Gosick – 06

Does Gosick redeem itself after last episode?

It’s Valentine’s Day! So I guess I should say Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone! I sometimes have trouble keeping track of which day it is here at Metanorn because of time zone differences, but I’m guessing it’s still Valentine’s Day for most of you out there. It’s going to get exciting around here soon enough, so I hope everyone’s ready to share the looooove. This is personally my second year single, which is probably shorter than a lot of people… except for those of you who aren’t single at all! But don’t worry – I won’t hold it against you because I’m not the sucker who has to spend money.

Anyway, there will be plenty of chances for you to fall in love with me later, so let’s just get this show on the road for now.

Thank goodness, we’re moving onto a new arc. Avril and Kujo are wandering around town for some reason, I guess to buy textbooks or something along those lines, when they see that evil red-haired magician giving a show. He summons a dead pigeon, causing the crowd to disperse, and then randomly takes Kujo’s textbooks and turns it into this ugly hat before walking off. The pigeon resurrects, leaving the watcher to wonder what that magician’s deal is. Well, I can say this: he’s in the OP, so he must be important!

Next on the list of weirdos to meet is a nun selling stuff in a stall. Her music box explodes with pigeons, and her precious plate gets stolen.

Victorique explains that the nun just faked the whole thing using a cage of pigeons hidden between her legs, though I doubt they had insurance back then which makes the motives kind of unclear here. Furthermore, the trusty newspaper reveals that Grevil failed to prove anything or catch anyone, even after being assisted by Victorique. In a manner typical of Gosick, the whole matter is resolved by… setting the questions aside and moving on to the next topic in a hurry!

Kujo pisses off Victorique by flicking her forehead, which causes her to not talk to Kujo for like 10 minutes (real world time… more like 12 hours in their time). I guess her low tolerance for pain is supposed to be cute or something, but it just comes off as really babyish and stupid. That’s just me, though, since right now I’m finding every chance I can get to talk smack about Victorique. Anyway, the two of them end up going to a town called Horovitz because of a newspaper ad calling all “descendents of the gray wolves” for some kind of reunion. Along the way, they run into Nun-san who says she’s just going back to her hometown.

If we’ve learned anything, it’s that we should suspect everyone. For the first time in history, Kujo notices something strange about Nun-san because she apparently wasn’t aware of the cold nights in Horovitz, despite supposedly being from the region. Good job, Kujo! Unfortunately, he doesn’t make any further connections, like 1) she’s lying, 2) why is she lying, 3) don’t trust her. Apparently his brain is only able to comprehend simple concepts like, “That’s odd… oh well.”

Eventually, Victorique starts talking again and explains why she bothered coming up here. Like the innkeeper suggested, Victorique is a descendent of a gray wolf, and her mother, Cordelia Gallo, was exiled from the village for some crime. This resulted in some chain of events that resulted in Victorique’s birth and confinement, as well as Cordelia fleeing from Saubure. Basically, Victorique wants to prove her mother’s innocence.

Alphonse Elric makes a guest appearance.

They meet three more suspicious fellows who are also heading to the gray wolf village, where they are greeted with a very sharp welcome. The village head shows up to calm everyone down, and before the episode ends, he reveals that Cordelia Gallo was… a murderer! That’s… not as much of a shock as I expected, given the build-up, but whatever.

MORE PICS

How do I confess when she’s surrounded by her friends…?

Tonight, we’re having pigeon.

Oh, you watched episode 5, too?

END THOUGHTS

After the disaster that was last arc, my feelings are a little mixed about this episode. On one hand, it could a chance for Gosick to redeem itself and actually have a decent story for this arc, but on the other hand, last arc was just so bad that it feels like I’d be unnecessarily getting my hopes up for expecting anything good here. Aside from random crap like the evil red-haired magician and the nun’s plate, which may or may not make another appearance later on (can’t say for sure after last arc’s fiasco), this episode has a few good things going for it so far: 1) it clearly defines what mystery we’re trying to solve, that is, Cordelia Gallo’s innocence, and 2) we get more than one new suspicious character – the nun and the other 3 guys in the wagon. This is already more than the last arc had, so this arc has… potential.

Unfortunately, it looks like Avril won’t be making another appearance for the rest of this arc since she’s back at the school, and Victorique is getting more and more annoying as we speak. Not only are Kujo and Victorique getting closer, we also get several scenes in which Victorique demonstrates that she not only looks and eats like a baby, but she takes pain and sleeps like a baby, too. I know a lot of you out there think this is cute, but I just don’t want to see Victorique anymore. If I wanted to watch some kindergartner being dumb and cute, I’d watch Mitsudomoe *shudder*.

Around the middle of the episode, my attention started to waver a bit, so I started listening to the background music. I hadn’t thought about it before because it’s not really music that just jumps out at you when you hear it like in Index or something. Rather, the music blends into the events so that you don’t always even notice it’s there. Perhaps the reason I had a hard time noticing the music before because you don’t really get any scenes where all the action stops and it just shows still shots with background music, drawing attention to the music. I don’t think it’s a good or bad thing in itself, but after paying attention to the music a little more closely, it’s a shame that it’s not more prominent because the music is actually quite good.

PREVIEW

As expected of mysteries, everyone is craaaaaaaazy. Yeah.

About sassy

Follower of both dark and mysterious horrors and funny and pointless comedies. Fascinated with ghosts and the supernatural. Friendly and talkative, but I will kill you if you get between me and Itou Kanae.