Kujo’s a simp, Victorica needs cps, Cordelia needs more screen time, and Grevil can kiss my ass. Language ahead.

May I first start by saying that Gosick is not bad.
However, Gosick does suffer from is these “discrepancies,” which is the best term I can think of, where shit just kinda doesn’t really make sense, or things happen for no reason. Very small, but very frequent discrepancies that all together really kept me from enjoying this show to its fullest.

Set in a small European country pre-WWII, we are introduced to Kazuya Kujo, a transfer student from Japan who is immediately given the reputation of “the Springtime Reaper” (I’m gonna get into the ghost stories later). Because he has no friends, for pretty much no fucking reason, Professor Cecile advises him to learn more about ghost stories so he can have something to talk about with his peers. So he goes to the library.

Before I continue with episode 1, I have to say that from here is where these “discrepancies” begin and start to confuse me, and therefore affect my entire enjoyment of the show. First impressions really matter, so if episode 1 is kinda bad, how am I gonna know if I’ll enjoy the rest of it? Episode 1 confused me so much that I rewatched it just to make sure I wasn’t judging too hard, and it was still so weird to me.

So Kujo is flipping through this book and foreshadows some mysteries they’re gonna “solve” later in the show. He then proceeds to pick up a strand of hair off the floor, so, of course, my immediate thought is, “Why is he picking up hair from the dirty ass ground?”

Spoiler, click to view

As I read the episode synopsis it says he “picked it up from the book” but it literally looks like he reaches for the ground, there's no way I can see that as him reaching from the book.

He looks up, sees something shiny, and proceeds to run up the stairs like his life depends on it. And mind you, this library is like, fucking 50 stories high, and he’s running up the stairs just because he’s sees something shiny. He gets up there and we see Victorique (Victorica), which he mistakes for a doll, and she goes all “I was expecting you” and shit. And despite the fact that she doesn’t say literally anything scary, he proceeds to run back down the stairs like she threatened to cut off his balls. It’s the weirdest first interaction I’ve ever fucking seen and it makes no sense to me.

They meet again later and pretty much become acquainted like really quickly. So much so that by the end of the episode they’re all already going on a weekend trip together.

I think you understand what I mean by “small discrepancies.” Like I said, first impressions matter, and the first episode flowed so weirdly for me it really affected how I viewed the show. I even opened up the first chapter of the manga and their first meeting is so different and makes so much more sense than this.

The show continues on as such: Kujo and Victorique are introduced to a mystery that is often related to an urban legend. Victorica easily solves these mysteries, which often lead to an even bigger mystery. They experience more events while collecting “clues” before ultimately “solving” everything.

I would say the mysteries themselves are lacking. While we are given clues, these mainly protein to who the culprit might be, and not the what/why of the actual mystery. Everything from the why and how is usually completely explained by either Victorica or the culprit themselves.

Spoiler, click to view

Like in Episode 5, by then there’s enough clues to know that Avril is suspicious and probably the true murderer, but there is no indication that she’s this phantom thief and is trying to find something until Victorica says it herself. Information like knowing more about Avril’s family before the fake showed up would have hinted to a motivation.

I feel like there’s a lot of mystery-solving that the viewer is left out of because of Victoria's “fountain of knowledge,” which really takes away from enjoying its mystery aspect to the fullest. We aren’t given good clues on what happened and the motivations, and this ultimately left me confused about what was happening for most parts of the mysteries. It’s like the characters had more knowledge of what was going on than the viewer and the story fails to help us catch up. At a point, I gave up trying to catch clues or evidence and just waited to be told. The first mystery was probably the best delivered/put together of them all.

With this, I’m gonna go more into the characters. Like I said before, Kujo and Victorica become acquainted very quickly and are already in each other's business by the second episode. It was kind of weird of me how fast they fell into this master/servant “friendship,” and while you could chalk it up to just their compatibility, I feel like a lot of progressions that would have made it feel more natural for them to interact with each other was left out and they just went straight into the solving mysteries together aspect.

Other than Victoria's father the character I disliked the most was her brother, Grevil. I'm honestly questioning whether we were supposed to like him as a character. He is introduced as someone with his own eccentricities and antics, but that's never shown in a charming or endearing way. We are told he cares about Victoria as a sister, but we never really see that. He never does anything for her and only comes to her when he needs something. His whole career is literally dependent on Victoria's existence and he doesn’t even thank her.

Spoiler, click to view

Later we find out that he’s been completely complacent in his father’s abuse of her, doing his “first son” duty of supporting his father.

He never really does anything to really her until the very end. But we’re supposed to be happy he decides to leave her alone and gets his own little mini closure at the end? No.

Now onto the ghost stories which I have a different problem with. The ghost stories vary in how they directly affect the people and the world. Some are just vaguely representative (like Springtime Reaper and the Gray Wolves), some are urban legends that are “fake” but they still have to deal with (Levithian and the Cannibal Department Store) and then some actually really fucking affect their world (Monstre Charmant). And it's this last one that really bothers me. Spoilers for the last arc:

Spoiler, click to view

In the final arc, Victorica, for some reason, is seen as the actual Monstre Charmant and people use this as a reason to become rabbits and stand for some civil uprising that seems to come out of basically nowhere. This gives Victoria's father a reason to take her in order to control these people and further push Saubure to join the upcoming World War II. It’s weird because we are never shown Victorica getting such a representation, or how this uprising even came to be, so for all of these random strangers to basically rally behind her makes no sense. Victorica hardly leaves the school grounds, let alone the library tower as it is. So for the ghost story to manifest its way like this in real life doesn’t make sense and doesn’t follow the previous trend of ghost stories

By the second half of the story, maybe around episode 16, I was enjoying the events a little bit more. Kujo and Victoria's relationship made more sense to me and the stakes started to have a bigger impact. However, it still suffered from a lot of “discrepancies” that ultimately fumbled my enjoyment. Spoiler:

Spoiler, click to view

Shit like Brian fucking Roscoe being revealed to be a twin and therefore further undermining and confusing me about his backstory and relation to Cordelia is what I’m talking about

Even small things in a dialogue where someone would ask a question and they proceeded to not answer that question provided further confusion. By the end, while I was glad they had a happy ending, I was honestly just over it.

I can probably chalk up these discrepancies to mistakes in adapting the series form the light novel/manga, but an anime adaption should be able to stand on its own and not completely rely on an audience that is familiar with the source material,

Overall I feel like Gosick failed on the impact it was trying to bring. The first half feels like a chore to get through, and while the latter half is arguably better, wasn’t enough to give this anything over a 50. And if I never hear Kujo screaming Victorica's name ever again, it would be too soon.