Review: Hyouka

One look at Hyouka, you’d think it’s just another slice of life genre about high school kids. Little did I know it’s a mystery-themed adaptation of a 2001 novel of the same name. Even the title of the series has a mystery behind it.

Original Author: Honobu Yonezawa

Studio: Kyoto Animation

Well, but guess what, it’s not your average mystery. Hyouka is about the members of the culture club solving unimportant mysteries, instead of the usual murder cases like you see in CSI. And you’ll be surprised to see how mature the characters are in spite of their age, cos you don’t see teens not acting like children fighting over a toy everyday.

How it all began, is when the main guy Oreki Hotarou meets Chitanda Eru (typical boy meets girl scene yay!) in his club room, and they start figuring how Chitanda was locked inside. So Chitanda got all fascinated by Oreki’s deduction skills, so she keeps forcing him to solve petty mysteries. Since she gets totally turned on by curious happenings, the cases needed to be solved in order for her to reach orgasm. So she went on ahead to ask Oreki’s help to solve her uncle’s mystery related to the school and the club like a selfish little bitch.

The mystery of her uncle was a success, but the detective play didn’t stop there, to Oreki’s displeasure. Cos Chitanda would unknowingly force him to SOLVE anything she finds curious by putting her face really close to his, activate her sparkly eyes and would look like it’s the end of the world if he refuses. Good thing Oreki is a nice guy so that little bitch would always get what she fukken wanted. Of course, she gets away with it because she's cute and innocent.

The art and animation is goddamn excellent that's for sure. They sure overdid the sparkling eyes

I appreciate that Hyouka maintains the fact that it's all about solving (not-so-important-and-unnecessary) mysteries in the rest of the episodes. I’m sure it got us all KININARIMASU. But the best case among the rest is the case of the Hyouka Anthology. Nothing can beat that. The next best case is the one about filming a detective story (because there's Irisu-senpai!)

I do acknowledge that without Chitanda, the story wouldn’t advance. Without her Oreki wouldn’t show his detective skills to the world and make the story awesomely unique. But there’s a lot of listening version of tl;dr, you know, like Death Note. Since you gotta explain the logic behind what happened. Sometimes it feels like the girls in the team is for mere decoration, as not only Oreki but Fukube is a very very GREAT character. I’m more than impressed by him (at how he envies Oreki but isn’t angry about it, his opinion on ‘obsession’) although he's just self-proclaimed biological 'database'. Mayaka on the other hand is an adorable character, but it feels like she's just a mascot girl who exists to fill in the blank. Minus the tsundere trait, I notice that are actually a lot of real life girls who has Mayaka’s dilemma.

Chitanda and Oreki appears to be canon, but due to fetish reasons I ship Oreki with Irisu. But seriously, if Oreki does go out with Chitanda later I can only hope that by the time he enters college, he’d dump her and get a new girlfriend who respects his energy conserving habits.

which is why I feel like punching the air in triumph when I see her disappointed face

Even so it’s one of the best animes of 2012 – not exactly my favourite but it’s better than most. I recommend this, but you gotta endure the long dialogs.