In some small way, perhaps Kazuya does want to celebrate that Victorique has gone missing.
What They Say:
Victorique has disappeared. The Marquis de Blois has had her taken to a remote convent known as “Beelzebub’s Skull”. Worried about Victorique and determined to get her back, Kazuya arranges a plan to retrieve her. On the train over, he meets other people who are also heading for the convent. They say their purpose is to experience Phantasmagoria, a secret soirée held there, but…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As Gosick moves along, and after an interesting storyline that dealt with the past of Saubure, Gosick takes a different approach for the start of this next arc, but not one that’s altogether surprising. While Kazuya and Avril are getting along well and enjoying spending time together, Avril continues to realize that Kazuya is very much focused on Victorique when it comes to all things. Just a simple shopping through the market has him picking out foods that will please Victorique, since as he says, getting the wrong thing will put him into a world of punishment. You can see some of the hurt in her expression of this as she continues to see a nearly insurmountable wall she has to overcome in order to get him to even look at her in a meaningful way, never mind to win him over. Avril’s persistence is definitely one of her better traits, but you do also wonder when she’d just give up and start to move on.
When Victorique goes missing, it doesn’t take much for Kazuya to become even more single minded when it comes to her as he tries to figure out what happened but has no clues from which to work. Amusingly, he intends to just head out into the world and one of the first things he does is to pack her a significant amount of clothes, which has Blois giving him some grief over as he pairs the wrong things together. When he is told where she is, kept up in a convent known only as Beelzebub’s Skull, he hits the first train that he can to go there and rescue her. But there’s an interesting twist to it as he gets on the train and meets other passengers who tell of the special party that’s held there once a month in secret that certain people have invitations for. The whole event has a strange feeling right from the start and everyone is so open with information about themselves and where they’re going that it feels like a whole lot of misdirection.
Naturally, there’s something far more involved going on there and Kazuya finds himself drawn deeply into it without realizing it as there are those that want to utilize what’s in this location in order to unearth an ancient power. With this tying back into the previous storyline with a certain character returning, the whole point of it all is to utilize Victorique as the key to things because of her position as a Gray Wolf. The mixture of a party atmosphere outside with the more serious and somber events that are ringed around the edges of it makes for an interesting dynamic, especially when you add in some of the confusion that Kazuya feels and his somewhat naïve nature that makes it easy for him to be nudged into certain directions.
In Summary:
Gosick starts its setup pretty well here and taking Victorique out of the picture for awhile isn’t a bad thing either, since Kazuya can handle the show pretty well. All told, I do find him to be a more interesting character than her, but that’s largely because her personality pushes me away most of the time with her aloof and holier than though attitude. The setup here is certainly as slow as we’ve seen before, but it’s the character moments that make it thoroughly engaging, especially as we see the students commenting on Kazuya’s kind of bad luck and his own admission that he can understand why people see him as something of the Grim Reaper of the academy. Gosick has set up some interesting stories over its run so far, but it’s been difficult for them to really maintain themselves week to week. I’m cautiously optimistic with this one though.
Grade: B
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.