Review of Hyouka

Curiosity. Whether you love it, hate it, or lack it, curiosity is an unavoidable human nature in all of us. Daily explorations and innovations are all often made due to someone's curiosity. Even the Internet was built upon someone's curiosity for a virtual universe. Honestly, Hyouka sparked my curiosity when Kyoto animation first decided to produce it. Because I've had many great experiences with the studio's previous works, Hyouka didn't seem it would be an outlier to this trend. But, looks can be deceiving. Hyouka, it appears, extinguished my curiosity just as easily as it had lit them. Hyouka played out as perhaps one of the most disappointingmystery shows I've ever seen. But I don't mean that it ended up so terrible for a Series as a whole. Rather, the first 12 episodes of Hyouka alone out-shadowed any potentials of newer mysteries that could've matched some of the galvanizing story lines it began with.

The setting of Hyouka is also misleading in itself since it takes place in the typical high school era, where most students are just beginning to reach the realization of their own ambitions. In this seemingly normal, typical school setting, something about the atmosphere within Hyouka's artwork suddenly set an alarm off. Immediately after the first episode, we find out Hyouka's main focus: Mysteries!

Hyouka circles around the Classics clubs, of all clubs, to unravel several obscure cases. Although the reason for solving them is at first unknown, Oreki, a man sloth who only wishes to live his life by conserving as much energy as possible, suddenly decides to solve these mysteries for his beloved high school classmate, Chitanda. Following Chitanda are Oreki's two middle school friends, Satoshi and Mayaka. These characters all play significant roles themselves, but I'll talk about that after some bits. For now, all you need to basically know is: Trivial mysteries around the school easily provoke Chitanda's curiosity, Oreki solves them, and Satoshi and Mayaka speculates the scenes as Oreki ends up solving the cases.

Despite its oversimplified cheesiness, Hyouka's mysteries provide a great sense of suspense that even a woman could enjoy. Each episodes utilize typical mystery novel devices such as cliffhangers and over dramatic scenes. However, they are all placed in concise places which constantly makes you rethink thoughts as new informations are being presented. What if the evidence is faked? Isn't she lying? What if there's another person involved? Perhaps, it wasn't intended to be pranks but rather.. a message? Each items worthy of mysteriousness forced me to re-think each solutions of the mystery and essentially, each case gathered more and more details every single minute to the point that hypothesizing who the culprit is based on empirical observations became a rather naive thing to do.

Actually, it's almost like describing a painting. First, imagine that there's a grass field drawn with bright vibes of warm colors. You would assume then, that the painting takes place in a peaceful, sunny location where the quietude could not be disturbed, right? What if then, a little girl holding balloons and a teddy bear is drawn in? Wouldn't that help re-assure the peacefulness within the illustration? Lastly, you look at the final piece drawn into the art: a man resembling that of your worst nightmare is hiding behind a random bush, armed, and seems to be hissing at the little girl. Well, doesn't that ruin the whole illustration. Ironically, Hyouka does something very similar to the process described above; at first an obvious answer is presented, glimpses of other alternatives are shown, and finally the different, appropriate route will be revealed. Hyouka keeps you guessing, and sharpens your analysis skills to an extent. Sometimes it gets to the point that watching Hyouka became less of an anime experience, and more of a scrappy puzzle.

The musical aspects of Hyouka easily over-sieges many other productions with its greatly effective soundtracks. Whether it's the befitting contribution to the suspenseful atmosphere mentioned or stand alone chilling music, Hyouka accomplished them all. Some over repetitive soundtracks also created a sense of security as each episodes begun, but soon transitioned into snaky, backstabbing orchestra music as soon as mysteries were being solved. The two OP's and ED's are deemed to be rather classic J-pop styled music, but the animation took the initiative to even step up its creativeness a notch.

Speaking of which, I'm sure most viewers of Hyouka could at least agree that the animation in Hyouka is spectacular. Shadow drops on figures and faces masking their identity were really effectively done to provoke a sense of danger, and many productions of artistic productions often generated spontaneous amounts of emotions. Lots of scenes referring back to an older scene or flashbacks gave off the just right balance between romanticism and realism. It was truly amazing that Hyouka expressed the exact emotion it intended to gave off with the mixture of Kyoto animation and original OSTs.

"He has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again [Sherlock] has taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one."

The prior quote described Oreki Houtarou, otherwise Hyouka's main protagonist, perfectly.

