Review of Hyouka

Plot: Slow start but intriguing enough to continue watching because of the directing, interesting character introductions and plot. The first half had a good balance of sleuthing and school slice of life. However, Hyouka’s plot and pace started declining for me during the cultural festival — the jumonji affair. At this point of the anime, I felt that they had run out of mysteries and so was dragging that one mystery out. I got increasingly annoyed with how the mains were running everywhere but not doing anything actually helpful. A complete waste of time even though I was looking for an anime to waste sometime.

Character development:
- Houtarou Oreki for me had the biggest character development throughout the series; which is both surprising and disappointing. Surprising as I wasn’t expecting to see a character development for him, however disappointing as it was very mild. I felt that they could have taken it further with the number of episodes they had.
- Satoshi Fukube was an interesting character. There were many subtle hints that there were more than meets the eye with him throughout the anime. And we do get some explanations here and there. However, again, very mild explanations.
- Eru Chitanda was an extremely frustrating and annoying character for me. She was bearable and even a joy at times to have in the first half as she balanced out Oreta’s grey-ness. However, I got increasingly annoyed with her as the anime progressed. She was shown to have a higher level of sensitivity/sensibility than Oreki in earlier episodes albeit being less gifted in solving mysteries. But towards the end, she was written to play a complete bonehead. She has annoyed me enough to make it the primary reason of writing this review.

TLDR; so much potential but fell off at the end.