And so much for the “Kujou is stupid” in this series. With this, he’s just become “not as bright as Victorique”, which is how it should have been at the start. This episode shows him actually investigating, using his head and going after clues. That’s what a good Watson should do, compared to his parrot-like role in the first half of this series. The teacher meanwhile still is a moron, but at least she’s a moron who doesn’t get in the way this time.
In any case though, this again was an excellent episode in terms of build-up. Kuji vs Victorique was used really well for that. The distance between Kujou and Victorique has been a major theme throughout the series, and here is where that really paid off with Victorique believing that Kujou’s involvement would only make her father put her back into that damn castle of his.
With four episodes left, the Coco Rose mystery will probably be the prelude to the finale. Here it’s going to be up to Mari Okada again to correctly plan the ending and make it fit into these 24 episodes. With this series in particular there should be no excuse, because some episodes in the middle could easily have been cut in order to fit the finale in.
I’m expecting a lot out of it, though, with such an amazing lead-up. Especially the occult roots around Marquis de Blois are interesting here: this show has consistently debunked any hint to the supernatural as mere tricks (aside from perhaps the fortune teller, but yeah: that’s pretty much the nature of fortune tellers: be vague enough so that your story fits for everyone), and yet this guy keeps going on about grey wolves, rituals and mystical powers. It’s actually much more interesting than the Coco Rose Mystery at this point: how on earth are the creators planning to put all that into perspective? I mean, we know that Marquis de Blois was obsessed over the occult since he was young and all, but I doubt that he carried out all of those rituals just because of his own madness.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
The problem is that the Coco-Rose case is junk. It’s horribly easy to figure out what’s going on if you just think about it, and if GOSICK wastes episodes on the case the conclusion will end up pretty sub-par.
@Azule, I agree. It’s not that complex a case. I already figured it out. Which is disappointing because this is build up to be the greatest challenge.
As for Kujo, he was just following Knox 9th commandment.
I also feel as if I’ve already figured it out as well…though Gosick is fairly realistic as a detective story. It’s only natural that we as viewers should get to the answer much faster than Victorique herself. Not because she’s stupid, but because she doesn’t have such an omnipotent view on the events at hand. And she doesn’t have the story-viewing ability that we have. Nicole is strongly emphasized, which gives us a good idea of what the solution will be, but in actuality, there is no guarantee whether Nicole is important or not.
And then of course, Gosick might pull a brilliant twist to make it something totally different from what we thought.