As a mystery Series, it's only natural for Hyouka to make references to the famous Sherlock Holmes novels. But instead of Sherlock, arguably, Oreki follows the path of Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock's older cousin) more accurately. Similar to Mycroft, Oreki starts out as someone who seems to be wasting his potentials. Oreki solves logical problems easily and applies appropriate solutions to most problems; but there's a major issue, Oreki is a sloth. By that, I mean Oreki doesn't like to waste time on anything trivial and rarely goes out of his way to do any outside activities. He's a smart guy who doesn't use his talents, and bored me with a rather dull personality as the series began.

However, once a cheerful, sparkly-eyed girl named Chitanda Eru intervened in the daily life of Oreki sloth, everything changes. Instead of being selfish, Oreki started reconsidering what he deemed as arbitrary matters around him and developed into a character who later inspected situations and cared for the resultant. The teasing relationship between Chitanda and Oreki is also one to be envied, as it gives a sense of hope that maybe even turtles can stand up for itself if given the circumstances.

In fact, someone could describe Chitanda as the ocean to Oreki's turtle-headed mindset.

Although, from even the first episode there's an evident amount of flirting & blushing between the two which suggests that the relationship between Oreki and Chitanda roots itself as a fatuous, romantic one more than anything else. Chitanda herself serves as an interesting comedy release, who gets intrigued by almost anything, in the quadruplet of the classics group. Chitanda has a pair of the most mesmerizing eyes in the world, and oftenly, she doesn't even realize her own curiosity being so infectious and transmissive through those hypnotizer-eyes. Chitanda even attempts to learn the art of seduction from a Senpai and though she doesn't successfully master it, we learn from a direct statement that Chitanda has her own charming, attractive qualities as a woman. Even so, Chitanda sometimes makes rather silly mistakes and it's within those memorable klutz performances that we realize Hyouka has a rather Slice of Life/Comedy side which can be as entrancing as its mystery aspects.

Besides the main duet, there were also other noteworthy characters. Hyouka specifically assigned most other (side) characters to a role which would either occur once or as a reoccurring pattern throughout the Series. Most substantially, Oreki's two elementary friend who joined the same high school as him, Satoshi and Mayaka's more dramatized relationship, played a nice contrast in addition to Oreki & Chitanda's more flirty one. Like many people, Satoshi is one who conforms with society but hides the secretive parts of himself, and as Hyouka progresses we learn more of him and Mayaka's past. As a female, Mayaka suppresses many of her feelings as well and only late in the series we find more than just what seems like her tsundere character. Otherwise, while solving mysteries, Satoshi and Mayaka both collect information for Oreki to solve and for Chitanda to be intrigued by. They also contributed to the unique storytelling technique Hyouka came up with, and became characters I absolutely respected even with their at times shady personalities.

Even with all these great remarks, I felt that Hyouka could've improved on some aspects.

What originated with Hyouka's initial premise came with a problem. Most characters in Hyouka are put in too perfect of situations and they are all given the most convenient excuses to somehow miraculously find and solve mysteries for themselves. Oreki, for example, got shoved into many crime cases by his sister and since her character was never really elaborated on, it seems as if his sister's whole existence was nothing more than an excuse to push plot lines across. Instead of saving the best elements for last, Hyouka also did the exact opposite. In the beginning of Hyouka, I barely recognized that Hyouka's mysteries were so realistic yet negligible. Only later did I find some of the writing to be unconventional and inconvenient in comparison to how over-dramatic some scenes were meant to play out. If Hyouka decided to suppress romanticism over realism, they could've at least attempted to make some of the mysteries sound more exciting. Instead, the producers decided to give Hyouka a rather dry, deceiving outlook.

All in all, Hyouka is like a cup of coffee. At first glance, one can only observe a pool of muddy, shady imageries. After the first sip, you began to taste the bitterness only realizing you forgot to add sugar. Once Kyoto animation is delicately mixed along with other sweet flavored ingredients can you finally taste the truly colorful quintessences of Hyouka Coffee. Of course, not everyone could grow accustomed to the taste. It certainly isn't everyone's cup of coffee. However, without a doubt, Hyouka truly prevails as a work displaying how nothing is as it seems.

As a fan of Slice of Life, I thoroughly enjoyed both the comedy and secretive aspects of Hyouka. As a curious being, you may desire to watch Hyouka because it produces splendid animation, misleading riddles, and ambiguous relationships. But in the end, I promise Hyouka will not be the enigma you expected. In most cases, it turns out for the better.