Anime: Gosick

Literary overanalysation mode on:

True to its name, Gosick is gothic as fuck, the key feature of which is liminality, and there's tons it:

• 
  * borders of reality -> visually through the sometimes surreal architecture, thematically through "magic", although downplayed in the adaption
  * borders of adulthood -> teenagers, school
  * cultural borders -> exchange students, minority groups
  * male lead is literally the female protagonist's link between freedom and defacto captivity
  * female protagonist is on the border of nobility and commoners (bastard child of a marquis and a woman from a community of shunned outsiders)
  * even the school (itself an institution representing the state in between childhood and adult society) is on the border of civilisation, situated out in the countryside
  * and of course the border of life and death -> murders
  * even the murder locations are liminal, including an estate house (on the edge of town), a ship (between water and land), a country road (a connection between significant places), a graveyard (again, a meeting place of life and death), a mountain castle (where one if the aforementioned minority groups also lives) and a research facility in the middle of nowhere
  

/overanalysation mode off

Despite the episodic nature of the murder mysteries, there's also a servicable underlying plot. Where the murders themselves are concerned, the whodunnit is very obvious most of the time, mostly owing to the very small cast in each arc, but the how is always entertaining enough to merit the watch.

It's an entertaining show with likable characters. I'm not usually a fan of tsunderes, but the pair is honest about their feelings often enough that I did end up quite enjoying the ship.

Recommended for anyone with a passing interest in mystery plots.

SUMMARY

Gosick is a gothic story that takes place in an alternate version of 1924, set in the fictional country of Sauville (about where the real-world Monaco is located). Kazuya Kujou, the proud third son of an imperial soldier, transfers from his native Japan to Sauville's St. Marguerite Academy, where he is quickly labeled "The Black Reaper" by his fellow students. As it turns out, the school — and the entire nation — is obsessed with ghost stories, and at the urging of his teacher decides to investigate the local legend of The Golden Fairy of the Library.

Noticing a brilliant light at the top of the tower-library, he climbs the seemingly endless stairs to find Victorique, a beautiful, blonde, doll-like girl who initially frightens him, but with whom he soon forms a strong friendship. Victorique is different from other girls her age, displaying supernatural powers of deduction that she calls her "Wellspring of Wisdom". She also has a fondness for sweets, grows bored easily, and generally treats Kujou like a servant to be bossed and knocked around at first.

Kujou finds himself embroiled in strange murder-mysteries, which he brings to Victorique's attention so she can help solve them. Her half brother Grevil, a seemingly arrogant, egomaniacal police detective with a hairstyle as flambouyant as his attitude, takes credit for solving her cases, much to the outrage of Kujou.

Things go from weird to dangerous when Victorique starts to leave the confines of the school library to investigate incidents surrounding her mother, Cordelia Gallo, and her father, the Marquis Albert du Blois (who is also Sauville's Minister of the Occult). Political intrigue, legends brought to life, and a love story develop as the series progresses, leading to an explosive climax and a tear-jerker ending.

REVIEW

I had the privilege of watching Gosick over the past academic year at my college's anime club. Everything from the gorgeous artwork and soundtrack to the story, with its many twists and turns, captured my heart in a way few television shows have. The writers packed in lots of emotion, drama, and enough humor at the right moments to break up the tension. The elements of love story, tragedy, mystery, action, and intrigue all combined in the story to give us one of 2011's best series to come out of Japan.

It's not without its flaws, however: there are some continuity issues pertaining to the time frame in which certain events take place within the story, and a couple of characters don't seem to have any purpose other than to provide Victorique with a key emotional lesson at opportune moments wasting story time that could have been devoted to the principles. The series' larger story arc doesn't really begin to pick up until the second half, and many stories took two or three episodes in the series to be completed.

What bothered me the most — and keep in mind that I completely agree with why the writers chose to take such liberties — was setting the series in an alternate history of the early 20th Century in a made-up French-speaking nation. Why not simply have the story take place in France, since that is the closest geographically to where the series' action takes place? The Second World War was moved to 1925 instead of 1939, a good fourteen years early. This was necessary in order for the love story-tragedy to come to fruition in a reasonable timeframe, but still, there have been writers who have been able to make their stories fit into historical events, rather than editing history to suit the stories (Margaret Frazer, co-creator and author of the Sister Frevisse and Joliffe medieval murder mysteries, comes to mind). Could no one figure out a way to make the story closer to actual world places and events?

