks out in rage against his boyfriend for being dead* Argh! You've gotta draw a line! Let's remind the readers of the McGuffin! I'll kill all the fuckers!
Aya: Oh, good. I thought you were developing a conscience for a moment. Hey, you plan the mission, you don't have enough angst.
Ken: Cool.
Cut to: The FA Cup final. Chelsea vs Southton
Southton's dressing room. A mysterious circle of mysterious stones form a protective mysterious boundary round the team. They are all holding the Welsh flag.
Jonathan: Victory is ours! Not in the name of the Queen, but in the name of Owain Glyn Dwr! We shall be victorious!"
The rest of the team: Cheers! (Actually, "lechyd-da", which some googling tells me is a wish for a good day/good health/good luck, but "cheers!" is how it's annotated).
The Welsh supporters: Cheers!
Daegaer: WTF? Seriously, WTF?
Ken and the others infiltrate the players' area. How disturbed am I that Michel is pretending to be a lost child so young that a big, tall, elf-vampire fake security guard like Free might need to hold his hand? Very, very disturbed. Chloe laughs in the face of the rest of the team while Ken confronts Jonathan as the evil, druidical, drug supplying Welsh nationalist that he is.
Ken: But it's not a simple dose of dope! It's a drug!
Jonathan: Dude, your English really does suck!
Ken: Argh! My weak point! Die!
They fight. Chloe slaughters the team. Free and Michel snuggle. Jonathan, made monstrously strong by the McGuffin drug, beats the ever-loving snot out of Ken.
Ken: Bleargh.
Jonathan: Bwa-ha-ha! We'll be reborn! We'll have unbelievable strength! We'll encounter these faggot Englishmen with streaming flags! In the name of the Red Dragon! Mua-ha-ha!
Daegaer: What do you mean, vol 5's not translated yet? Argh!
He has an angsty flashback of his first footballer boyfriend David dying, his boyfriend's brother weeping that surely David never knew he'd been doped, the team doctor was knocked off the day of David's fatal match, all mixed up with Nana telling him that the overall McGuffin of the series the "orphan drug" is involved. Poor Ken sullenly listens to his teammates saying that no footballer in the history of ever has really been drugged without their knowledge and consent, no matter what they pretend. Not surprisingly, Ken freaks out and disagrees. "I David would never do something like that! I David always thought of the team! Kase Jonathan told me I David hadn't --"
Michel looks worried. Chloe looks like he's been handed a wonderful way of torturing Ken further. Aya ignores everyone and thinks that the McGuffin Drug isn't really the sort of thing athletes would normally dope themselves with. Chloe niggles away at Ken a bit more, and Ken snaps he's not a beginner, but he'd like two of the team as interpreters when he goes to visit Jonathan. "The English sometimes speak too quickly for me," he says with a bitchy handwave, slamming the door.
Everyone: Chloe!
Chloe: Hey, I just call it how I see it. His Engrish sucks.
Aya: *looks vaguely murderous*
Outside, alone in the cold and dark, Ken finds a sad and lonely football and muses on the use of the pathetic fallacy in modern manga. Inside, Aya's all, Leave Ken alone, you insensitive bastards.
Chloe: Wait, I can make another crack about you two and your command of the English language and culture!
Aya's expression: How about I crack you open with my inscrutable Oriental martial arts, you racist fucker?
Then they all prepare - they train, read, look mysterious and spy on Ken, whose preparations are mainly curling up in the foetal position around his sad and lonely football.
Two days later. Salisbury.
Jonathan O'Brian (David's brother) opens the door to find Ken, Chloe and Yuki all cheery and happy. Yuki, like all Americans, is wearing a backwards baseball cap and is chewing gum. He screeches "I'm your biggest fan!" hysterically. Ha ha! Yuki's a grumpy little shit, and this is like watching Nagi pretend to be Omi on a sugar high.
Jonathan: Er. C'mon in, you multi-cultural group of wierdos. This strangely-dressed woman is my sadly widowed sister-in-law, Sarah.
Chloe: *pounces* Well, hel-lo there! I'm straight.
He drags her off to the kitchen to make tea, leaving the other three to look bewildered (Jonathan) and sceptical (Yuki and Ken). They remember their covers.
Yuki: Ken, my darling brother! I wanna see David's room!
Ken: Now, now, that can't be!
Yuki: But I wanna see David's room!
Jonathan: Whuh?
Chloe (thinks): Golden raspberry. No hope. [No, really. That's what he thinks]
In the kitchen: Sarah and Chloe are making tea in a cafetiere.
In David's bedroom: Ken looks nostalgic.
Back at the ranch: Nana plans to cook some more. Aya plans his escape. Michel thinks about Free's manly height and big broad manly chest and high elven cheekbones. Like, a lot.
Back in the kitchen: Sarah prepares scones and fairy cakes and clotted cream and fresh-churned butter and strawberry jam and fruit cake and a roasted swan for everyone while Chloe molests her.
Chloe: Hey, d'you like the flowers? They're just like the flowers your disgraced dead junkie husband always got you, right? I researched it specially!
Sarah: Boo-hoo!
Chloe: Aww, c'mere and I'll give you a hug. Women. So emotional.
Back in David's room:
Yuki: *grabs photos* Hey, cool! Here's David with Jonathan! And here's David with . . . what are you doing in this picture, Ken?
Ken: Gimme! All football teams take those kind of pictures. In the showers.
