Gosick

Are you looking for a subpar mystery anime where the main character manages to solve the mystery without much rhyme or reason, done so in a fashion that is nothing like Death Note, Sherlock Holmes, or any other mystery medium where the viewer tries to solve the puzzle as the anime moves along? Are you looking for a detective character with god-like deductive powers not acquired through hard work or training? Are you looking for the blandest lead male character that has little character development throughout the series, and gets obnoxiously annoying as he constantly screams the female lead's name? Are you looking for a ... mediocre romance that concludes in a happy ending? Look no further! This is the anime for you!

For a deeper in-depth review, read further. Be warned, there are spoilers.

Mystery. To start, the mystery is horrible. I picked this anime up hoping to find a nice mystery anime. Technically it is a mystery anime. But it's executed in such a fashion that it doesn't at all feel like a mystery anime. When you watch a movie like Se7en, you're really engaged because you really want to know who did it. When you watch Sherlock Holmes, you find yourself drawn i, despite the fact that you know the bad guy is Moriarty, because you want to know how Sherlock solves the challenges thrown at him. Gosick offers none of these. Any plot twists it "purports" to have is easily deduced. I could see who the villain was coming a mile away. Everything was so blatantly obvious. Granted, I didn't always see how the "villain" executed his or her plan, but that's because Gosick doesn't offer clues here or there. The main female character jumps in like 10-15 minutes before the episode ends, spoon feeds you the solution, without really explaining how she managed to deduce such a solution, using clues that seem nonexistent or clearly bullshit (please see motorcycle incident with blood girl for an example). I guess my biggest grip is yes, technically, Gosick does offer these elements. It just executes it in such a poor fashion it's like you're NOT watching a mystery anime.

Male Lead Character. This guy is annoying, horrible, does not grow at all, and is as flat as a cardboard. By the end of the show you'll want to punch him in the face. He incessantly screams out the female lead's name to the point where it's like the creators are purposefully trying to tick you off. He's also very unrealistic. I understand he's like around the age of 18, a high schooler, but are you really to expect us to believe that he doesn't know what love, or at the very least, what liking someone is? He constantly refers to the female lead as his "friend" and justifies why he does what he does because she's his friend. Except he has other friends, and he doesn't risk his life for them. Either make it so he's all shy and can't confront his feelings, or make it so that he acknowledges it but he can't confess to her, and or make it so that he knows he likes her and he tells her about it. None of this "I totally risk my life for you, I think about you all the time, I love hanging out with you, and there's obviously chemistry between us, but we're totally just friends."

Female Lead Character. She's mediocre. To say she's bad would be a slight overstatement. My biggest gripe with her is her "deductive" abilities, but I think that's more a flaw of the plot and story than the character herself. She does show growth, and she is cute. But that's about it.

Music. Didn't really stand out, and not even in a way where the music is so good it allows you to really sink into the anime, not realizing you're watching an anime. Long story short, the music is average. It's like elevator music that you don't enjoy, but don't hate.

That Guy with the Pointy Hair. A slightly below average character. His change is gradual, and you start to see it, but then it's like the creators realized they only have 5 episodes left, so they put his character growth in overdrive and suddenly he's changed too much, too quickly. I see where they were going with him, and I appreciate it, but they executed it in a poor fashion. Either initiate the change earlier, spread the pace of the change so its slightly quickened across the show, or make the season longer. His change came too quickly, too abruptly, and you know it all happened because the show was ending soon and they needed his character to perform some task for the show to end the way it ended.

That Really Annoying High School Teacher. The high school teacher is 110% extra and useless. I understand she's comic relief, and sometimes we include comic relief characters that really don't offer anything. They don't move the plot forward, they don't stimulate character growth, they really don't do anything but offer the occasional laugh. And while that isn't ideal, that's okay and still acceptable. But the high school teacher wasn't funny. She never was. She was actually annoying.

Other characters. Everyone else was okay, but no one stood out. Gun to my head, the short haired blonde girl was the best character. But even she had a flaw, namely that it was implicated that she was the perpetrator of a certain murder, except the show never followed up on that, and just pretended like it never happened. It's one thing to find out she wasn't the murderer, and that all the signs were just a coincidence. It's another thing to drop the matter entirely like it never happened. Either don't give signs implying she's the murderer, or at least conclude the matter.

Ending. The ending was overly dramatic and quite bad. The whole point of the prophecy was that... get ready for it... it's a prophecy of the future, an inevitable fate that cannot be avoided without some significant fight-back. But nope, they just drop the prophecy like it's nothing, and then prove it wrong with little to no effort. You can tell they threw the ending in just because they wanted to end the season on a dramatic and epic note. Except it felt quite out of place. The ending wasn't that bad (except it was executed poorly), it's just that it came too quickly. Once again, it's as if the creators realized they only had 3 episodes left to conclude the show, and thus put everything into hyper drive.

Verdict. Unless you've depleted all other mystery/romance anime, I don't see why you would ever want to pick this up. It's a mediocre anime flirting on the skirts of "bad anime."

