Aaahh, I give in. Despite how incredibly flawed the mystery in this series is, I’m going to blog it and drop Dragon Crisis, but if Suite Precure next week is crap, I’m going to pick it back up. I know that I’m really juggling around series this season, but blame their strange airing patterns!
The reason why I originally chose Dragon Crisis over Gosick had a lot to do with my assumption that Gosick would only be 12 episodes long (I mean, how much work can you put on Mari Okada anyway). The characters were just too annoying, and because of that I wanted to give Dragon Crisis more a chance to impress me in a second half, despite being much more cliched (hey, there have been plenty of series that start out really cliched, but get more creative and interesting as they go on). But guess what? Gosick is going to be is going to be 24 episodes long. This actually allows the characters to develop and the shows to evolve. Besides, the stories are small and compact, so there should be plenty to talk about.
Don’t get me wrong though, this episode still was pretty flawed. I’m really not sure why Bones put the director of Heroman of all things on this thing, and it shows: this is miles away from their best work. The one advantage that this series has over Heroman however, is that this time, the source material is actually pretty interesting. If you don’t look at the execution, but just at the story, I admit that this show is pretty interesting.
In this episode, the creator pretty much presented two stories for Victorique, and especially the first one was pretty bad: Kazuya states exactly all of the clues that are needed to solve the mystery including a daydream that just… makes no sense, both in the way that he told it and the fact that Victorique connects this daydream to the culprit. That’s exactly what I mean by that Victorique isn’t a genius at all, and how she simply has access to the script of this series. In comparison, a real genius detective would be Sakon, from Ayatsuri Sakon: that also is a series in which people have been murdered by ingenious plots (but not too ingenious to the point where it gets ridiculous), and Sakon mostly spends his time carefully gathering clues and examining his surroundings, before relating all of those together. In Ayatsuri Sakon, we really get to see Sakon’s thought process. In Gosick, we get none of that.
Instead, we just get some interesting stories. It makes no sense, but I do like how most of the mysteries in this series aren’t standalone and how they eventually become connected with each other. This show outright sucks at the “how” of its mysteries, but one thing I like is that the creators wait really long to explain exactly why things happened. This allows you to fill in some of the details for yourself. At the very least, I can see that the original source material of this series had some very interesting ideas. But was Victorique also a Mary-sue like she is in the anime version, or was this completely different?
Rating: (Enjoyable)
By the anime-no-chikara, I thee summon here blogging wheel. Lend me your powers and let’s see which, in turn will grow strong animes between Gosick and Dragon Crisis.
Letting joke aside, there’s no hurry to decide what to blog so soon. Just give time to time and decide carefully. This continuous pick and srop is showing your as an indecisive person, which you aren’t in the first place.
Oh, had no idea Gosick was going to be 24 episodes long. It’s true the mystery so far has been quite a letdown but I always figured it would get better later on because they foreshadowed a lot of things during the episodes.
I just hope it picks up soon. As for Dragon Crisis, it’s just as love-hate. Action is amazing but the rest is still a cliched and frustrating mess, even more so than Gosick IMHO.
Honestly between Gosick and Dragon Crisis… Lol both suck at this point
I couldnt believe how ridiculous the mystery was this episode… Just like you said, Victorique jumps to conclusions out of NOWHERE…
And then the anime is going through mysteries at a ridiculous pace, I mean, the case is introduced and 10 minutes later solved? WTF?
Im not sure what Gosick is trying to accomplish here honestly, right now it just seems like a pointless attempt at having a lolita sherlock holmes
“Don’t get me wrong though, this episode still was pretty flawed.”
Tsundere for Gosick.
As for Dragon Crisis, it’s just as love-hate [2]
Gosick may have soe problems now, but the OP shows that later the main plot will kick in…then it should become way better…
honestly, the cases till now was all pretty easy to see through no need to have access to the script. and because its so easy to see through till now the show is not that much intresting, but i agree, still more intresting then dragon crisis
I agree that these are pretty easy mysteries so far. Victorique’s fountain of wisdom is apparently reading a lot of mystery fiction. 🙂 (And yes, there were a good hundred years of mysteries before Doyle and the Fair Play Golden Age, mostly in the fiction magazines. Lots of ’em in French, too.)
Interesting review, but I think you might be reacting a slight bit too hastily against Gosick and many of its key elements.
To get it out of the way, Kazuya told Victorique about the daydream because:
1) it was out-of-place (like you mention), which he himself found strange and a bit embarrassing
2) It was relevant to why he wasn’t paying more [conscious] attention to the details of the crime scene (or noticed the wire/motorcycle until too late)
3) he subconsciously had a feeling he should tell it. It is later explained that people often think about the random objects they see out of the corner of their eye, and this is perfectly plausible because it happens to me all the time.
But that aside, “exactly all of the clues that are needed”? On the contrary! In fact, he said nothing other than “I walked through forest, had an embarassing daydream of a blond, hence my lack of attention, when suddenly amidst a twanging noise a guy on a motorcycle flies past and his head falls off.”
Even in his recollection you can see/hear something resembling a wire whipping — anyone who’s watched murder shows would know the like.
