As Crunchyroll's winter line-up was unveiled this week, I felt nothing but despair as I didn't care for any of them. Except this one. This is the only show that I wanted to watch and having seen it, I wasn't disappointed. Why did I want to watch this show? Well, just from the promo poster I could tell this was a Sherlock Holmes re-imagining (right down to the pipe) and that's exactly what it ...
As Crunchyroll's winter line-up was unveiled this week, I felt nothing but despair as I didn't care for any of them. Except this one. This is the only show that I wanted to watch and having seen it, I wasn't disappointed. Why did I want to watch this show? Well, just from the promo poster I could tell this was a Sherlock Holmes re-imagining (right down to the pipe) and that's exactly what it is.
This time, Sherlock Holmes is a blond little girl called Victorique, who is pretty enough to be described as a living doll. Watson is an young man from Japan called Kazuya Kujo. Kujo and Victorique are classmates at a prestigious boarding school in the fictitious European country of Sauville. It's the year 1924 and that means that the environment surrounding Victorique also evokes to a degree the atmosphere of London that Sherlock Holmes inhabited with horse-drawn carriages and the likes. Indeed, Victorique also smokes a pipe! (Note: I here by would formally like to go on record as NOT endorsing smoking in any form by any age group)
The Inspector Lestrade of Gosick is one Grevil de Blois, who takes all the credit for the crimes Victorique solves and who, it is implied, controls almost all of Victorique's movements. This seems to be a integral part of Victorique's story, and the key difference between Sherlock and his blond, female and doll-like reincarnation, and you get some sense of her isolation and "imprisonment" (she calls her sanctuary in the library a prison) when Kujo blackmails Grevil to take him and Victorique sailing and has to explain what a ice cream cart is to Victorique and amazes Victorique with the simple act of calling a taxi-carriage.
Certainly Victorique is her own character, modeled though she clearly is after the great detective, and the story at this stage appears interesting and captivating. In the first episode, Victorique solved the first layer of what is turning out to be a deep mystery. The first layer was stupidly easy to solve and it took me less then a second to figure out "who did it" but then, it took Victorique about that long to solve it too - so the trivial mystery was treated as trivial and was only used as a spring board to launch into something bigger. I will certainly be tuning in next week to see if the new mystery is worthy of Victorique's time and see how long it amuses her - she, like Sherlock Holmes, is prone to getting bored easily.
Should you give it a go? Well, notice how many times I said "Sherlock Holmes"? That's pretty much your answer right there. O, there are aspects in this story that can only be present in an anime but at the heart of it, it's another story where the great detective (just to be clear, that's his official title and I am not being an uber fan here) is re-imagined and put in a new world to be bored in... until something happens that requires the employment, as Victorique put's it, the fountain of wisdom that lies within! I for one hope future episodes will involve a hound ^.^
Read more
more than just worth watching so stop reading and watch it! >.< Was this review helpful: Yes / No Report as spam
