Characters That Made My Year – Victorique de Blois (Twelve Days of Christmas: Day Three)

Day Three, and its time for a character that it’s really hard to dislike (even if her show was somewhat lacklustre) – the moeblob that is Victorique De Blois from GOSICK.

Victorique is adorable.  I don’t really have a lot of reasons for including her other than her moe was such that even I found her adorable, and believe me that is an achievement.  This year had three shows that followed a similar format of a hyper-intelligent loli detective and her male side-kick (Gosick, Kami-sama no Memo-chou & Dantalian no Shoka), but of the three loli’s Victorique was without doubt my favourite – Alice didn’t get enough screentime or development, and Dalian (even though her show was my favourite of the three) was also quite shallow; however Victorique went through quite a lot of changes and it made her even more likeable as the show went on.

Gosick wasn’t a brilliant show.  It was tedious to an extreme for much of it’s first half, saved only by Victorique’s adorableness, but it did pick up quite a lot in the second half and reached a very satisfying finale.  Victorique starts as quite a standoffish, aloof character who doesn’t really have much clue about how to interact with people normally (understandable given her childhood was spent locked in a tower with little to no human contact).  Victorique’s vast intellect and deduction skills also place her on a pedestal that cause the people who should care for her, her family, to treat her  like a resource to be mined rather than a little girl.  Victorique’s interaction with the clueless outcast Kujou bring her out of her shell, as he refuses to treat her in any special manner (other than being alarmingly willing to be treated as her personal doormat) since Kujou is just happy to find someone that will talk to him normally as well.  While I can’t profess to like Kujou in anyway (he’s really the pinnacle of the bland male lead phenomenon) watching the two characters change and open up to each other over the run of the show was the main reason I stuck Gosick out to the end.

The moment I’ve chosen as my favourite for Victorique comes in episode 12.  This is essentially a filler episode as nothing noteworthy really happens, its just Kujou and Victorique enjoying some downtime between mysteries together.  It’s the way that Victorique tries so hard to appear mature and not let on how much she is enjoying being out of the library and just hanging out with Kujou that I found unbelievably cute – she tries so hard, but still slips into moments of childish glee when presented with presents of sweets.  So simple, but very effective and really solidified Victorique as one of my favourite characters this year.