Gosick

"Gosick"? Really, Japan? You couldn't find ONE Japanese to English Dictionary in the entire country before you came up with the final spelling of the English word that you chose to name a book series and television show after. Spell it "Gothic," or hell, the French "Gothique" would have made even more sense contextually, considering the country that this anime takes place in speaks French. Gosick sounds like you're ordering somebody to throw up. But I digress, let me talk about the show in question because why the hell not.

Gosick (Ughh, just typing that feels ridiculous) is one of the most mixed and just plain weird shows I've seen in a long time. It starts out like just another Sherlock Holmes wannabe series — what with little genius Victorique solving crimes for the police with the help of her loyal henchman (a Japanese retarded version of the quite able Watson) always by her side — but then things get all wacky. We're then thrown into an alternate 1920s European theater where WWII takes place more than a decade early, and the fate of the entire world is balanced on the shoulders of a pissant made-up country that sits between France and Italy on the Mediterranean Sea, despite any evidence that this country's fate has ANYTHING to do with the outside world.... Well, it's either supposed to be an alternate timeline, or the writers truly think that WWII took place in the late 1920s. Considering they never really go out of their way to show WHY the big war was moved up so much in this universe I'm very willing to guess that the main scripter simply failed world history in school. But I digress yet again.

Okay, so here we go. Gosick is essentially a mix of Hayate the Combat Butler, Chrno Crusade, and Detective Conan. It's all about the third-born son of a high-ranking Japanese military commander (one Kazuya Kujo) who travels to the made-up European country known as Sauville in order to study at the St. Marguerite Academy for good boys and girls. All the blue-eyed blonde students call the darker-skinned, dark-eyed kid from Asia "Reaper," and he's soon treated like a pariah because kids can be assholes. But thanks to a strange twist of what others may call fate (but I call teacher tampering), Kujo becomes friends with a young-looking classmate who rarely leaves the top of the library tower on campus, and who claims to be the smartest mother-fuckin-cunt on the planet (one Victorique de Blois... And if you ever forget her name, don't worry, because Kujo YELLS IT OUT in either grief, exasperation, joy, anger, or sadness 50,000Xs per episode. VICTORIQUE! VICTORIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIQUE!!!!!!).

And apparently Victorique's boasting of having a big brain is true, seeing as a local detective (one Detective Grevil) regularly comes to her in order to get her advice on how to solve all the gruesome murders and difficult crimes that come his way. Then he ends up taking full credit for them in the papers. This pisses off Kujo something fierce, but Victorique is fine with it because Grevil is her half-brother, and the reason he brings these crime-ridden brain puzzles to her in the first place is because she's forbidden from ever leaving the St. Marguerite campus by their shared father, and Grevil only forced his way into the police force in order to bring her these mysteries and keep her from going stir-crazy with boredom.

WHAT?! Victorique's father keeps her locked up in the gilded cage of a super high-end boarding school? How can this be?! Well, it be because the Marquis de Blois is the world's biggest cackling asshat who wants to use his daughter's brain to do..... something and something with the king of Sauville because something else.

Honestly, I paid close attention to this whole thing, but even though I finished the series up less than 24 hours ago I cannot recall just what the Marquis de Blois' retarded plan was all about. But let me back up. There's a whole lot of history to go through for you to fully understand just how fucked up this show gets.

BIG SPOILERS AHEAD, MATEY

Things start off with a series of 2-3 episode story arcs that introduce the characters and the world that they live in. The first half of the show is like this, with little snippets of information about Victorique's heritage thrown in between all the grisly murders she helps to solve. For the most part, I was entertained. We find that Victorique is the product of her father the Marquis, and his rapey relationship with a girl who was shunned and kicked out of her hidden village in the mountains (a village known for its intelligence instead of its inbred rednecks, like MOST other isolated mountain towns tend to produce) because she was framed for murder. Well, all the Marquis wanted from this mountain-town girl was the baby, so soon after Victorique's birth he sent mommy dearest to a psych ward and forgot about her.

