Gosick is newly revealed to be 24 episodes, a relative rarity in this one-cour world of anime we currently reside in. That’s welcome news, though the series has yet to make the jump from good to great for me.

I actually found the mysteries a little more interesting this week, though they were apparently one-offs. As was the trend with the last arc, though, the seemingly independent mysteries tend to be interconnected – which means that while we seemingly have two murders solved, there’s still the matter of English transfer student Avril Bradley and her connection to one or both cases.

The first murder could hardly have been more obvious, but to be fair I think that was intentionally spilled to us at the time – they practically showed the wire strung between the trees. As for the case of the mummy knight, that was an interesting one – and seems likely to be tied into Avril and the mysterious book she retrieved from the crypt. But what of that strange injury to her hand, and the blood on the wire from the first case?

As always, the interplay is ultimately more rewarding than the mysteries themselves. Victorique certainly has a good time mocking Kazuya for his randy impulses, not least of which is his interest in the beautiful exchange student. But at the same time she forces herself to eat his offering of the kaminari-okoshi (one wonders where Kazuya found such an item in 1924 Europe). I loved her line about boredom being her greatest enemy and a commotion her second-greatest – and how Kazuya drove away the first, but was the second. I’m also growing increasingly irritated at Grevil and the way he treats not just Victorique but Kazuya, too – the “baby squirrel” thing is arrogant and petty. And what did he mean with his “gray wolf” comment? I’m going to trust that there’s a comeuppance for him at some point, because seeing him hog all the glory while Victorique stays locked in her tower is pissing me off. The odd thing, of course, is that she seems quite content to stay there – afraid of the alternative, in fact. Is she just socially retarded, or does Grevil have something held over there that we haven’t seen as yet?