But I quibble too much. In the end, whatever flaws the series has are minor in the larger scheme of things, and I have to give credit to the writing team (for the light novels and mange as well as the TV show) for making this series what it is. There were moments I truly got misty-eyed, something that doesn't come easily to me when watching movies and television. If the writers can make a jaded guy like me get all choked up, that's saying something really good about their abilities. I for one highly recommend Gosick to anyone who likes anime, and for those who don't, it is still something they'll find worthwhile.



I did like how the character of Victorique was written. At once she was mature beyond her years, and immature and naive as a result of having been kept in isolation most of her life. Is it any wonder she has the attitude she does toward people? I don't think so.

Okay, so there's my review of Gosick. Hope you enjoyed it.

I'm a sucker for everything even the slightest bit Neogothic. I'm a sucker for Victorian aesthetics. I'm a lolicon; not of the really creepy kind, maybe, but still. And I never really liked Sherlock Holmes.
That might be why I quite enjoyed this show. Even though it's a mediocre show at best. And even though it's gothic only in (mispelled) name.

Roriconfan mentioned in his ruthless (heh, can't blame him) review two titles, Death Note and Monster. The former was a bit too heavy on his Sherlock's complex of making everything work like a fine tuned Swiss clock, with ludicrously convoluted plans spanning years that were never threatened by chance events, by reality and its chaotic nature if you want, so it lost a bit of plausibility; yet it had great characterization, personality, originality, so you didn't care for plausibility and you just cared to see such plans unfold. The latter was lacking such originality and strong characterization, but on the other hand it had such a plausible, consistent and engrossing story that it could very well have been taken straight out of a good western thriller novel; it drew you in its storytelling and never bore you even though it was so slow.

Gothic... pardon: Gosick (sic), seems to have neither merits. There is no real logic whatsoever in its Sherlock's complex, and it begins to have some noteworthy plot only near the end, when it decides to completely forget about the mystery story nature it was supposedly built upon. It has a certain style, so it can cater to a certain audience just as it did with me, but overall its true value appears that of a generic show with little soul. It does have an appeal, but as it tries to take itself seriously without the foundations to support it, that appeal is lost on the way together with your suspension of disbelief. What's left are interesting aesthetics, decent premises that only at times develop into some real storytelling, and some sparks of stylish personality; but those traits alone aren't enough to make a good cocktail. A good cocktail needs an identity, a definite taste.

A show that should cater to a specific niche, a specific subculture even, that should have a specific well recognizable (and acknowledged) style and set of "rules" should strive to have an identity compatible with such nature. That way it might not be universally good, but have value for that target audience. Does Gosick have such an identity? Does it have any identity? Let's see if we can find it.

Art & Animation

While it does look fairly pretty most of the time, this is mostly because the setting is pretty. Frills and lace clothes are pretty. Shiny, long blonde hair are pretty. Victorian mansions and gardens are pretty. Velvet and gold are pretty. It looks opulent, but such opulence is mostly on the surface: it's gold-plated, but it's iron on the inside.
Backgrounds are colorful but rarely detailed or interesting. A lot of times you might realize the background on which characters are moving is nothing more than a generic, greenish bidimensional stage, with a couple of trees lazily drawn. And those characters, well, it's not like they actually move a lot, you see? Animation goes from never being really fluid to being annoyingly stiff at times: in a certain flashback episode, for instance, we have this scene of a ballet where pretty much only two frames are alternated: leg up - leg down.

That could not be such an issue if this identity we are searching for were there. Take SHAFT's Bakemonogatari: they turned the lack of fluidity in a style of its own, not just getting to a working end from lacking means, but building a visual identity on it, as they are known to do. Even better, take Shinbou's rendition of Cossette no Shouzou: a visual orgy, an LSD trip into the mind and soul of Neogothic, Decadence aesthetics. The means were quite lacking, and if you look closely you see how they had to cut corners here and there, but it always happened only in your peripheral vision, as you were drawn into a kaleidoscope. Even his Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase, an unpretentious comedy, did have such a visual identity.
And that's what "gothic" visual art must be to be called so: a couple of clothes full of frills or a couple of half-assed attempts at being randomly artsy with picture-book resembling scene cuts aren't enough, everything needs to be suggestive and evocative in a specific way, from lighting to color palettes, everything needs to trace back to a definite symbolism. For it is from that symbolism that you can spark certain suggestions and emotions deep down the viewer's subconscious.