Then Victorique was raised in an isolated stony tower in the Marquis' castle, and brought up to be a cold and calculating brainiac. Then for some reason she was sent to St. Marguerite Academy where she never interacted with anybody and looked down on all the other students (because she was soooo much smarter than them all — because intelligence is 100% transmittable through the uterus), until Kujo arrived. Kujo was shunned by all his classmates because he looked completely different from the rest of them, and so his ditzy teacher sent him to deliver something to the top of the library tower to Victorique (who, when he first saw her, was so small and pretty and wearing a frilly dress, made Kujo think she was a doll... Did I mention that Kujo is one of the stupidest fuckers on the whole planet?). And because he was kind and Victorique a tsundere bully, the poor Japanese sap was made the 10 year-old-looking girl's gopher.

Together they solve a lot of murders and kidnappings (and by "together" I mean "Victorique solves them and makes fun of the full-on retard Kujo's stupidity for always arriving at the wrong conclusion before she sets things straight") and things are alright (storywise) for a while. But like I said, then the second half of the series begins and the focus of the show becomes Sauville's history and its trouble between the warring factions of the Science Guild and the Evil Dicks of the Occult League of Douchebaggery (the second of which is run by Victorique's insane papa) which vie for the King's ear. We're told of the alchemist Leviathan's involvement in this ongoing feud (which was a pretty good tale, I must admit), the Queen's mysterious death by beheading (and missing head), and the story of the distant convent shaped like an enormous fly's head where a giant vision of the Virgin Mary appeared during a battle in The Great War, when all the nuns in the place went insane and prayed for God to kill all the German pilots who dropped bombs on them. No, I didn't make that last one up, and yes, I did have to rewind and watch that scene several times in order to hear all the dialogue through all my maniacal laughing. Those nuns were PISSED!

So anyway, it turns out that the Marquis wanted Victorique's genetically enhanced intelligence to help him play a chess game using the country of Sauville as his chess board, and quite honestly this is where the whole thing lost me. Okay, I get that she's a super genius (despite the fact that I figured out half the mysteries in this series before she did, and with less evidence at my disposal), but what I don't get is what her daddy was making her DO with her giant brain. All the decisions she makes in directing the Marquis to act (in order to do whatever it is he's trying to do) ANYBODY could have come up with. And in the end all that the Evil Dicks of the Occult League of Douchebaggery end up doing is figuring out and telling the King that the head Science Guild dude is from the same village that Victorique's mother is from (by seeing a crayon picture he drew when he was a child). And then the King is all like "Eh?! What?! Oh noes! Not THAT place!" And then..... Fuck, I don't recall other than Victorique's mother and her lover(s) finally start doing stuff and get Victorique out of town just as shit goes sour and they blow up and kill half the capital that's brainwashed by the Marquis into following him because they believe that Victorique is a reborn storybook monster without a heart. No, it doesn't make any more sense in full context.

Oh, and the brainless Kujo isn't even involved in the whole Sauville-based uber finale because the Marquis was all like "LOLS, what? Dude, you so stupid. Stop bothering my daughter, G. Go home. Go back to Japan. I ain't even mad." So Kujo is forcefully sent back to Japan, thrown into the army, regularly beaten up by his commanding officers, and soon finds himself busy raping Nanking, and killing American POWs and shit, but that's okay, 'cause he writes to Victorique and invites her over to his place when the war's over and Japan's all fucking demolished and shit. But since her country's all dead and stuff too, and her brother's still kind of a dick, she goes over to Kujo's house and is like "Hi, I look 10 and all, and I appear to be from the country that just dropped a couple of A-bombs on your asses, but I'm super smart, and I like Kujo, so like, can I stay and stuff? Awesome!" And now she has silver hair because.... Because she was sad?.... I... Wow. Whatever.

BIG SPOILERS OVER

Gosick ends up going everywhere, but in the end you're left feeling that you didn't get anything close to a full story, just lots of bits and pieces of many smaller tales. The WHYs of most of the shit that happens are ignored, and one of the biggest mysteries (the what/when/who of the son of Leviathan) is not even attempted to be cleared up. Oh, and why did Brian the magician steal Kujo's text books in that one early episode? And was nothing ever to come of Grevil's unrequited love? And did the government ever find all that gold when the clock tower was taken down ('cause that really was a HUGE fucking deal)? And once again, WHY did World War II take place in the late 1920s? What the H?!