Jonathan: Allow me to change the subject.
Ken: Oh, thank Christ. Let's engage in manly talk about football with no homoerotic overtones at all.
Jonathan: Suits me. You have really pretty eyes.
Yuki: *searches room like whoa*
Jonathan: I think there are a few things you need to know about Great Britain. The class structures erect high hurdles.
Ken: Class structures?
Daegaer: Class structures?
Jonathan: Yes, it may only be in people's heads, but it's very strongly engrained. People pay attention to accent, where someone's from. For example, the usual "newscaster English" is the "Queen's English" that the noble classes speak.
Ken: *looks pissed off* *thinks* Chloe uses that -- Krypton and Michel too . . .
Jonathan: The working classes use "Cockney". You two use "American English", by the way.
Yuki: *glares* *thinks* Is that a sin?
Jonathan: Then there are people like us, who speak a different English than the English. My brother and I are from Wales and speak "Welsh". "Welsh" and "Queen's English" are very different, so we don't use it too often any more.
Ken: Er.
Daegaer: 0.o
Ken muses on this infodump, remembering how hard it was for David in Japan, how it's difficult to be in another country and be different from everyone else and how much he'd like to kick Chloe's face in. Meanwhile Yuki finds a gun in David's desk and takes an impression of its muzzle with his gum. They quickly take their leave, with Chloe jubilant because he's charmed a sample of David's medicine from Sarah. Yuki hates them all and swears he'll never act like a kid again. Ken is angsty. And has really pretty eyes.
The final chapter has a pretty cover picture of the table in David's room, with a bunch of flowers put in front of a photo of David and Ken. It's very sweet. The we turn the page to find Jonathan shredding the flowers and looking at the picture while thinking, "We'll soon have our dearest wish. Thanks, brother. you haven't died in vain . . ."
Back at the assassin-ranch, Ken's still not talking to anyone. They watch Jonathan give a press conference at which he eulogises David and blames everything on the dead doctor who has played with the team's lives and sullied the sport. David's not a fallen hero! He's still a hero to his team! They'll win the cup final for him tomorrow! The assassins look bored and switch the TV off. Hey, it's been a few pages since Chloe tormented Ken!
Chloe: *smirks* If David did know, is that why he shot the doctor?
Ken: *looks grim*
Yuki: The gun in David's room matches the bullet in the doctor, it's definitely the murder weapon.
Aya's expression: Oh, shit.
Chloe's expression: Hee hee!
Ken's expression: Well, sanity's overrated, I've always found.
Ken: *flees outside to the cold and dark* *starts messing round with the sad and lonely football* *hears footsteps*
Ken: *super cheerful* Everything sorted? So, who do I kill? The manager? The team owner? Or --
Aya: Make a decision, Ken! Kryptonbrand isn't Weiss. You won't be told here you should simply execute the targets without thinking.
Ken: *goes steadily scarier and more psycho* Hey, know what? I was a pretty good player! The youngest goalie in the J-League's history! I loved football since I was a kid. I thought I'd accomplished everything. Until I was betrayed by my best friend, ha ha!
Aya: Kase, right?
Ken: Oh, you remember? Yep, Kase stabbed me in the back and I lost my whole life. When I killed him he said he'd always envied me, he'd always hated me. I never understood that before, but I do now, since I started here. *big scary smile* You've got something that you can't achieve, right before your eyes. It makes you crazy. Jonathan and David felt the same. Just because they're not English, their cards are marked. But now finally they can --
Aya: Er, Ken . . .
Ken: *has romantic flashback of David saying "My honour is nothing. The glory of the team is all!"* *freaks out in rage against his boyfriend for being dead* Argh! You've gotta draw a line! Let's remind the readers of the McGuffin! I'll kill all the fuckers!
Aya: Oh, good. I thought you were developing a conscience for a moment. Hey, you plan the mission, you don't have enough angst.
Ken: Cool.
Cut to: The FA Cup final. Chelsea vs Southton
Southton's dressing room. A mysterious circle of mysterious stones form a protective mysterious boundary round the team. They are all holding the Welsh flag.
Jonathan: Victory is ours! Not in the name of the Queen, but in the name of Owain Glyn Dwr! We shall be victorious!"
The rest of the team: Cheers! (Actually, "lechyd-da", which some googling tells me is a wish for a good day/good health/good luck, but "cheers!" is how it's annotated).
The Welsh supporters: Cheers!
Daegaer: WTF? Seriously, WTF?
Ken and the others infiltrate the players' area. How disturbed am I that Michel is pretending to be a lost child so young that a big, tall, elf-vampire fake security guard like Free might need to hold his hand? Very, very disturbed. Chloe laughs in the face of the rest of the team while Ken confronts Jonathan as the evil, druidical, drug supplying Welsh nationalist that he is.
Ken: But it's not a simple dose of dope! It's a drug!
Jonathan: Dude, your English really does suck!
Ken: Argh! My weak point! Die!
They fight. Chloe slaughters the team. Free and Michel snuggle. Jonathan, made monstrously strong by the McGuffin drug, beats the ever-loving snot out of Ken.
Ken: Bleargh.
Jonathan: Bwa-ha-ha! We'll be reborn! We'll have unbelievable strength! We'll encounter these faggot Englishmen with streaming flags! In the name of the Red Dragon! Mua-ha-ha!
Daegaer: What do you mean, vol 5's not translated yet? Argh!