No, the art direction here had no idea what gothic art is. They directed it as they would have directed any other kind of show: to them "gothic" is a pretty doll in lace clothing. Even Rozen Maiden, a show about pretty dolls in lace clothing and honestly very little else, had a glimpse of how evocative such a thing can be, and did throw at you some gloomy, suggestive, even disturbing shots at times. A bent doll with its arms torn, pristine beauty and violence tied together: it never reached great artistic peaks, sure, but it had its own identity there, it had something to convey, some feelings to call upon.
Gosick has nothing of the sort to convey. It's just an annoying little brat with her new sparkly clothes that keeps shouting out to you "hey you! Look at me! Look how pretty I am!". That's no identity.

Sound

The opening song is as forgettable, generic as it gets. An anime song that could be the opening of any anime of any genre. Then we have two endings.
The first one starts being very encouraging: it hasn't the slightest bit of originality, but that's because they just went and try to copy from well known gothic metal standards such as Nightwish (and it's not a coincidence it begins with English lyrics, what's surprising is that English isn't that much butchered as it often happens); the introduction pricks up your ears with a strong buildup, followed by a bridge that still is rather good with some punchy power chords... and then it would be the time for the refrain, the chorus, they built up the melody for that, here it comes, here it comes, wait for it... but it never comes. It all reverts to a flat tune.
The overall impression would still be fairly positive, as at least here they tried to make something gothic, but can we really give a positive vote to something that's sung more by a computer than by a human being? Yes, because Komine Lisa isn't singing it, Autotune is singing it on her behalf, and her voice is so filtered and distorted that it appears to have a vibrato only an android from some cheesy '50s movie could have. As this happens even in the 2nd ending, this time again a soulless, generic Japanese ballad without the slightest bit of personality, I can only come to the conclusion this Komine Lisa couldn't sing even if her life depended on it.

Background music during the actual show seems to often suffer from the same indecisiveness the first ending has: at times you suddenly notice that hey, this passage here isn't that bad, it actually carries quite the punch, but as soon as you get there it either fades out or turns back into a flatter tune. All in all music is never really prominent in the series, and this once again is a lack of artistic identity. You don't have to be a music video disguised as an anime as Cossette no Shouzou was to be gothic, of course, but as you chose to portrait a very specific artistic theme you should try to be artsy, to be bold, whenever art is involved.

The actual voice acting ranges from very bad to quite good in a couple of instances, but more generically settling on mediocre. Eguchi Takuya is incredibly annoying in his utter lack of emotions when Kujou keeps calling for Victorique in his bland, robotic tone even when he is supposed to be thrilled/surprised/scared/on the verge of tears. On the other hand Yuuki Aoi, that doesn't particularly shine during the typical tsundere/cooldere interactions Victorique has, pulls off a good performance in the most dramatic moments, and a particular weeping moment of Victorique ends up being quite moving thanks to how her voice breaks up. The rest of the cast is made of such generic characters that voices can't be anything more than mediocre. I mean, we are even dealing with the four-eyed airhead that goes all "megane megane megane" when she loses her glasses, what would you expect from seiyuus?

In conclusion, nope, hardly any identity, gothic or whatsoever, here too. Everything's generic.

Story

The show begins with a very definite episodic setup. It's not however your classic detective show with self-contained episodes, as we are more dealing with what should probably be called mini-arcs. Each "case" is actually composed of more than one "mystery", and takes 2-3 episodes to be wrapped up. The first one, for instance, mixes together a murder in the locked room mystery with a Ten Little Indians one. Now, how these different mysteries are tied together is interesting and seemingly even quite original at first, but you soon notice the ropes that tie them together often tend to be forced, artificial, even preposterous. Moreover, each single mystery in itself is tackled with your run of the mill Sherlock approach, but in how it is unveiled there isn't the slightest bit of plausibility or sense. Victorique is more of a clairvoyant than an insightful detective with an eye for details and subtleties: whenever she reconstructs a chain of events from certain clues, there blatantly are infinite other possible (and often much more plausible) logic explanations. This means she is neither Sherlock Holmes nor Jessica Fletcher.