Probably the thing that irked me the most about this whole show though was the treatment of Avril Bradley. Avril is a British national who transfers to St. Marguerite (after getting kidnapped, but then rescued by Victorique's intellect), and soon falls in love with Kujo. Avril is cute and fun, and actually LOOKS like a teenager, but she apparently doesn't stand a chance with Kujo because of his lolita complex and his blind desire to be with the preadolescent-looking Victorique. Honestly, Avril had NO place in this story beyond her original kidnapping and rescue in that early story arc. It just pissed me off that she was the much better candidate for Kujo's mentally handicapped affections, but Kujo can't take off his blinders for even a second to see that she's pretty much throwing her moist panties at him every time they're together. There IS NO love triangle here, it's just Kujo and Victorique, and Avril looking in on the side. Neither Victorique nor Kujo even acknowledge her existence half the time!

No, it's not really a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I'm just saying DON'T make a romantic interest for the main POV character that's MUCH BETTER than the girl he finally ends up with, especially if she never adds anything to the plot and is just there because.... Well because.

And really, WHY is this thing called Gosick (meaning "why is it called Gothic but mistakenly spelled Gosick?")? Is it because Victorique wears nothing but Gothic Lolita-styled clothes? Or maybe..... Fuck, that's the only reason I could come up with. Whatever. I'm done.

So, what did I think of Gosick? It started out mediocre, but then took a left turn into "What The Goddamn Fuck" Land and never looked back. Now, I'm all for crazy stories and insane landscapes, but only when they're fun and entertaining and have good characters in them. I disliked most of Gosick's characters (especially the brain damaged Kujo who could be told point by point how a hideous murder was enacted, have the murderer confess and explain it again himself in even greater detail, and then ask "Sooooo, so-in-so was killed? For reals?!"), and the main plot of the second half was just dumb and forgettable. Shit happened without any explanation or reason, but because chaos reigned and everybody was confused we're told to just go with it and not question it. Sorry, no. If you pretend to be an intelligent show based upon the ideas of observance and deduction, then your ending better make more than even a lick of sense. Gosick does not. And that's why I feel I must give it a Thumbs down. Go watch Detective Conan for some really well written and well thought out mysteries instead.

Nope. I didn't even try to figure out this one. It tried so hard to be smart and intelligent and other synonymous words, but it was just dumb in the end. Half the murders and crimes were very easy to figure out, or so ludicrous that you can't help but laugh at them when the "solution" is "deducted," and the other half were just forgettable.

Take for example that first big mystery, with the murders on that giant luxury ocean liner... The reason that we're given for how that girl who put everything into motion was able to buy a fucking LUXERY OCEAN LINER of her own, in order to trap a dozen people on it and kill them all, is that she was given a little bit of money ten years before. That's it. Nothing is stated in regards to how the giant, super expensive ship was able to leave port, drive out to sea, and maintain its heading (in the middle of a fucking hurricane at that), nor who cooked all the fancy food everybody ate, and all that other shit... It's made perfectly clear that the guests are the only ones on this ship. How. Can. This. Be.

And before you guys say anything like "Well, it's only a cartoon, give it a break!!!" I find I need to remind you that it tries so hard to be a show of such high-bar intelligence as to rival Sherlock Holmes. It claims to be a show of reason and science and deduction, yet NOTHING in it makes any kind of sense. It's just dumb. And dumb mystery shows are even dumber for it... If you get my drift.

It was dumb. Even its name, Gosick, is dumb. Go watch the new British Sherlock Holmes show for some smart mysteries and shit. Really. And they all speak English in that show.

Ich liebte dieses Erscheinen! Die intelligentesten Leute waren alle Männer und Frauen des blauen Auges des blonden Haares, und die dummen Buchstaben waren alle NichtAriere! Ha! Sie japanisches Volk, das diese Fernsehsendung bildete, prüften meinen Punkt! Heil ich! Ariere für immer!

Ich gebe diesem Erscheinen zwei Hilter Fäuste Wut! Das bedeutet, dass es superschreckliches ist!