Review of Hyouka

5/10

May 15, 2020

2 min read

8 reactions

Story: 6 Hyouka doesn't really have a main story. It is more like a collection of random mysteries that Oreki tries to solve. However, the cases weren't even that interesting in the beginning and his solutions weren't even that impressive. To label Hyouka as a "mystery" feels like disrespecting the true mystery novel authors that Hyouka mentions (Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie). However, it is definitely a "school" and "slice of life" anime, but Hyouka doesn't really take advantage of the setting that they are in (their school). Yes, they host meetings in the Literature Club, but they might as well be speaking to eachother in a nearby cafe.

Art: 10
Sound: 7
The art is truly beautiful for its time (2012), and the voice acting and soundtrack are good.

Character: 5
Although there are 4 main protagonists, I didn't know or understand anyone except Oreki by the end of the series. Having everything through Oreki's perspective definitely plays a role in that, but one would imagine that I would at least remember Ibara's name, for example. Ibara's and Chitanda's characters were boring and flat. They were simple people with very minimal conflict, and it may have been because of that that they don't change. Fukube, on the other hand, definitely changed but for the worse. He started off interesting and confident, but he just gets deeper and deeper into a midlife crises despite only being 15. The only thing stopping me from giving this section a 1 is Oreki's character development. It was super clever of Hyouka to start Oreki's character with one metaphor and end it with the same but developed metaphor.

Enjoyment: 2
Because of the lack of development in 3 of the 4 main protagonists and because of how plain the story was, I put Hyouka on hold for a few months before I finally managed to finish it, albeit after falling asleep to many episodes.

Overall: 5
I started this series because it has good ratings, and I probably would've enjoyed it when I was younger, but I don't think this show lives up to complexity that it promises.