Sherlock Holmes was an obsessive-compulsive bastard, and Doyle a paranoid fellow; your enjoyment in his stories came from the insight into the little subtleties hidden in apparently trivial details and the witty ways through which the "perfect murder" was both devised and proven to be not so perfect by the even wittier Sherlock. Fact is, when Sherlock comes up with a theory from a set of clues, it really seems to be the most plausible one - no matter how convoluted it is - once all the pieces are put together. Whenever Victorique reaches a conclusion from a set of clues, you already have reached a dozen much more plausible conclusions. Furthermore, other times murders aren't witty in the slightest, and you actually have to facepalm wondering why a Victoriquesque plot device would be needed to solve them; let's just take the very first case in the introductory episode as an example, to not spoil anything of value: the murder in the locked room is simply done by firing a gun through a keyhole. Let alone how convenient it is for the murderer that the victim really had to be directly on such a limited line of fire in the exact moment it was needed during all the confusion (that's a typical Sherlock's complex fault), but come on, we might be in the '20s, but you don't need the guys from CSI Miami to notice that the gun has been fired through the keyhole. You have a corpse inside a locked room, you know suspect A has fired at the lock - supposedly to open it - and there is only one bullet around: the one inside the victim's head. Which is facing the door and has been shot in the face. So, well, DUH!
Let's not even go into how big a keyhole is compared to the bullets shot by guns from that era, there's no need to be that picky. The show simply has little care for details and consistency, plausibility about them, as such any Sherlock action about details they can come up with ends being rather ludicrous.

Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote, embodies another typical genre of mystery stories, a genre which relies on placing around clues for you, the viewer, to notice and see if you can point your finger at the right suspect before her, the detective. This doesn't happen in Sherlock Holmes as you usually are made aware of such clues only once Sherlock has already noticed them and he is explaining them to his lackey Watson. Well, for the reasons stated before, even if they tried such a recipe (and they pretty much didn't) you could never really do it as there's little plausible logic between clues and what they end up meaning, thus you can only be the passive receiver of the writer's severely lacking sense of logic and causality.

Meitantei Conan really is a far better and more credible detective show in these fundamentals, which goes a long way to say how successful Gosick is, as Conan is a show for kids.

Anyway, Gosick slowly turns from detective story into a drama, passing through a mid phase of slice of life semi-comedy. The slice of life arc hasn't that much value to add, by its own very nature, but the final drama arc finally is something quite worth watching. How it comes about by tying together several of the previous mysteries is fallacious at best, but it finally has some actual plot to work on and some content. It is quite repetitive in its setup - Victorique is taken away by the same villain to be used for her analytic "powers", spineless hero goes to the rescue, villain just lets her go, rinse and repeat - but as the world scenario turns from a generic stage into a pivotal point in history - an early WW2 - how her fate is connected to it can spur a bit of involvement and you finally can care for her and Kujou's feelings as they are pulled apart by something a bit more poignant than school drama. This actually manages to have just enough build up and content to actually make you feel a tiny bit moved at the ending; there also actually is an ending which is an ending, something nowadays is a feat in itself and something you wouldn't have expected during the first two-thirds of the show, as since then all the symptoms would have led you to foresee a generic open one.

Part of the reason you are misled into believing there won't be an actual ending - apart from the episodic setup - is that WW2 is several times foretold as what will be the crucial point in Victorique and Kujou's relationship, their test of fate. Yet everything takes place in the '20s, so you expect the open ended bullshit "the future waiting for us might be dark indeed, but we will keep fighting to the end won't we?" - ending credits.
Luckily this is alternate history.
But... why did this have to be alternate history? Long story short, it's pretty obvious it had to so they could have their hands free and no need to actually do any research to be lore-friendly. Why try to adapt their story to reality and historic characters when they simply can make up a fictional nation squeezed between Italy and France, set everything there and let their wildest fantasies loose, like cheesy kings, occultists, mysterious elven villages ('cause yep, face it, they're elves) and people never having seen a black haired guy (an Italian with black hair and dark eyes? Preposterous!)?
While this might somewhat work from an Asiatic viewer's point of view, and maybe to a less extent even for Americans too, well, how can I say it... I'm of rather small build, I have long, shiny blonde hair, green eyes and I live like 20 miles from where Victorique and those Grey Wolves' village are supposed to be. But of course I keep being mistaken for a Scandinavian (ok, maybe a dwarf one at that, I give you that...), not for a local. So, err, sorry, I have some slight troubles buying that setting. No offence.

