Gosick – 08-09

BATTLE MAID.

Hey, everyone! I’ve been gone for quite some time now, and I’m sure all of you missed me like crazy. Well, everyone who matters, at least! I have a lot to tell you guys about my crazy adventures. As you might (should) know, my laptop screen burned out a while back, which set me back for about a day, but immediately afterwards, I ended up fighting for my life against the plague! I’m the type that rarely gets sick, but somehow I caught a cold and an (I suspect) infected mouth wound at the same time, which made life pretty miserable for a week or so. Or maybe it was because of the cold that the wound got infected, who knows? It didn’t help that I had to spend about 20 hours that same week meeting with an engineering project design group, mostly late at night. On the plus side, the project looks like it’s going to be pretty cool. Maybe I’ll share it with you guys if I ever get a chance to get really off topic! But anyway, once the week of hell ended, I got to fly home and pick up a shiny new laptop, made in the year of 2011. I felt like I’ve been living in a cave for 4 years since I’ve been using the same crappy laptop since 2007, so the performance on this one is really impressive to me. But switching computers set me back another few days while I copied files over, installed programs, and so on. FUN PACKED!

While I was unable to watch anime (for like, two whole weeks), I got to think a lot instead. I’ve got some fun ideas for the next manga and music posts, so stay tuned! I also got a chance to finish Zaregoto 1 and 2, and let me say that that was marvelous. Zaregoto 2 ended pretty tragically, but… well, I’ll save further thoughts on that for later…

Enough about me! Let’s talk about Gosick. Before getting into these two episodes, I want to share something with you all. I happened to stumble upon this review on ANN today. It’s about the first light novel, not the anime, but Mr. Santos spectacularly describes my feelings so far:

“However, the exact details of the villain’s scheme are only revealed in gradual snippets, and that’s where the story excels—dropping subtle hints that allow you to figure out bits of the mystery in advance, but never the whole thing. (Admittedly, the whole thing turns out be a rather ridiculous, far-fetched scheme, but it’s about the journey, not the destination, right?)”

I’m not as optimistic as Mr. Santos, though…

Where were we? It’s been so long. Oh right, at the end of episode 7, that one dude… Raoul, was it? Ironically, I have a harder time remembering Western names in anime than Japanese names because of the horrible accents. Anyway, the disposable fool got shot, supposedly by the village elder while they were wolf hunting.

Unicorn CHAAARGE!!!

Within like, a minute, Victorique solves the case for us. The culprit was… Derek? Damn names again. Anyway, it was the one out of the three stooges that DIDN’T die. Basically, he and his buddies were treasure hunting in Horovitz, and he killed them, presumably to keep all of the plunder to himself. Exciting.

Very soon afterwards, they nab the person who framed Victorique’s mother. I didn’t even remember what the evidence was because they kind of tagged it on at the end of episode 7, but that’s basically it. One maid framed another, end of story. There was some deal with the gold coins, but you know, it had absolutely nothing to do with finding the culprit. Thanks for the clues.

At the end, we get a round of BATTLE MAID where the maid goes bonkers and fights everyone off with FIRE and a SPEAR. She’s manlier than the men in the village. Who needs guns? Real men use our ancestral weapons, dating back to the Stone Age. Naturally, Kujo gets his ass kicked because he’s so awesome and good at fighting. I almost screamed… when he didn’t get impaled. We need some actual drama, dammit!

After the bridge to Horovitz gets burned, we get a shot of Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl, AKA creepy evil red magician and Victorique’s MOM.

Episode 9 begins with mai waifu Avril scaring the crap out of Kujo, followed by Kujo delivering a kimono to Victorique. Awesome start, I approve.

Finally, something I can understand.

Victorique gets a cold basically because she’s an idiot, which essentially removes her from really participating in this arc. This is good news because I’ve had just about enough of Kujo and Victorique’s creepy relationship. The neat thing about this part is Victorique’s house. She does go home at the end of the day, and her house is behind a freaking hedge maze. Talk about a pain in the ass every time you go home as well as having visitors over.