Anyway, the Inspector brings in a blood-stained rope: the middle region was blood-stained, as was the end where it was tied. After a bit of thought I came to the exact same conclusion about the cause of death, and even that the person was likely no match for the motorcyclist and possibly hurt/threatened (hence the blood at the end of the rope). I didn’t link the blond hair in, though.
This is certainly “not too ingenious to the point where it gets ridiculous.” In your Professor Layton review you were a lot more lenient on a setup that truly was “too [convoluted] to the point where it gets ridiculous.” This “mystery” and that in episode 1 were certainly not.
And about the poor/inconsistent characterization you mentioned, Kujo’s just acting the timid, out-of-element son of a hardened Imperial soldier he is. His personality and behaviors are consistent and reasonable given this premise.
Speaking of “premise,” Victorique really does appear to have some degree of “access to the script,” but far from this being the result of the director’s unintentional and uninspired blundering, this is quite intentional. Her ability is supposed to be altogether TOO fast and TOO accurate, which is a profoundly meaningful component of her character. She’s not in the least bit supposed to be a simple and gullible party to matters beyond her grasp like the pawns in Baka’s protracted taunt (Level E).
For that reason, it should be obvious that GOSICK is not meant to be a conventional mystery/detective series at all. The pacing of the “mysteries” indicates that they are merely side stories intended to weave together into an interesting underlying plot, as well as opportunities for the characters to get to know about each other, the setting, and their respective pasts. They also provide opportunities for the creators to showcase Victorique’s alarming ability and the conditions of its activation. After all, conventional mystery is far removed from “piecing together fragments of chaos” — nay, it is far more akin to determined attention to detail, dogged questioning, extended contemplation, and a few pivotal revelations. What more proof could there be that you’ve been going about watching this show the wrong way? A critical eye is commendable, but scrutinizing a love story with an eye for political inaccuracy is altogether missing the point, I daresay.
Just my opinion. Perhaps the forums are better for this sort of thing…
hoiut, very good analysis. It’s so refreshing to read about such in deep thoughts sometimnes.
To Psgel’s defense this time i dare say the pacing and complexity of the mysteries Victorica has to solve are kind of the letdown here. I had the feeling before with the old lady death and this headless motorcicle man, they solved it a little too quickly it gives the sensation of shallowness before giving the impression of Victorica being smart.
Old school mistery series told us the crime scene has to be analyzed in search of clues which are collected and finally eleborated to reconstruct all of the crime dynamics at the end. Usually search and verification of the clues is what drives the entire detective story and big adventures are born from that.
Gosick is far to quick in this matter for the sake of letting us notice how smart victorica is. She reconstructed anything from hearsay. She hardly moves from the library and search the crime scene. You even wonder how she could have such an acute observation unless she never searched the crime scene in the firts place. Clues are brought to her by others, more than her searching for them. So it looks she actually knows just everything before, and hence Psgel’s wrong impression.
Let’s just say thes emysteries aren’t that challenging, and aren’t build up with the necessary care so that they looks way to easy.
This is Gosick’s wrong assumption. It’s just a lazy detectrive story. But there’s still time to build up something more interesting later. Unless they keep the lazyness.
Regarding this series, I am rather happy to find out that it will have 24 episodes. It alleviates some of my worries, because for me, this series has actually been rather good, but a little slow. Admittedly, the mysteries are not very hard to solve, in terms of the HOW. That is revealed almost immediately, in all the cases we have seen, such as the gun shooting through the lock, the wire cutting the head off, etc. It’s not the HOW that this show really cares about though. It is the WHY. The whole arc with he Queen Berry was kind of a setup, not only to let the viewer get to know the characters, but to reveal some deeper goings-on with the predictions and all about the Great War. It also gave a reason why the Arabian maid would try to kill her employer. Similarly, the focus of the currently episode is very much about the WHY of each crime. Why did the culprit commit murder? That is what I like about this show. In my experience, a lot of the time in detective manga or anime, the methods will be ingenious, but the motivations will be shallow.
Moreover, I agree with hoiut that the mysteries are really kind of short stories. I feel the real point of this show is the story Victorique. She is slowly being fleshed out, over the series, and we are getting little bits and pieces, but there are loads of unanswered questions. I feel that the “mystery” here is her. (Even Kazuya keeps calling her mysterious.) Even Kazuya is somewhat mysterious, himself. Why does he have the reputation be being the Black Shinigami, before the show even began?
Plus, about the whole “She’s got access to the script” thing, I wonder if that might not be true. In this episode, and in a previous one, I believe, there was a scene where we basically get a whole bunch of patterns coming together, zooming out to Victorique’s eye, in a distinctly “second sight”/”magical ability” kind of fashion. With the way the fortune teller could predict the outcome of the Great War, who knows if such supernatural abilities may actually turn out to be part of the show?
Sorry for the double post. I would like to also mention, that, according to ANN, the director of episode 4 was actually Hiroshi Ikehata, who worked on stuff like FMA: Brotherhood and Gurren Lagann. The storyboard was done by Namimi Sanjo, who did work on Heroman.