It happens. There's this show you wanna watch, and you wanna enjoy it. But the problem's with the main characters. You HATE them. You just wanna beat the crap out of them because of their mere existence. This is the feeling I get with Gosick. (Of which I wanna call Gothic, but hey.)

The European setting, the timeline it's in, the rest of the characters. Everything is fine until the spotlight is shown on the "unfunny comedy pair" of Kujou and Victorique.

Kujou is walking a thin line between being a pansy shounen lead / punching bag for the shoujo ... lead and being somewhat capable. Emphasis on "somewhat." He the Watson to Victorique's Sherlock. But he's a creation of the Japanese for-otaku entertainment industry, so whatever capability he might've had was thrown out the window for the sake of the mainly male audience who what a shounen they can relate to. (Else, K-on where there are no shounen leads to worry about at all.)

Victorique is someone I wanna punt like a football. Kujou wouldn't / would never do it, but I would. That "higher-than-thou" attitude just needs to be dealt with in a way that's severe enough to bring her right down to her; then having second thoughts about lifting off again.

But I'm a sucker for "detective dramas." So I'll keep watching despite the two walking, talking plagues that hold it down.

This review is by no means a work of an expert and should not be taken as one. This review is made by an average viewer that is considerate to the average viewer rather than critics that are bluntly critical about absurd things that most people don't care about. (Some Spoilers, I tried to reduced the amount of spoilers just in case someone is just looking for an anime to watch and skimming reviews)

Gosick in a nutshell: ghost stories, urban legends, master detective, love triangle, and tsundere lolicon.

Story (6/10) - Well I'll admit that I did initially enjoy the story I later found that ... outside the ghost stories/legends it was rather repetitive and boring. The problem with this series is the main female protagonist Victorique. Now I understand that they explain that her race (Gray Wolves) is renowned for their intellect, but because of this she is hardly faced with any kind of challenge. If there was a case that needed to be solved she would be able to solve it if the right clues were present, and they always turn up usually with the help of Kujou (the main male protagonist). As for the love triangle it's nothing special, textbook and predictable. The only reason why Kujou and Victorique's relationship grew is because Kujou is feared and has very few friends (4 if I recall towards the end) and Victorique gets bored and uses Kujou, nothing special. The ending is blah... I'm just content that they ended the series. The last arc was the best part because things were finally coming together and making sense. As for the very end I thought it heavily brought down the last arc, because it's basically your cop-out happy ending (it's really up to the viewer also I personally didn't like how they ruined Victorique's loli appeal). Also keep in mind that an anime with an end is like a luxury because some anime that desperately need one don't or won't have one (School Rumble; although I read School Rumble Z and was content that they had ended it, but some viewers won't go as far as reading the manga leaving casual anime viewers clueless).

Art (8/10) - Looks good, the average viewer probably wouldn't notice the details of the Victorique's clothes, background inconsistencies, average forgettable faces of minor characters, accuracy of the Victorian period art, and also its Gothic atmosphere. The intro I think is a bit too colorful for an anime with a pretty good Gothic vibe, but meh I just skip it or walk away till I hear the opening song ending. The outro is more appropriate. Not too many people pay too close attention to intro/outro so points were deducted for such reasons.

Sound (7/10) - Aside from the pretty upbeat tempo of the intro, everything seems to fit. Unless the viewer has a keen ear for Japanese acting, they won't really notice the over/underacting that was done.

Character (6/10) - The two main characters are pretty bland nothing too innovative, although Victorique's redeeming quailty is her back story. There are also other characters with decent back stories. I just had a problem with Victorique, and how she was always able to solve everything. As for her logic behind her reasoning and conclusion for each case the audience has to accept that it was said and done regardless of whether its factual or not.

Enjoyment/Overall (6/10) - It's not bad, like I mentioned before outside the ghost stories/urban legends it's pretty repetitive and boring. Initially it was very interesting, I was actually getting into it and then I realized that I was able to predict the outcome (case presented, find all clues, gather party involved, reveal logic and reason, case closed; basically like most detective stories). In the end I just watched it because of the ghost stories/urban legends. Though I think others will enjoy it more than I did.

“Gosick” is what happens when You play a mystery game on easy mode with auto-resolve turned on.

Kazuya Kujou - a transfer student from the far east stumbles upon a mysterious girl. Called by some the golden ferie of the library, she's petite, has a sweet tooth, is unpleasant and able to solve any and all mysteries with little information. From that day on Kujou gets dragged into being her “assistant” in solving cases the police are ill equipped to handle. Most of them having some strange relevance to ghost stories and urban legends of the region. Sometimes proving that the ghost stories are far less ... horrific than reality…

Speaking of reality being horrific, that extends to the main cast, unfortunately.
Kazuya Kujou - our vessel for the plot. It is through his eyes that we experience the plot. Because of his looks and time of year when he arrives at the academy he’s given the nickname “Reaper who Comes in Spring “ and is somewhat feared at the facility. He’s everything You would expect from an anime protagonist, kind, nice, polite, lacking anything that could even pretend to be character. We don’t see him do anything that isn’t revolving around helping someone or, more often, Victorique. Despite being the third son of a soldier, having two older brothers, one good in military affairs, the other in intellectual, he doesn’t exactly do anything to create his own niche. He mostly goes shopping, acts as a servant for the golden fairy of the library, gets kidnaped and used as a bargaining chip in a blackmail, You know… the normal teenage stuff. Despite being subjected to verbal abuse, violence and witnessing things most people would never want to, he doesn’t really change. More or less he ends the show very similar to how he began.

