Gosick is an anime based on solving cases and misteries related to "ghost stories" and local legends. It's a shoujo mistery drama and it takes place in The Kingdom of Sauville, a ficitonal country located in Europe, surrounded by France to the west, Switzerland to the north, and Italy to the east and they all speak french. The time line is somewhere after the Great World War but we'll get to that later. We have 2 major characters in the series and lots of other small characters that appeal to many kinds of personalities, I thought it was a very light story at the beggining but I got caught up in the last 10 episodes and couldn't stop watching. It gets sort of intense towards the ending.
Plot: 7/10
- The plot is nice. Not amazing or mind blowing but enjoyable. I admit I started watching because of the main character's clothing but I found that the mistery solving thing was fairly interesting. As I mentioned before it was very light at the beggining, and it seemed a bit disjointed at first. Exchange student comes into new school, is an outcast, meets another outcast girl and they obviously get along.. let the case solving begin! As we progress the little misteries become bigger and start to intertwine themselves into the life stories of the characters and the political status of the country itself.
I felt I liked this part a lot more because it had some continuity to it instead of just being random "ghost stories" to try and figure out. In the end the plot gets a bit hectic with everything exploding in in your face fairly quickly (expect lots of fire and deaths, nothing too graffic but blood is a constant) but still, it was a continued plotline and that's nice to see.
Characters: 6/10
- Pretty standart characters actually. You got the weird girl genius, the loyal boy that always stands by her even though he's treated like dirt, the clumsy teacher, the unrequited love interested, the heartless bad guys, the anti-hero, the one that disappeared but is always there watching, the one that seems not to care but actually does, all that jazz. They aren't much imaginative but they fit well in their roles, particularly Victorique, Kujo and Brian Roscoe (in my opinion anyways).
My favorite character was Kujo for the sole purpose that I love "knights" that overcome everything even for the most flawed and annoying characters. He's too loyal for his own good, but he has a kind heart and never gives up, and I love that. Victorique is also interesting because of her ability to solve the cases, but none of the other characters actually made me love them or connect to them in any particular way, well maybe Grevil.. a little.
Music: 6/10
- Normal I guess, asides from the opening theme I didn't pay much attention to the background music because it was very generic... but it fit in the aesthetics of the series.
Artwork: 7/10
- I usually go for a more mature style of artwork in the anime I really enjoy (such as Wolf's Rain, Bebop, Mononoke, Death Note), and I hate "chibi" characters with big eyes and small mouths and noses, but when I started watching this series it surprised me that the art is actually very well made, not only in terms of characters and wardrobes but in terms of arquitecture, backgrounds, landscaping and such. Nothing too amazing mind you, but it was fairly enjoyable.
Entertaining: 8/10
- This gets the highest score of the lot because it was really entertaining at the end. I really got caught up in the plot and wanted to see how would they solve the cases, how would the main characters overcome their problems and how would they develop, would the country fall or rise with the political issues, conspiracies and mind games, and the fact that anyone could actually die at any point of it was a plus too.
I'm not a fairly smart or deductive person when it comes to solving cases and that's why I enjoy mistery series so much, but some/most of you might find them really easy to solve. Anyways it's a personal review.
Timeline: 6/10
- This bothered me. It started off just fine, the setting is somewhere around 1924, after the Great World War (or WW1) and they talk about that a lot, so it's always present in your mind. Apparently this true history timeline is flawed and was made that way to adapt to the anime. I don't know if it's the same in the manga, as they talk about "in some years you'll be separated by a great storm" but it doesn't pass any few year, it passes, mostly, a year, so I'm not sure if this was mis-adapted or if it's the same in the manga.
The WW2 (or so it looks) breaks down from around 1924/5 to 1929, which you might know (if you know the basics of history) is total bananas. So yeah I got a little bit flushed by that but it was alright in the end.
OVERALL: 7/10
- It's an enjoyable anime and I recommend it mainly because the ending was very emotional for me, the climax of all the intrigue was very intense, but of course there are much more intense anime endings than this, it was just a surprise to see such a light watch turn into something so deep.
Bottomline: Go watch it if you like mistery solving series, frilly clothing, tsundere relationships and a bit of political drama as a side dish. It's fun, and it's only 24 episodes, it's fairly quick to watch.
Things I personally enjoyed:
~ All the newspapers, posters and books were written in french.
~ Kujo's devotion.
~ The mysteries in general.
~ Victorique's wardrobe.
~ The variety of sweets, candies, cakes and such.
~ The Ending. I'm a sucker for that sort of endings.
~ Grevil, Brian and Kujo are really cute. (I'm a fan girl, deal with it!)
Things that personally annoyed me:
~ Kujo always yelling "Victorique" over and over and over again.. but that's expect in anime right?
~ Tsundere Victorique and why do they always prefer these annoying brats over nice girls. Really, anime people.. why?
~ The whole "I'm your precious friend thing", c'mon, they know better than that...
~ The fact that Victorique carries a pipe everywhere but doesn't smoke.
~ Sometimes characters yelling or stating obvious happenings, such as one falling on the ground and a passerby stating "she fell" "she got up" or "she's dirty".
~ The lack of accuracy on the beginning of WWII.
~ Second ending theme.
Well, that's it for my review, hope I got you interested (or maybe the opposite?) in seeing this anime, I'm not a professional reviewer or anything, so please don't judge my reviewing too hard :P
Ja ne!
