Friday, July 15, 2011

Gosick - winded down

{spoilers warning}

Gosick started out with great atmosphere, lively character dynamics, and promising scenarios. However, it devolved into a cliched romance.

Gosick is set in the fictive country of Sauville, which emerged victorious with the Allied nations after WWI. The anime designers put a great deal of effort into bringing the Alpine beauty and charming capitol of Saubreme to life.

The series starts strong when Kujo and the mysterious genius Victorique get themselves tangled up into mini-Battle Royale aboard the ghost ship. From there, the pair grow closer as they explore Victorique's past and take on other mysteries.

Kujo is the earnest Watson to Victorique's Holmes. Unlike Holmes, Victorique's eccentricity is not entirely by choice, but enforced by the forced isolation by her father's orders. She is also part Rapunzel, living in her high library tower, far from other people. While she is mentally capable, she lacks Holme's physical power and accuracy. Early on, Kujo helps to compensate for this weakness.

This dynamic erodes as Kujo and Victorique becomes closer, and the the next world war looms on the horizon. As an alternate history, the Second World War is spurred sooner. The original story ties in Victorique's past and her father's obsession with Sauville nationalism, but washes the characters away with under the tide of history.

Perhaps that was his intent, but it reduces Kujo to clinging to Victorique, and Victorique trying to cling to Kujo. This is the helplessness of children in the world of adults. Again, perhaps this was the author's intent. However, I enjoyed the series, because the characters were engaged and were intimately tied to the outcome of the early story arcs. There were other ways for Kujo & Victorique to stay relevant. Several times, characters would mention Cordelia Gallo's (Victorique's mother) involvement during WWI. I think that Kujo & Victorique could have played a larger role in a smaller part of the drama, if they had been able to flee underground or gone to a neutral neighboring country and taken part in the Sauville resistance regime.

Instead of being on the verge of adulthood and grow up, Victorique relies on Cordelia's legacy, while Kujo marches off to war as an infantryman. The fall in the significance of the characters after the first half and the sudden jump in events between parts 22 & 23 resulted in having the characters struggle to survive, but by the end of the series, their story could have been the story of any earnest boy and beautiful girl. Maybe that's enough for some audience, but I think that there could have been so much more with the original setup.