Victorique de Blois - basically a supernatural gothic lolita version of Sherlock Holmes. She’s called “The Golden fairy of the library” by students of the academy and “The Gray Wolf” by those who know her lineage. Because of being a tool and a prisoner from the day she was born her social skills are lacking, she doesn’t know how to express gratitude and is pretty bossy. She spends most of her time at the top of the library where she reads books, eat sweets and basically solves crime for her half brother. Despite being still a prisoner at the academy she slowly opens up to Kujou and learns the value of close relationships. What kind? Good question. The show only hints at that.


“Gosick” is the type of show that doesn’t exactly know what it wants to be. It’s a mystery, a drama, half baked romance, a political thriller, horror and a slice of life all at once. The problem is, it’s subpar in all of those aspects. Surprisingly it's most competent as a drama.

As a mystery show it’s… not so good. I love mysteries, that’s why I might be more harsh than I should be in this part. The show doesn’t give much clues for solving it’s mysteries. It gives some but most are part of the main enigma. Almost all are related to something that could be called a side quest or a side mystery. I do admire that the show doesn’t treat You like an idiot and after showing You a clue it waits a while before shoving its importance in Your face. I can respect that. I can also admire that most of those clues require the viewer to have some knowledge of the real world to actually matter. Like knowing that glass sculpture can break easily or that clouds and smoke can be used as a projection screen. Those are things that, even if not related to the main mystery, still give You a chance to solve, at least some, of the mystery before our Victorique shows up and steals the thunder.
That said, some of those “clues” are totally idiotic. The most idiotic of all happens during the mystery of the alchemist Leviathan. I won’t go into details but it’s related to an invisible ghost. It’s so dumb the facepalming was my only reaction.

The main problem with the mysteries is… Victorique herself. Because of the way she was written the writers probably decided that they don’t need logic to create their plot. Let me explain. The Golden Fairy of the Library has a supernatural gift that she calls “The fountain of knowledge”. A skill that allows her to analyse any situation in a way that most people would not think of given the amount of information given. Unfortunately that is the problem. She is able to tell that someone is faking his death (even if that person has no palpable pulse) just by remembering that earlier that person played around with a ball. Even thou she didn’t even got close to the body herself and had no logical reason to think that. She even concludes that ice cubes in water were poisoned just by the way the fluid settled at the bottom of the glass. Despite not really having anything to base that on other than someone felt ill after drinking the water.
I suspect that the logical explanation for her power is that she just read a lot of books but that doesn’t cut it. Not even close. The show, despite trying to be grounded and logical, has some moments of the supernatural. Especially in its beginning mysteries and close to the end. She states that she needs enough “pieces of chaos” to be able to solve the mysteries but even then, the amount of information is sparse. Because of that the show doesn’t show much clues to the main mysteries.

What do they do with the times saved that way?
Good question and the answer might shock You… They play a little game called “Will they, won’t they”. Despite not being a romance (thank god for little things I guess) the show spends a lot of time showing personal interaction between The Fairy and the Reaper. No, there is nothing wrong with that and yes, it does help to get invested in them. Unfortunately it’s shown in a way that has two main interpretations. Romantic interest or emotional dependency. To be fair I have no idea which one would be worse in this case. Victorique often berates Kujou for, how she puts it, being an idiot, only to regret it almost immediately when he leaves her and is happy when he gets back a few minutes later. When she can’t find him because he went to town for groceries, she almost panics, cries and feels lonely. They do have some scenes that hint that there could be something romantic between them but a few minutes later the show goes back to status quo and almost all new mystery arcs start with both of them having the same kind of interactions as in the beginning of the show. The only moment when the show doesn’t hide that there is something more between them is in the few episodes and especially in the epilogue.

In my opinion the show is at it’s best when it’s a drama. Despite lacking in the mystery department and having less than satisfactory romanse part, we see a lot of different types of drama during those 24 episode. We see a girl with PTSD trying to get revenge, we see a village full of people that despise the outside world, we see a market for kidnaped children and what obsessive love can do to a man (and his wife) and that’s not all. In every mystery we see at least one (more often 2) types of human pain. Not all are given the proper respect but at least the show doesn’t use cheap tricks to add drama to them. There is no need. What we are served is suitable without adding to it with dramatic music or over dramatic crying. It does those things but it’s reserved mostly for The Gray Wolf and once or twice for The Reaper.

