Review of Hyouka

I'm a light novel writer so I'll write this review in a manner mostly regarding the story without any spoilers. So getting to the Story! I've seen many animes in the same fashion as this one, meaning that the highschool life, a club in which only the main characters are allowed and all their adventures. This story falls in score mainly because it relied on the same things as other 1000 anime series. But I have to say I never imagined makeing the story evolve into a detective series. It's not Sherlock Holmes or Detective Poirrot , but it's something similar to "Suzumiya Haruhi noShoushitsu". Meaning that if we skip the SF action the main part was uncovering some secrets. I personally hate japanese style endings, especially in such storyes but it's really my point of view, you will understand after you've watched closely the last 2 episodes.

The Art was awsome, especially in the final episode which was really troublesome. From that I can clearly see that they had in mind more episodes, probably out of funds they decided to make a final episode faster but , storywise you can see clearly that it's a huge leap from the previous episodes, and it's alot more artistique.

The sound was allmost impecable, the problem was the lack of entertaining OST's and I swear I could hear the sound from setting a card face down in Yu-gi-oh GX in this anime.

Characterwise, it was a failure. I mean the main protagonist was strongly presented, but the other characters were horrible. Chitanda, Eru was a character with only one quote, you could describe her in one sentence even after 22 episodes "I'm curious" . Not only that but if it was 2 words, they would probably be "traditional" and "suffocate".

We move on to the other characters especially Fukube, Satoshi who was just a clown jokeing around and was extremly jealous of his best friend. He was made out to be a Jack of all trades, but he failed to even do that, because the author couldn't find any use for him.

Ibara, Mayaka is another example. A character that could only accompany the other characters, who had no usefull skills or no irreplaceble moments.

Finally we reach Oreki, Houtarou. Unlike other animes with High School and club rooms, this guy is actually really special. He is a genius who refuses to admit it, because of that he is really original. Not really an awsome detective but actually reminds me of Narumi, Ayumu from Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna, only that this is a really lazy version of him. I personally hate it, and I wouldn't ever call this anime a romance, but the writer actually intended to pair up the characters. I think he did a horrible job with that because this character lacks the basic qualities and his personality is as maleable as water making him inconsistable throught the series.

Enjoyment yes, allthough in the begining it was really boring.

Overall I'd say a 7 even if it's alot more than I usually give to this type of repetetive anime story, this time it was episodes 11,12 and 21 that really were to my likeing and episode 22 for the exquisite artwork but the last lines in the end were probably the worst ending I've ever heard.