Aaanyway, to tie things up, is there an identity, hopefully a gothic one, in this story? Not much. There's a glimpse of it in how Victorique is a prisoner, a Princess locked in the tower, but it never manages to catch gothic symbolisms and themes. It's more of a fairy tale identity, in all fairness. Fairy tales ain't nothing bad, mind me, I love good old fairy tales, but yet again the authors seem to have completely missed the point of Gothic narrative. Now, if they called this series Fueari Teru it'd have been another thing, but they didn't, did they?
The last story arc is fairly good, but it can't balance out 20 other episodes that are, in hindsight, quite pointless.

Character

What strikes as especially disappointing is that the entire supporting cast is awfully underdeveloped. Which, if you think about it, is quite appalling, as it's a full season series of 24 episodes mostly with nothing much going on apart from the mystery-of-the-week, and the number of recurring secondary characters is quite low. We have Victorique's brother, a rival love interest for Kujou, a comic relief idiot sensei, Victorique's mother and a companion of her, and a villain that only makes his appearances towards the end.
The very existence of the idiotic sensei is offensive as she is completely pointless: they put her there to appear once in a long while to look dumb for no reason and then disappear again. And of course she isn't funny, she just is an anime cliché that feels horribly out of place given the setting. Victorique's brother could have been an interesting character in how he is torn between his loyalty to his father and his not so well hidden sympathy for Victorique: however that's hardly worked upon, things just end happening in a certain way and you are never given 5 minutes of insight on his inner turmoils, leading to him being little more than comic relief at first and useless later on. Avril is almost as pointless as the sensei: Kujou is never hesitating for a single second about his blind loyalty and dedication towards Victorique, he hardly ever notices Avril is alive at all; thus she has no role in the whole thing apart from being a device to further remark how Kujou is so in love. Well, thanks, I wouldn't have guessed otherwise. The villain is an evil, manipulative villain because he is a sick bastard (distorted facial expressions included), and little else. Now, the mother at least is actually slightly interesting as we slowly get to discover more details about her previous history and what are her goals in regards to Victorique, plus she ends up having an actual role in the course of events; still it's nothing really polished.

As for the main duo, it's simply loli tsundere + generic masochist teen male. All their interactions are something we already have seen countless times in countless other anime: it kinda works though as the setting tends to be somewhat serious and the most clichéd humorous interactions between the two archetypes are relatively far and inbetween, so rather than being annoying for being so old you can still perceive them as being quite cute. This might subjectively depend on how fed up you are with the stereotype, though; as I still have a bit of a soft spot for it (can't really understand why I'm this patient) I might be quite forgiving. And it admittedly can get pretty annoying here: why do we have once again to see this spineless, indecisive male lead that never thinks of love and keeps blurting the trump word tomodachi at random? I mean, ok, let's swallow yet again that he likes to be mistreated by the spoiled brat, but we don't even have the usual harem as an excuse for him to be indecisive about his feelings (so the horny viewer can still identify in him no matter which chick in the harem he prefers). He clearly is a 14 years old, madly in love teen, can we please for once see one of them realize it as soon as it happens and act realistically? Is it so hard to conceive a love story, do we always have to see unnecessarily awkward - and blatantly fake - friendships? It's not that once one says "I love you" the story cannot advance, quite the opposite.

Sure thing is, there's nothing neogothic in their personalities and their interactions. They ain't a Beauty and the Beast, he isn't a dark, troubled, haunted soul, and she is, at the end of the day, just an arrogant brat with pretty clothes and an asshole of a father. She lived in isolation for most of her life without ever seeing a living being, let alone talking to anyone, yet since the very beginning she is nothing more than your run of the mill spoiled brat: give me an emotionally frigid, utterly broken doll that's beautiful but hardly human, and then we might have something gothic to work on. Let's see how the male lead could end up being fascinated by such an empty vessel, and let's see where this unhealthy relationship leads to, I might even acknowledge a positive, politically correct development as still acceptable.
What we are given is instead a cute girl that keeps blushing at every compliment and then goes to her tsundere act, so much for the troubled psyche and character depth.

So nope, our quest for an identity ends up being a mostly fruitless one. Even in this department Gosick is generic, soulless.