I think the show would have worked better if the elements didn’t fight for their screen time. Make a drama with mystery elements or a mystery with drama elements (to be fair the show is more like a mystery with drama elements at the beginning but that shifts pretty quickly). Both would be viable options that would work with this kind of setting and motif of ghost stories in the background. As it is, we don't get enough clues to solve the mysteries ourselves and we don’t get enough background to make us care more about the victims of the mysteries. Every mystery gets between 3 to 5 episodes and even with that the show can’t concentrate on what it wants to be. I would even be fine if the show decided it wants to mix things up and make one mystery more of a detective story with clues to let the viewer solve it themselves and the other more of a drama. All I ask is focus.

With all that said I still enjoyed the show.
Yes, it’s a disappointment as a mystery show because we get a character that acts like an auto-resolve button and feeds us the solution.
Yes, it’s a disappointment as a drama because we don’t get enough background about characters or their suffering.
Yes, it’s a disappointment as romance because the characters don’t do much with their relationship and it’s stuck in limbo for most of the show. In this regard it’s similar to “Hyouka” that came out a year later.
Still… It does have its charm. Part of it is the design of The Golden Fairy of the Library and the mystery around her. Who is she? How does she solve mysteries? Who is her mother? Why is her father such a dick? Why is her brother using her to do his job for him? Those questions and more are actually the reason why I stuck around.
I don’t regret it. Despite having mediocre writing the execution of the premise and visuals are pretty solid.
If You want to watch an anime that despite its flaws is able to suck You in and You don’t mind mediocre writing I think You can enjoy this show. Especially when You don’t get many anime with this type of world. Something grounded in the 20th century with enough deviation to be able to play around with genres, even if not exactly expertly.

Personally I did have a good time watching it and that’s mostly because of the mystery surrounding Victorique and her development.

I planed to watch gosick because I love detective serize. After watching tantei gakuen q my expectation was very much about gosick as it is much higher ranked than tantei gakuen q. But I'm really disappointed.
Story: it starts with a very mysterious way, kujo a Japanese guy who is from a soldier family comes to Marguerite where he met victorique and their journey begins. The love story between a common guy and a tsundre loli. The mystrys are good. Since the background is 1924 Europe, it has a vintage feeling. All the stories has sad ending but are good enough to watch. The first part ... is really nice but the show goes downhill from the second half, specially the last 2/3 episodes are really contradictory to the rest of the episodes. Gosick is an anime which involve brain not muscle power but last few episodes are full of nonsense action and dark theme which doesn't match to the rest of the serize.
Art: pretty much average compared to a 2011 anime. The background art is detailed and nourish our eye but the character art is pretty mediocre.
Sound: good. The best part of gosick is sound. The voice actress of victorique have done a great work, it matches beautifully to her personality. Other voice artists are also good. The background music and songs are good.
Character: there was a time when the art wasn't good like today's, but had lovely stories and character design. Bitter truth is that most of today's anime has good art but fail to the other two part. There isn't enough depth of the characters. It is very difficult to good characterisation in only 24 episodes. I wish the characters will have more depth.
Enjoyment: I really enjoy most of the episodes but not the last few. It is a romantic detective anime so I had much expectation from gosick. But last few episodes ruined my enjoyment.
Overall: the ending contribute 50% to the overall rating to my opinion. Gosick fails in this part, probably ending is rushed, may have low budget or something else for bad ending. I don't know why most of the anime ending is frustrating, big potential defeated. Though it seems to be a negative review, gosick is not that bad, probably I was expecting much more from it being a high ranked anime.
Thanks for the reading.

Starts as "Sherlock Holmes: A Lolita in Red" and ends as "Where the fuck is the plot? I lost track three episodes ago".
It's funny that the show never makes direct references, but the first few episodes feel like they were straight up cut out from the Sherlock books. This is really nice for the fans, but it also sets a very misleading tone for the series, which causes everyone to wonder what the f* happened when the plot kicks in.
In short, if you're coming here looking for a mystery/detective series, you came to the wrong place. If you want a story about ... World War, but in an alternative setting, anime version, with some Holmes-ish elements, then you came to right place.





==============SPOILERS AHEAD====================

Don't worry, the protagonist isn't a huge faggot.

Gosick is an anime I had mixed feelings about throughout. In my opinion the best word to describe Gosick is uneven, as I find that applicable to just about every aspect of the show. Gosick was consistently good but never great and overall I watched a decent but flawed show that I enjoyed but wasn't blown away by.

Art-

The art is crisp and consistent throughout the show with no episodes or sequences being blatantly ugly or blatantly gorgeous. It's generally pretty. Victorique is an attractive and unique character but almost everyone else is generic and forgettable. There are a few scenes, such as shots from above ... of the very large library and conservatory in which Victorique spends most of her time, in which you can tell the animators paid great attention to detail and put time into the shot, which was appreciated.

Sound-

Solid voice acting in the dub from both leads. Neither delivers an outstanding performance, but both are definitely a cut above the norm. So few supporting characters are actually important in this show that no one really stands out (and wouldn't stand out unless their performance was extremely good or extremely crappy), but I have no qualms with the voice acting.

