Friday 3 June 2011

Gosick - Episode 20

With Victorique pulled away from the academy at her father's will once again as he looks to her to solve the long-standing Coco Rose murder case, is there anything Kujo can do this time around to help his diminutive companion?

As it happens, Kujo is perfectly placed to do his part, as he runs into teacher Cecile who has made it to Saubreme out of her own concern for Victorique - after filling him in on the details, Kujo sets out to find Victorique and manages to make contact with her briefly before she's squirreled away to do her father's bidding - an almost impossible task given the lack of information presented to Victorique to assist her in solving the case.


Thus, it's up to Kujo to assemble the "fragments of chaos" in her stead - something which he succeeds in doing with almost disappointing ease as a portrait hanging in the very building Victorique is held sets him off on a tangent of investigation which seems to suggest that the stranger aspects of Coco Rose's murder were pulled off using a lookalike.  With at least this additional information in tow, and with some help from Brian Roscoe, Kujo manages to reach Victorique as the pressure upon her to solve the case is ramped up, giving her the reprieve she needs to do what she needs to survive.  Is this going to be enough to solve the case however?  Well, that looks like a question for next week's instalment.

Although this episode is somewhat shorn of too much screen time for its gothic lolita star, the instalment as a whole does exactly what I've hoped for Gosick to do from the start, and something that it's often failed in earlier in the series - presented a case where the viewer has a decent shout at piecing together the clues.  With Kujo doing the digging for evidence and the basic story laid out before us, for once we can ponder over things for ourselves without having to rely on Victorique's genius, and it makes for a much more satisfying viewing experience.  Of course, this might all go out the window next week as elements are pulled out of nowhere to make Victorique seem smart, but regardless of that this was still a sufficiently interesting and entertaining episode that seemed to get the balance of its elements just about right.

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