Upon opening the envelope, I was greeted by a wonderful doujinshi with high production quality. The front and back covers were printed in color and the front cover was printed on a nice quality glossy card stock. The cover is a picture of Schuldig with his arms around Crawford and Crawford has that "Get off me!" look on his face. It's very amusing. The back cover is a cute picture of Yohji and Ken with their eyes closed and their heads touching (get your minds out of the gutter! ^_^). There is also a highly detailed chain and cross on the back cover. It's as if I could reach out and grab it.

Before I get into the meat of things, I need to explain something. When I first started watching Weiss Kreuz, I immediately took a liking to Yohji to a point where I didn't like to see him paired with anyone other than women. After all, he's Yohji, right? He's supposed to be a playboy, a lady's' man! Besides, in the more lighthearted scenes of WK, he's downright hilarious. If you know me, then you know I don't mind reading yaoi, but you also know that I don't like seeing Yohji in yaoi pairings. This doujinshi changed that!

The first story, "Dust In The Wind" by Sonya St. Germain was wonderful! It takes place on Valentine's Day and Yohji has just received a very special Valentine specifying a time and a meeting place. After talking Aya and Ken into covering the shop for him (although it didn't take *that* much convincing ^_~), Yohji meets up with his mystery valentine who turns out to be none other than Schuldig from Schwarz. From there, the story takes an interesting turn. It seems that these two have been meeting like this for quite some time and they are very much in love. The only problem is that they are the fiercest of enemies, so nothing good can come of this relationship.

I won't give away the story, but let's just say that Schuldig ends up having to do the dirty work of letting Yohji down gently. I love it because it leaves so many possibilities open. Is this the last time these two will meet like this or will there be other late night rendezvous?

Sonya's detailed pencils are very reminiscent of Lea Hernandez (Clockwork Angels and Cathedral), so in my book, this is a definite plus. I could actually feel Yohji and Schuldig's pain after looking into Yohji's tear-filled eyes. The only problem with the character designs was the way Omi was drawn. When I first saw him in the 3rd panel on page 6, I was surprised he didn't have a cross-shaped scar on his left cheek. Yup, Omi looked a lot like Kenshin in this story. Surprisingly, there is also an Aya/Kenshin short by Sonya.

"Dust In The Wind" was very well written and I'm extremely happy that everything was spell checked. Spelling errors are a major pet peeve of mine. There's nothing worse than being absorbed in a really good story, only to come across a spelling error.

If you don't mind reading shounen ai or seeing Yohji in a shounen ai pairing, then you'll really love this story!

Another short story that I found really good was "A Tangled Affair" written and drawn by Pluto and Jo. This is a hilarious pairing of Ken's bugnuk (tiger claws) and Yohji's garrote. In it, the bugnuk and garrote seem to be going at it all night and in the morning Ken and Yohji find their weapons covered in some sort of gelatinous matter. Turns out that it's just chocolate pudding (what were you thinking??) and at the end of the strip, we find the culprit behind the bugnukxgarotte pairing. I won't give it away. You'll just have to read it for yourself!

The artwork isn't too detailed in this story, but it doesn't need to be. It's a simple tale of a length of wire and a clawed glove. Yohji and Ken's facial expressions are very funny, especially when they find their weapons covered in gunk. The shimmery satisfied look on the culprit's face is priceless. This is something you have to see for yourself. Visually, this story was really great.

Since this was a short story of about 7 panels, the writing was faced paced as well. I'm glad they chose gag rather than angst for such a short story because angst would not work well in just 7 panels.

My only problem with this doujinshi was the way it was numbered. Everything was all right until the "Tangled Affair" story. It's on page 42, and in the table of contents it's labeled as page 43. There is also a cute Nagi story on page 43 that didn't seem to make it into the table of contents. It's almost as if this story was thrown in at the last minute.

All in all, Weiss Shokolade (White Chocolate) is a great book. It's all well written, and well drawn. I especially loved the various pinups and I wish I could see the alternate cover in color. It depicts Yohji and Schuldig complete with angel wings. Production quality on this book was very high and out of all the doujinshis I've seen come out of Umbrella/Passionate Kiss, this one is probably the largest in size. Now I have to stick it in a golden age comic book plastic so the lovely white cover doesn't get dirty!

Thanks Weiss Engeln for making my first yaoi Yohji experience a good one!

--reviewed by Jason