The soundtrack is strong for sure with a couple of legitimate standouts, my personal favorite being "Honrou no Naka no Seimei", which I have on my playlist. Each song is individually nice without a doubt, but I would fault the soundtrack in that songs get reused multiple times and it does get noticeably repetitive by the time you reach the latter part of the show.

Both the intro and outro sequence were above average.

Character/Story-

The story is very imbalanced and uneven. It has three separate and unique entities in play- the "girl detective" plot, the romantic plot and the political plot. Yes, they're all connected, but they're not developed anywhere near evenly. The detective stuff dominates the first half or more of the show and becomes a bit repetitive and tiresome, especially when the same generic statement- Victorique knows absolutely everything down to the tiniest details and is never ever wrong, period- can be applied to every single situation.

The romantic plot is the one of the three they did the best job with as it was presented early enough on for the viewer to be invested and it progressed in a realistic and believable way without being over the top or ever approaching fan service/hentai territory.

The political plot was the weakest of the three as it was not delved into until far later in the show, at which point the viewer is far more invested in the detective and romantic elements, and it largely felt rushed and as though many details were not explained well if at all. The political plot was hard to follow and simply wasn't all that interesting.

Something that seems to happen often in anime is applicable here as well- the male "main" character, Kujo, is far less developed or interesting than his female counterpart, Victorique, who is clearly the true main character. He's the generic likable, non-aggressive, nice guy who you've seen in many other anime and is ultimately forgettable. Victorique, on the other hand, is far and away the most memorable character in the show and is very quirky. I had mixed feelings about the character as a whole, as she spends the first half or more of the show being more or less a giant bitch, but she's clearly intended to be likable even if she's a massive pain in the ass.

As an in general statement, the quality and interest level of the show dipped up and down a lot. There were stretches of 2-3 episodes that felt like an 8 and were engaging and interesting. There were other stretches of 2-3 episodes that felt closer to a 5, dragged and were approaching the territory of slow and boring. This pattern continued throughout the show. It definitely felt like there were some filler-ish parts and that those moments could have been better utilized filling in some of the blanks the show never gets around to explaining. Lack of explanation definitely plagues this show in multiple areas.

Enjoyment-

As stated above, my enjoyment when watching Gosick was uneven, with certain stretches feeling like an 8 and other stretches feeling like a 5 or a 6. The quality and engagement level of the episodes and mini arcs definitely varied. My overall feeling at the end of the show was that it was pretty good but never great and while I'm glad I watched it and would be open to watching it again down the road, I don't see it as essential viewing or something I'd be truly missing out on had I never seen it at all.

The ending felt rushed and it was really safe, predictable and cliche. I was moderately satisfied with it I guess, but I wasn't blown away. Basically when all was said and done I shrugged and said to myself "that was pretty good I guess".

Overall-

A show that isn't terrible at anything but isn't amazing at anything either. "Jack of all trades, master of none" as they say. Gosick is worth a watch but isn't without flaws such as unexplained plot elements, cliches, conveniences and uneven pacing. Also, it's not anywhere near as dark as some other reviews will lead you to believe. Come in with the right expectations and watch a decent show, but I don't see this ending up on most people's list of all time favorites.

+Strong soundtrack
+Absence of fan service
+Quirky, memorable female lead

-Repetitive
-Victorique knows every detail of every case, period, and is always right
-Uneven, both in its pacing and in its development of different aspects of the plot

OBJECTIVE RATING- 7
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 7

Erm, what can I say.
Because of Detective Conan & Naruto, I love animes since I'm 7, although I haven't watched many.
When I saw this on Crunchyroll, I was super excited. The art was great, Victorique was cute, and the historical environment attracted me lots, but.
First two eps were nice, after that, I tried to find the series interesting but it was so..Idk, I mean, honestly it was stupid and boring. The dude who reminds me of Manaka Jumpei (don't get me wrong, basically every big-head chara with black her reminds me of him) is just so annoying. I remember seeing someone saying this about ... him and thinking he's not that bad. But wow, after each eps it's really, really annoying. The 'mysteries' that they try to solve are boring, and incredibly stupid. (sorry if I'm repeating.)
What can I say. It's a pity because I really loved Victorique's personality, she was original, the story too, with the ancient time, wolf, fairies and mystery stuffs, but it's a big fail for me.
I saw 11 eps on a period of 3-8 months. (as I said, trying to convince myself it was actually good)

Gosick an mystery and shounen show that takes place in 1924. The main characters are Kazuya Kujo and Victorique. When watching this show I felt like Victorique carried the show and making me kind of sad of the lack of other character development. I really like Victorique in the show, but she had to much weight in carrying the show. Music is decent nothing really special that stands out to me. It did its job and went well with the show. What surpises me though that Kotaro Nakawgawa made the soundtrack and yet he made music for Code Geass R1 and R2, GunxSword, and Bamboo ... Blade. So, with that he has made soundtrack that you can listen without watching the show, but this show doesn't have that. Director is Hitoshi Nanba and I know him making Eureka Seven. Besides that he hasn't directed other shows I've seen or just been a helper in others such as a pokemon movie and Lupin the 3rd (movie). Studio Bones has made this show and they have done works like Fullmetal Alchemist and Brotherhood, Darker than Black, and Soul Eater. So, when I saw bones made this show I was expecting the animation to be good and they didn't let down there. This show was very consistent with the animation, and made it one good show. The story to me in the beginning was a bit better, because I like that weekly mystery cases they did. That wasn't a problem, but I personally wished they stick to the beginning more. I give this anime a 6.5 out of 10

Gosick

It's a title that I saw a few years ago and definitely had to give it a new round. As the saying goes, when you look at it a second time, you always see it in a different light.

