So you have 24 episodes to adapt 9 volumes of light novel to a well rounded and enjoyable anime, sounds like a great plan. You have plenty of time to build up your characters and story and lead us into an amazing ending that was, hopefully, developed in the light novel source material. And yet somehow, Gosick continues in the long trend of adaptions that manage to do almost everything wrong. And leave me confused as to how we got to the ending we did. This was a decent start of the journey, and than it quickly fell apart just after the second cour started.
But lets look at the characters real quick. Generic is probably the best description for these characters. They are not amazing, but I normally enjoyed them and never actually hated them. Victorique is your pretty standard tsundere, but never going too far over the top, and has an ability to quickly solve any mystery presented to her. The side kick is Kujou, who is by far the most generic, his entire role is to guide Victorique to the next mystery and provide her with a love interest. I can’t say I remember him ever doing anything memorable over all these episodes. As expected we also get a full cast of side characters, from brothers to teachers to mysterious figures in the past. Some like Grevil hold important parts pushing different parts of the story ahead, if not being rather interesting themselves. But others like Avril, serve no real point expect to produce a minor conflict between the main cast members.
But who is here for the characters, what about this story. 24 episodes to work with, gotta be good right. And it is a real mixed bag here. The first cour is decent generic mystery stuff, without much actual mystery though. This isn’t a show that you will be pausing to write down clues and figure out whodunit, they honestly don’t give you anything to work with and just have Victorique figure it out like magic and leave it at that. And that alone is annoying, not really a mystery if I never even had the possibility to solve it.
Than we have the turning point, when I feel it all went down hill quickly. Gone is the fun mystery episodes, now we are getting overarching stories and characters. Trying to put together this complex backstory for characters and prophecies. Mixed in is this question of magic or science, which camp these new mysteries fall into and what is possible. And than that all falls apart. It ends super sudden, and they realize they need to get a certain ending. So off to the rushed ending camp we are, now we are a war show. No longer are Victorique and Kujou hanging out and solving mysteries, or helping each other out. Now Victorique is stuck in some confusing land of prophecy and family conflict, while Kujou is literally shipped to his home country to fight in war. Now this is so far from what I was kinda enjoying, and well into the land of what happened.
These events in the second cour and ending of the show, would have been fine with me if they were properly introduced. Slowly over the first cour seeing news reports and characters talking about a possible war. Talking about the various political happenings back home. Receiving letters of concern or worry, letting the characters know of events outside of the school and local town. But it was not, none of this was built up at all, it just happens. No explanation or warning, no developments. Just now we have magic and prophecies and war.
Some things that are good still, or at least decent. The OP and ED and various musical bits throughout the show are good. I didn’t love any of them, but they fit the show well and never stood out or distracted. And visually it looks fine, probably looks slightly better than most shows of the era.
In general, this was a massive disappointment, and I don’t understand why things ended the way they did.
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