Review of Hyouka
"I'm curious," says Chitanda Eru, and Oreki Houtarou, unable to resist the sparkle in her eyes, knows that once more he has to give up on his lazy ways to help her solve a new everyday mystery. Hyouka is a series that takes elements of both the mystery and school life genres, mixes them together, and churns out a product that is a very interesting blend of the two. At heart it is very much what you'd expect from a school comedy, from the cast to the plot. The cynical, dry male lead with a sarcastc streak to his inner thoughts and narrating, the airheaded somehow-top-of-her-classfemale lead with more energy than a hamster on coffeine, the male lead's goofy, easygoing guy friend, and so on. Episodes centering around onsen visits, pool days and cultural festivals, a carefree after-school life in a club that does relatively little, and so on. The cliches and stereotypes line up, but what it presents isn't as bad as the premise makes it out to be, in part because the characters carry something more than just their stereotype. Especially in Mayaka's story arc there's very interesting characterization, and the love stories that are presented don't feel forced or out of place, being subtly sweet rather than diabetic.
The most significant reason for the decent presentation lies in its crossover with the mystery genre however, and the way it handles this. Essentially what the main characters spend their time doing is solving everyday mysteries, be that a strangely locked door, mysterious disappearances of school property, or other such events. The main character, Oreki Houtarou, while strangely devoid of any other noteworthy talents, has an uncanny knack for piecing together bits and pieces of information and form a theory on the passing of events - indeed, he is the kind of detective you see in the classics of crime, only instead of crimes and murders he solves minor mysteries of daily life.
The sequence of events and the way hints to the mystery's solution are presented is done rather well, and while some can be missed easily, or relies on understanding aspects of Japanese language and culture, upon properly watching through episodes after a mystery's solution, most if not all the clues used to piece the mystery together are clearly there for the viewer to see, and pieced together the finished conclusion seems coherent and logical.
Visually the mystery solving is aided by creative visualizations of the characters' trains of thought, helping the viewer to understand and comprehend what is being reasoned more easily. This is a very good decision by the creators, because if there were only spoken words some of the explanations could easily go over the heads of the viewers, but with the visual element, it's very easy to comprehend.
Even putting that aside the art remains very lovely, using a vivid colour palette, which together with lush background, clear lighting effects and camera angles that are not often seen in anime series gives the series a very liely and engaging visual appeal, as should be expected of a school series, plus plus. The music is likewise very appropriate for a mystery series, with suspenseful and sometimes dramatic instrumentation and dynamics, yet it does not forgo some of the more typical tracks of school anime, from the exciting tunes of fun days to the goofy tunes of funny scenes. Of particular note is that it also uses a few pieces of classic music as
The opening themes are both decent, lively j-pop tunes, a little upbeat but nothing quite over the top. Thematically they draw on some central aspects of the main character's leading issue of him feeling a little gray and distanced from his friends and the 'normal', lively high school life, with some lovely colour and effect use mixed amidst the more standard anime opening clips. The first ending theme is a more bright, sung-by-the-female-leads pop song, while the animation is ninety percent silly fanservice. The second ending song is a very upbeat pop song that sort of screams "school anime ending theme", with bright backgrounds and the like, though it does an amusing job making references to older detective fiction.
Overall Hyouka is a decent series that brings something new and refreshing to the school anime genre, and while it doesn't point itself out as a very good anime, falls to a few stereotypes and so forth, it does stand out above the massive crowd of school anime that are less successful in their attempts to break away from the masses. It offers lovely visuals and music and does a very good job at visually presenting the characters' thoughts in a orderly but also fun fashion, and it's fun seeing the mysteries get solved. If you're a fan of either genre this series will probably offer you something interesting, without being particularly outstanding.