Unfortunately, it is also true here.
In short, the series is an ongoing overdramatic cliché. Most of the scenes, especially between the protagonists, could hardly seem more forced. But the implementation had at least a noteworthy effect.

Gosick proves to be predominantly a sympathetic title that ensures individuality and atmosphere with a pleasant style of presentation and setting. The background story that reveals itself in the course of the ... plot is also worth mentioning.

The mysterious aspect of the series has been satisfactory, but nothing particularly impressive. Individual cases handled by the main characters were also just above average.

And since I've now arrived at the main characters. They had at least a rudimentary charm and in the course of the series, they had one or the other highlight. Most of the characters were pretty monotonous and meaningless. The protagonist had potential at the beginning but ended up being an uncomfortable sidekick for Victorica. And for the rest of his dialogues consisted mostly of shouting the name "Victorica".
The female protagonist had a background and was basically also an important fragment of the main theme. However, she was rather unsuitable as a female lead. She was nothing more than a shy and arrogant little Tsundere. This is not necessarily negative, but she hardly had any scenes worth mentioning, let alone sympathy.

The greatest strength of Gosick was undoubtedly the actual structure around the individual mysteries, as the actually following resolution. Likewise the plot about the alchemist and the background story of Victorica. Unfortunately, the set-up for many of these events was just hot air in the end, as the results simply seemed empty.

I have to admit, apart from a few scenes from the final episodes, Gosick had a pretty poor finale. Not the content, but the implementation. It was simply not appealing and played a secondary role in front of the eyes.

The intro and single osts have been pleasant and interesting.

Gosick is an anime that inspired me more back then than it does today. But that's okay too. He has his own strengths but cannot use them to make up for his weaknesses. Nonetheless, it is a title that is above average.

It feels like Gosick tries to have everything in there somewhere. This is a 24 episodes long and for half of it it manages to keep its pace. There's a lot to know about the country of Sauville, in particular the Saint Marguerite academy, an elite school that our leads Kujo Kazuya, a Japanese student, and Victorique, the daughter of a cultist (yes there's a lot going on here) attend. Well, Kujo does attend, Victorique is a prisoner there because of her family's involvement in Sauville's political life. She also happens to be a little genius girl with beyond human mistery solving powers. And a ... pipe that she never actually lights it.

There's also colorful and interesting side characters populating Sauville. Grevil, the police investigator and Cecile, a teacher at the academy are my favorites and always welcome when they show up. Despite having a lot of things to solve, the story here has a tendency to forget about itself. A lot. Many episodes are self-contained tales but many of them are not particularly interesting, though a couple are really good. Kujo and Victorique go around solving misteries out and about, though the mysteries here are not the type that invites the viewers to solve it. We just get to see Victorique putting random things together that happens to be right because she's the main character. That's her on the cover of course.

The characters are interesting enough and you do care for them but not even that can conceal the fact that the plot here is spread too thin. That's the biggest fault of Gosick. This would be very good if it had half the episodes so Kujo wouldn't need to go screaming for Victorique up and down for so long. It does get exhausting at certain point. Then the last two episodes come in and solve everything very, very fast and ads a 10 years gap on top of it on its way out. Because it's one of those. There's a good story and good character development here somewhere. This anime is based on a visual novel, maybe it's worth checking that out instead.

A mediocre love, drama, with a touch of romance, i wouldn't recommend it to a romance lover, maybe to a lolicon who wants to see more story development than usual. Overall i dropped it halfway because the story started to not add up to the plot and the anime used the "Flashback, i just remembered something important" technique too much. The strong points of the anime if i can call them like that were the beautiful introduction, The first arc i must say was far better than everything else in the anime, the art was very pleasant and one of the few things that kept ... me going. The main character thought was horrible to the point he was just a support

Studio Bones knows how to make a good anime or at least an interesting one to say the least. This ranges from Full Metal Alchemist to the ever popular Soul Eater. Seasoned storyboard worker turned director for the anime Gosick was given to Hitoshi Nanba (Area 88, Captain Tsubasa).

Gosick is about a Japanese kid, Kazuya, moving to basically southern France (fictional place called Sauville) and happens upon a mysterious loli blond French girl in the upper library. Together they slowly form a sort-of friendship while solving various mysteries they happen upon.

