Gosick - Episode 3

After its promising premise and a reasonable opener, episode two of Gosick seemed to fritter away much of its potential by, quite frankly, making a bit of a mess of some of the core tenets that caught my eye within the series in the first place, made up for only somewhat by the fact that Victorique as a character is all kinds of awesome.

Still, with the remaining survivors aboard this remodelled version of the ship the Queen Berry starting to suspect one another and with one individual in particular pulling a gun on his shipmates things are certainly all set to get interesting - that they summarily do, with first one and then seemingly another death, before things begin to get decidedly dangerous for Kujo and Victorique in the face of an axe-wielding madman which results in a narrow escape for Kujo in particular before any danger is averted and help can be called before the ship sinks.

Once our surviving trio reaches the shore, it's time for the police to intervene, and whilst Grevil de Blois is in charge of the case it is of course Victorique that explains it all - the perpetrator, how they carried out their fiendish plot and why in a grand old story that manages to slot into World War I amongst other things.  So, our gothic lolita saves the day, but of course it's her brother who claims the plaudits - speaking of which, the episode (and this first story arc) closes with an explanation as to the particulars of Victorique's circumstances to leave us fully furnished with regard to information about her.

Compared to a very disappointing outing last week, this instalment of Gosick was certainly an improvement - it had mysteries that were actually mysterious in places, and although the eventual "villain" of the piece became apparent very early in the episode fleshing out the hows and whys was still entertaining enough, helped along once again by Victorique who remains as enjoyable a character as ever.  Renewed hope then for this series, although it certainly doesn't seem as though it's going to be as smart or cunning with its story-telling as I had hoped; perhaps it can manage to get by simply on the strength of its lead female character alone?  It's certainly a possibility judging by what we've seen so far.