Value and Enjoyment

Paradoxically, it utterly failing at being a gothic piece of art actually increases its value: as it isn't something that's directed at a specific niche and is instead generic, it can cater to the wider public. It's value is mediocre, but so are many shows, and anyone who can swallow the average anime out there can swallow this one too and even be slightly happy with the sparkly surface. As for those who were expecting something gothic from it, well, they are going to be hugely disappointed, but yet again they still are people into anime, so in the end they are likely to feel they have seen one of many anime, with just a little bit of random gothic aesthetics sprinkled on top, which is a plus. Obviously, if you try to show it to your non otaku friend that's into gothic culture telling him to watch it because it's gosick, you are going to get a baseball bat shoved up your arse while he goes all Varg Vikernes on you. And considering what your friend is into, the bat is likely to have metal studs on it: even more painful.

I honestly can't put my finger on the reason why, all in all, I still personally enjoyed it. Maybe I'm that much of a sucker even for the cold clichéd surface aesthetics of the genre. That's slightly worrying, as it means being an hopeless fanboy. Maybe as I kind of knew what I was getting into from previous comments and reviews my expectations were never high. Maybe the fact it has an actual ending was that much of a relief.

Anyway, to anyone out there looking for a Gothic anime, do yourself a favour: don't look here, look here.

I enjoyed Gosick where many of my friends did not, perhaps because I don't actually like mystery shows. Gosick is not really a mystery show - the mysteries are not really testing the viewer's intellect, and little enjoyment can be derived from puzzling them out. Rather, Gosick is enjoyable for the interaction between its leads, and for the beautifully realized historical-fantasy setting of Sabure (a sort of Genoa-if-it-had-lasted-until-1920).

General animation is, like most modern shows, good but not spectacular, though the detail on some of the designs is impressive. The opening animation is fantastic; drawn in stylized, pastel tones, but with plenty of attention to detail, and does a great job of summarizing the plot without giving anything away. It matches well with a wonderful opening song; sadly the rest of the music rarely lives up to this, with the second ending being a particular disappointment. Background music was forgettable or rare; voice acting is generally clear, with the only confusing voices being deliberate, between family members.

Like many shows with a firm lead couple, Gosick struggles to arrange the rest of its cast. It can't plausibly have a harem dynamic, and thankfully doesn't really try (aside from one irritating minor character). But two main characters are simply not enough to sustain an interesting story, especially when there's so little tension in their interactions. We never the leads are getting together, and while their interactions can be cute it's not enough to drive a story.

That slack should be taken up by the large-scale plot, and it's certainly ambitious enough. In the second half of the series we get a twisting, almost incomprehensible plot about the struggle between two government ministries, against a backdrop of the build up to WWII. It's a fascinating period of history, and the worldbuilding alone is impressive - beautiful period trains, elegant if occasionally implausible architecture, and some stunningly intricate outfits. But for me there was too little sense of causality in the overarching plot; it seems more like a set of incidents with nothing to tie them together. This is especially true in the first half, where we have various individual mystery arcs. While there are a few recurring characters, too often new background is only introduced when it's needed - e.g. most cases have some connection to a local legend or fairytale, but we never hear these stories ahead of their own episodes. The conclusion does attempt to weave together a number of the earlier cases, but this ends up feeling very artificial.

So the overarching plot is unconvincing; the arc-level plots (the mysteries) pass the time well enough, but contain little to satisfy actual mystery fans. On the character side, from the recurring cast of the various mysteries we build up a number of quite detailed secondary characters. But their motivations never seem to drive the plot; each character is interesting enough in isolation, but nothing adds up about the way anyone is acting. The love story between the leads is at least coherent, and Gosick is at its best when we're simply watching them being cute together. But there's nothing really new here, either in the characterization or the events. The likes of Toradora did the love side better, without the confused and confusing plotting.

I suspect, then, that what I enjoyed about Gosick was the setting. I have a particular liking for the interwar years, and this show goes much further towards presenting a grand, fully-realized world than e.g. Senko no Night Raid. But the careful consistency of the setting is let down by the horribly haphazard plot. What remains is a well-presented but thoroughly conventional romance, and not really a show I can recommend to anyone who doesn't share my interest in the world.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

SPECIFICS

FINAL THOUGHTS

And now for some excused scorings.