It’s not often a mystery anime comes to light much like any within the horror ... genre. More often than not those anime fail to hit the mark and their various ways. Unfortunately, Gosick fall directly within the lines of this problem. A series focused on mysteries being solved either come off as ridiculous and implausible, or overly simplistic and unimaginative. The first mystery is solid enough, but as the series continues each new mystery seems worse and less interesting than the one previously. Besides, the loli known as Victorique and her banter with blank slated character Kazuya nothing really happens. Side characters often make nothing more than a cameo appearance to advance to the next mystery or what have you. Even driving forces behind the two main characters offer nothing more than what was told such as Kazuya’s father is rich and wants his son to succeed, no other personality or traits to be known or shown.

Apart from the character Victorique herself, there is not much to Gosick. Victorique runs the show by herself be it a wide evolving range or personality or even to the showmanship of her solving a weak told mystery. A saving grace are elements to each mystery carry over into the next instead of a “mystery-of-the-week” sequence. Not to say Gosick is totally saved from this, but it helps the show from falling completely into a bad rap.

Basically, Gosick has a decent main character in Victorique while the show suffers from mostly everything else. It will hit the viewer with a lot of imagery and crash land them into endless amounts of information that comes off as important, but amounts to nothing most of the time. It just is not a good mystery show worth recommending.

The first 12 episodes were slow and typical of a low-budget detective show. Gosick made all the characters except Victorique morons in the first half so that the audience might see Victorique as a genius. Most of the solutions were either extraordinarily predicable or came from thin air, simply attributing to Victorique's intelligence with no further explanation.

I understand that the setting is fictional but there is no explanation for anything such as the clocktower that nobody notices until its relevant to a mystery. The world-depth is shallow and seems to be hastily/lazily established.

The second-half definitely had a plot with more meat on its bones, ... but still never really seemed to sink in. Most twists were predicable and felt like the directors were trying too hard to force shock on the audience. I would have given this anime a 2 or a 3 if it weren't for the last two episodes. The last two episodes are rushed to hell, but they do tug the heartstrings a smidge and give good closure especially for almost non-existent "romance".

tl;dr Poor detective show that tries to save itself as a romance in the last two episodes

[Rambling alert, more of a comedic thoughts and opinion than a typical/actual review]
I... I still can't fully put into spoken words how much of a visceral reaction this anime caused within me (maybe someday I'll write an actual review for this but I just had to stamp this while it was fresh in my mind). I don't usually rate stories on "Good" or "Bad" like an average (normal) person would, if it manages to hold my attention and maybe even some anticipation, then I'll usually classify it as Good at the end of the day.

This anime managed that (so for me by default it's not ... bad), and by normal standards it's not Terrible, but GOD I ALMOST want to hate it so much. I just can't say I fully do but AAAHHH, genuinely a story has never made me feel this way and that in itself keeps me fascinated by it.

Yeah yeah, unnecessary openers and this isn't a proper review (definitely dramatic, but besides the fact that this is just how I write in general-) this is genuinely how the story made me feel personally which usually the type of reviews I myself look for/enjoy. I'm not gonna go into the technical stuff like the pacing, character portrayals, plot decisions, etc cause there's waaay better writers/analysts for that, I just wanted a place to share the *incomprehensible emotion words of AAAHHH* this made me feel.

If you wanna feel a conflicted mix of emotions or just experience what probably-realistically-most likely is a "Bad" (but not "trashy bad") story at the end of the day... Then behold Gosick, also listen to the OP/EDs 2 or 3 times before skipping them, they kind of grew on me after a bit (not enough to listen to them outside of this though).

·Only one thing I do want to mention in specifics as it came to my mind, semi-SPOILER alert I guess...
.
.
.
Screw The Brother! No You Ain't Redeemed for that one bit of barely aid at the very end (which even could've been skipped over it was that sidelined), that actually did concretely tick me off. 😂

I had pretty high expectations because of the good rating, but honestly most of the anime felt boring to me. A lot of the mysteries weren’t that interesting, and sometimes the dialogue made me think, “what are these characters even talking about?” Victorique also tends to speak in a very poetic and roundabout way, which made things feel unnecessarily complicated.

The chemistry between Victorique and Kujo didn’t really work for me either. Their relationship felt more like master and servant rather than natural partners.

The story also uses a lot of ambiguous terms like “storm” or “gray wolves,” which sometimes just made things even more confusing.

I will ... admit the ending was pretty good and emotional. Unfortunately, for me a good ending wasn’t enough to make up for how boring most of the journey felt.

Golden fairies and ghosts and alchemists oh my! Gosick certainly contained many, many elements and unique aspects...too bad they weren't pieced together as well as they could have been.

I love a good mystery, whether in a book, movie, or an anime. If there's funny business going on with twists and turns, I'm all for it. However, even as a mystery based anime, I sadly found myself very bored on several occasions and constantly questioning everything that Gosick had to offer.

