Review of Hyouka

I've been trying to fill the void during my job by watching Hyouka and Kokoro Connect (both dubbed so I can multi-task). While both coincidentally tackle high school club mysteries, the latter stumbled to the finish line while the former finished rather nicely. To be brief about Kokoro Connect: the characters grew a TON due to the problems they tackled, but it required both supernatural events and lovers quarrels. It was a rendition of Freaky Friday mixed with a weird harem vibe and so many random overused tropes that it really wanted me to get it over with. What I really enjoyed about Hyouka was howrealistic and logical it was. Mysteries that could genuinely happen in the real world were presented, and the way in which they were solved or concluded was fun and interesting. It's like playing a murder mystery every episode. There were actual scenes you could go back to that give away a culprit and lead you to the answer, but simply wasn't what we were paying attention to. This attention to detail is what I really appreciate about a show, because it didn't hit us with annoying tropes or gotcha-moments to take away from a good yet simple plot.

When I first finished the show, my first thought was that these characters didn't grow and the story didn't do much. But after really thinking about it, I think that was unfair to say because this anime is trying to shoot for realism. In other 12-24 episode animes, the world can be saved and people are in wedlock after dating a year in high school to fulfill our fantasies. I feel like Hyouka and Horimiya both are incredibly unremarkable. They aren't masterpieces, but to me they never set out to break the mold. Simply put, shows like these are what bring us back to reality. I'm not going to remember the names of all of these characters or even every single mystery, but the plot and intriguing character interactions will stick with me.