Conclusion: Gosick

Gosick also finished along with Aria, with a pretty tense ending. I have to say that while there was definite 'excitement' value from the fact that the ending threw 50 different things at the same time at the viewer to overload his/her sensibilities, the actual end was pretty shallow and devoid of any actual cojones.

Dude that's from a cereal box

What I really don't like about the ending is that it suddenly notices that it's not really going anywhere. It develops the whole political aspect for a bit (teetering towards WWI yay) and then towards the love/betrayal sub-theme (with the King's arc) and then repeats (with no real emphasis or variation) "binding love eternal" with the main characters. It does this by trying to make things flashy, in the least sense of the word; the last episode features disjointed clips portraying what each character goes through. Needless to say, there isn't much.

The point I'm trying to make is that Gosick has no clear point. It's not trying to play a straight slice-of-life with a bit of humor, but mainly romance as things go on (like CLANNAD); it's not trying to preach a Rocky-type lesson on never giving up with sharp sunglasses and a universe-sized robot like Gurren Lagann; it's just sort of doing a Magikarp in the middle of the desert, hoping to mix things together like a salad for a refreshing new series. However, in trying to do this but not emphasizing any of the themes the series mixes together strongly enough, it ends up being like that wannabe "Great American Novel" that your grandfather has written in Word '03 on your desktop...all 3.5 chapters of it. It's just not very good.

Then the studio tries to pull random surprise crap in order to 'hook' the viewers; but quite honestly, seeing as how the series managed to pull off a nice happy fun-time ending by wending its way through the Forest of Improbability (including how one of the protagonists has a fricken twin that just magically helps him like they're playing Mario Galaxy or some shit), I called bullshit on half the events that happened in the last episode before they were resolved. INCLUDING WHERE THE MAIN PROTAGONIST GOT HIS LEGS CUT OFF BY ARTILLERY FIRE. If a series doesn't have enough cojones to let stuff like that just happen instead of handwaving it as a dream, then they don't really deserve to have a popular series.

What? Oh nvm I just had a schizo moment. Snapping back to reality in 3...2...Russians...

The art style is cute and music surprisingly original (however, the ED is dangerously reminiscent of the music style of Spice and Wolf). But that doesn't save this series from being a long, slow slog with multiple stumps pretending to be full-blown mini-arcs that makes you wonder, "When did I think that this was going to be interesting?" Do not watch this series unless you really have lots of free time.

I hope Ikoku Meiro no Croisee turns out to be good, and from what I've seen so far, it will. Anyways, I'll have a review on that soon. I will now leave you with what seems to either be a pretty horrific mistake on the studio's part or an incident that may indicate why this series is so shoddily done. Look at the date below (it's at the "end of the war") and tell me when WWI began/ended. Go on, I'll be here when you come back.

Good job. I guess that might make sense...if you've never attended middle school in your life.