Unicorn STAAAB!!!

This should really go into the more pics section, but it’s so awesome that I think it should be right here instead. Oh, right, plot… Kujo meets Grevil on the train into town.

Seven days…

On his search for the so-called Blue Rose paperweight, Kujo stumbles upon what I assume is the actual stolen Blue Rose diamond given by the fact that it doesn’t shatter when Kujo idiotically drops it on the ground. Of course, glass doesn’t necessarily shatter in real life if you drop it on a hard floor because it depends on the actual circumstances, but in anime, as well as movies, glass always shatters. He also stumbles upon a pale, emaciated girl in a BOX in the BASEMENT, which is… kind of alarming. I’ll take a wild guess here since Gosick has made a habit of being excessively elusive in clarity, but I think the stolen diamond and creepy girl are the focus of this arc. Just a hunch!

Left: before, Right: after

Kujo tries to explain to Grevil the weird stuff going on in the department store, but there’s a conspiracy going on to make him look like a madman. At first I didn’t even notice that the room had changed in appearance, but the above pictures show that the floor had, indeed, been replaced.

Downtrodden, Kujo’s salvation comes from the friendly neighborhood spi… street rat. Nameless, of course, but he offers some insight into the CONSPIRACY for the bargain price of a single coin. Before he can articulate the problem to Victorique over the phone, though, Kujo is… ABDUCTED!

DUN DUN DUN! UNTIL NEXT TIME (A FEW DAYS)!!!

MORE PICS

OTL

It’s symbolic!

I need you… Hato-kun…

Best scene in Gosick, no contest.

END THOUGHTS

Episode 8, as an arc ender, was a disappointment. In terms of plot, I mean. I’m a bit rusty on anime, but I am totally into the mystery thing after reading both Zaregoto books. Gosick does not deliver and shouldn’t really be considered a mystery series, at least primarily. The thing with the valuable jar or whatever was out of the blue, and the part where Derek kills his friends is not cliché at all. Meanwhile, the only evidence really supporting Victorique’s accusation of the maid was 1) they got a pretty quick confession at the festival by tricking her and 2) the maid was obviously CRAZY. Wonderful sleuthing, guys! I’m giving up on Gosick as a mystery series and going to think of it more as an adventure show. I figure if I don’t expect much intellectual activity from it, I won’t be so pissed off every time an arc ends.

I’m surprised I never noticed this before, but the setting of Gosick is actually really wonderful. The period feel to it is kind of weird (the costumes… the costumes), but the environments are just magnificent. They make it a point to have high, wide shots of the school, the town, the insides of buildings, and so forth, and they’re drawn wonderfully. It makes me kind of jealous that I don’t live in a place with such an old history, or I guess any place where they’ve spent so much money on elaborate, elegant architecture and design. The school garden, especially – I want to wander around a place like that.

Wait… my college has a garden like that… I need to get out more…

I mentioned music last time or maybe the time before that, but I think this time we got some cool new background soundtracks around the end of episode 8. It came on as a surprise since the music is generally pretty unnoticeable, but the cool action music when the town was getting light on fire was pretty sweet. I think the scenes at the very end had new BGMs, too, but even if they weren’t new, it was definitely very cool. Bonus points for Gosick for impressing me with its music.

Last thing to mention is that I am A-OK with Victorique being cut out of this next arc. I’m not sure if she’ll come around at the end to save the day, but given by the fact that she’s still bedridden in the previews, I’m hoping she stays there and out of our hair. Maybe Kujo can finally man up this time around and solve it himself. Oh, or maybe the Dark Magician saves the day, saving Kujo the trouble of being cool.

PREVIEW

I can show you the world…

The street rat comes to the rescue! Or something like that. By the way, what on earth was with the weird singing in the preview? I guess Victorique’s crappy singing is supposed to be what you call an “endearing character trait,” but seriously… no.

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.