Story - 4/10

From the first episode, Gosick lacked in what every good anime and mystery needs. A story. We find ourselves at a school in ... Europe with main male character Kujo who is a transfer student from Japan. Upon random chance, he meets a girl in the library named Victorique who just happens to be stupidly intelligent and they become buddies in solving mysteries. Problem is, for more than half of the series, these mysteries are broken, all over the place, and don't seem to have any real connection to each other until much later on. Not only that, but when solved by Victorique, its clear that the mysteries were lacking several clues and details that weren't released to the audience that only Victorique knew about.

I will admit, it was always pretty easy to guess who committed each crime just on character behavior. But the events that Victorique would come up with always seemed like they were grabbed from thin air with random information that seemed to come up out of nowhere. In comparison to, lets say Phoenix Wright, to where even in the anime, the audience is given 2-5 episodes to put the pieces together themselves and more often than naught, there's a lot of connection.

Another thing was just how painfully slow the attempted story took to arrive on the scene at around episode 14 or 15. By that time, we should have already had a glimpse into possible outcomes for the end, but that's seriously where the story actually began minus little chunks of information given in the first 12 episodes.

I was also pretty bummed at the lack of romance that Gosick provided. I mean I get Victorique was meant to come off as cold and distant, but it took so long for any solid romantic feelings to bloom. When there was even a remote hint of it in the middle or end of an episode, it would just dissapear without a trace in the next. It was just sort of dissapointing and really took away several opportunities for character development.

Art - 5/10

I will say this. I thought the art was nice. Animation was clean, and honestly very pretty to the eye. It wasn't the absolute best, but it at least gave the viewer something pleasing to look at in waiting for story progression.

Sound - 6/10

Same as the art, I found that the sound was pretty good. Classy and dramatic when necessary, and I personally found the opening and 1st ending absolutely beautiful. For me, sound was one of the highest points in the show in comparison to everything else.

Characters - 5/10

Characters were...up and down for me. They weren't bad but at the same time, their personalities weren't anything super special. We have Victorique, a girl as pretty as a doll who loves sweets and is tsundere as hell in the first half of the show. Kujo who practically followed Victorique around like a puppy while pleasing her with sweets and doing almost nothing helpful in assistance to solving the shows many mysteries. Cecile and Sophie, two women who worked at the school who honestly didn't have much of an impact at all and were honestly sort of annoying. Aviril, a girl who had her identity stolen and always butted in with ghost stories and had an underlying but obvious crush on Kujo...

In a sense, characters were very mediocre for more than half of the series, only waking up with sudden, random, occasional character development when the relevant stuff started happening. Everyone had a chance to be better than they were and it was really only Kujo and Victorique who stood out in the end.

Enjoyment/Overall - 6/10

In conclusion, I wasn't enthralled with Gosick, but I didn't absolutely hate it either. Honestly, I feel like without all of the pointless fillers and random events, it could have been a solid show with around 12 episodes to cover the important events that actually mattered. There was just too much history and war talk and off topic ghost stories and uncessessary mysteries that took away the positives that this anime DID have. It's no mystery like Death Note, it's no drama like Parasyte, and it's no romance like Fruit's Basket, but it's a pretty decent watch overall.

Now all I have to do is get Kujo's repeated screeching of Victorique's name out of my head.

At first i tought this anime was gonna be buns because just by watching the first episode i immediately thought that it wasnt for me. However, as i kept watching it i became more immersed and interested in the characters, the world, and the mysteries behind it all. I loved the mystery of this anime and the way that the plot was told and thickened as the show progressed and with every mystery Kujo and Victorique solved was nice storytelling. There were times where i kept wanting to watch the next episode with how interesting the mystery was. The romance was also very cute and ... made me root for the characters to be together. I liked how the characters were not annoying and was not very tropey like other anime characters. However, i hate that some characters' backstories were explored and some were not, its very inconsistent and that irritated me. Some characters had depth some had not. I also had issues about the pacing of this anime. In the beginning, the pacing was quite slow but the ending became rushed with a whole arc being squeezed into 2-3 episodes idk. Overall, it was quite a nice blend of shojo and mystery elements and was an entertaining watch.

NO SPOILER

This isn't a bad anime, it's just normal and don't stand out for me.
The story is OK nothing unexpected but it can entertain you.
So why just 5? Well.... i had a problem with characters. I didn't like the way Victorique acted to Kujo and i hated other characters than those two, especially the other girl and i still find her dumb.
I don't know but i also think that other characters are just dumb.....
I wanted to drop it because of characters but i watched every episode, so i could write a review as someone who didn't drop it after episode.

You can try it ... if you want :)

I am not very good with writing reviews, this is just my opinion about this show. Gosick is a detective show based in early 20th century. It contain a lot of cases with pretty interesting stories which usually starts with urban legend or a ghost story and some how Victoria(que) is able to solve them with no problem. The characters in those stories were decent but to make the main characters interesting and smart they tends to make side character incoherently stupid. Writer also put romance between main characters but it didn't clicked right to me.

The best take away from this show is ... the background art, it is simply amazing, it really feels like late 19th or early 20th century European city. There was an arc about a medieval village (village of grey wolves) art style was at peak there. So, yeah, main story and character are pretty average but the side stories are decent and so it the art style.