Gosick Half Season Review

I seriously published this on the 23rd, right?

hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah

In a small country, Sauville (bordering Switzerland, France, and Italy, as well as overlooking both the Alps and the Mediterranean), Kujo Kazuya attends the prestigious St. Maugerite Academy. Feared as ‘the Black Reaper’ by the occult and mystery-loving school population, he meets Victorique de Blois, an brilliantly eccentric girl who secludes herself in the library all day, never venturing outside.

No shit, Sherlock.

Grevil de Blois, Victorique’s half-brother, is also a highly eccentric detective, completely contrasting with Victorique’s personality. He claims to be a brilliant detective, although it is always Victorique who solves his crimes for him at the end.

One such crime was conducted in the Spring of 1924, the murder of an old fortune teller, Roxanne. Her Arabian maid murdered her by tricking her to look through a locked door’s keyhole, and then shooting her brains out through said hole. However, she escapes from captivity…

Victorique and Kazuya go on a pleasure cruise provided by Grevil, except it’s not what it seems. The 11 guests have dinner, and end up waking up in the locked lounge of the ship. They find a model of the Queen Berry there, a ship that sunk ten years ago. Apparently, the ‘Garden Box Evening’ occurred on said ship, where 11 children of diverse nationalities were stranded onboard her. They were to substitute for hares, a practice used by Roxanne for her rather, er, bloody premonitions – hares and hunting dogs were released, and she would tell the future from which hares survived.

AND THEN FILL IT WITH ELEVEN BUNNY WABBITS

Anyways, the captive prisoners soon learn that there’s an extra person in the lounge, and after a disturbing message is revealed on one of the walls, they frantically try to escape. The first fatality is struck when a man is shot dead by a trap in the door, and six other people die while trying to escape via lifeboat. The five remaining survivors walk back to the lounge, to find it’s been completely trashed and nearly flooded.

Among the survivors are an old man working for the Foreign Ministry of Saubure, Maurice, the only one in the group to remember the story of the Garden Box Evening. He was the one who checked the ship afterwards while it was sinking – apparently, all of the children murdered each other. The adults that caused their death were gathered in this boat today, which happens to be an exact replica of the sunken Queen Berry, right down to the locations of each of the traps in the room.

“YEAH, I DIED”

Well, not exactly – the only reason they went into that lounge was because the door was open – it wasn’t the same lounge as the first one. Victorique reveals the truth of the mysteriously fast changes – their first lounge is just as it was, and the second one was prepared in advance. The sudden appearance of creepy writing was simply the culprit pulling off a section of wallpaper.

Eventually, Maurice goes insane, and pulls out a hidden weapon – these were hidden along the original ship as well, so the children could kill each other with them. Honestly, I thought Victorique would reveal her nonchalance to the situation because all of the guns were blank, but Julie Guile, the rich daughter of a coal mine-owner, pulls out a gun and shoots Maurice instead.

ai wa shocku

The four survivors; Julie, Kazuya, Victorique, and a stage actor, Ned Baxter, realize the ship’s sinking, and hurriedly run towards the radio room. However, Ned suffers a fatal injury and collapses in a stairwell. The remaining trio quickly hide in a room and get weapons when they realize someone else is coming.

It’s Ned, with a giant axe. He reveals that he was the hunting dog on the original trip – he feigned death by using a tennis ball to stop his pulse, and elicited suspicion among the other children, leading to almost all of them killed. Julie was among the survivors, making it to the radio room, filled with wealthy aristocrats – and Roxanne.

Look at this anime.

Kazuya flashes back into the past as well, when he was the Third son of an Imperial Soldier, who forced him to become ‘stronger’ to ‘protect’ the weak. With Ned about to kill Victorique, he takes a pair of brass knuckles and beats Ned up. Quite a lot.

Victorique also flashes back into her past – because she was an illegal daughter, she was locked in a tiny room in the de Blois mansion, and not allowed to go outside, even at school. However, such reminiscence is short-lived as Ned charges back into the fray, Kazuya forcing Victorique into the radio room to save her (and her being the only person to know Morse Code). Ned beats more shit out of Kazuya than the shit that was beaten out of himself, until Kazuya uses his super protecting skills to heavily wound Ned.

She sparkles, thus is a vampire.

Ned-verless, Ned still doesn’t die, until Julie stabs him with his own axe. Then he probably died. Or, after he fell into the ocean, he swam all the way back to land and survived.

They return back to solid ground, and Julie is arrested for being the perpetrator of the whole thing – wanting revenge on every single person who staged the original Garden Box Evening – including Ned. The reason behind the Evening is revealed – after the Duke of Austria was assassinated, political turmoil in 1914 led many people to go to fortune tellers to tell their country’s fate. In fact, the children that made it out alive were exactly the Allied forces that won the war – and the world leaders based all of their political action during the Great War on what the children did on the ship. Even though all of them got immense sums of money, the psychological effects never wore away.

And the maid that murdered Roxanne? She was one of the survivors, too.

Brilliant deductive reasoning in action

Did anybody seriously read that?

Man, I should stop writing posts every time I finish an episode, cause it’s going to be drawn out like this and not short like the Level E HSR (did I mention I made a really long summary for that, too?)

Anyways, if you did read that, that’s what Gosick’s like – really long and complicated, with stupid mysteries that are only figured out when Victorique reveals something that we don’t know.

It’s like Kazuya: “WOW I WONDER HOW THIS MYSTERY HAPPENED”
Obvious suspect: “I DON’T KNOW”
Other person who is obviously the real criminal: “WOAH SO SCARY”
Victorique: “Well, I shall now piece together the pieces of COALS. See, there is a gun on the table. The person was shot in the head. Thus, somebody used a gun to shoot a person in the head.”
Kazuya: “AMAZING HOW DID YOU DEDUCE THAT”
Victorique: “Also, using this magical fingerprint kit I got from that toy store, it seems that the culprit’s fingerprints are on the gun. Thus other person who is obviously the real criminal is the real criminal, obviously.”
Obvious suspect: *is shot in the head by other person who is obviously the real criminal*
Kazuya: “WHAT YOU DO I PUNCH YOU NOW”

The end.

Really?

REALLY?

At least the art’s decent.

Man, Victorique’s French accent is laughable, at least in my French class (other, more educated people who actually speak French say otherwise). But so is every Japanese person’s xxx-accent.

Other than that, her intelligence (or at least memory) is extraordinar…ily stupid. I mean, who memorizes where every single book in the library is? Wouldn’t it be better to memorize the contents and not fetch a book each time?

And Kazuya? Really? Did he really think Victorique was just going to the dentist? If so, I’m really, really, I don’t

Eh, I don’t know. There’s more to say, this is a mystery, it’s gonna be a pain writing another one of these long ones – let’s just start episoding this.

Also, spechul post coming up tomorrow, prepare for it~!