Review of Hyouka

[Slight Spoiler Warning] Hyouka is a slice of life anime that does a very good job of referencing famous mystery novel authors, yet fails to be a good mystery itself. Hyouka is a Kyoto Animation show with a generic high school setting (of course) and features trade mark, cute, moe, animation. I am not a huge fan at all of slice of life shows as they offer little to no substance plot wise but, I was oddly excited to watch this series because I am a huge mystery fan. On top of this, I heard Houtarou was a very cool and laid-back characterthat resembled Kyon (Haruhi Suzimiya). But, sadly, I was extremely disappointed after watching the show unfold with its dreadful pacing.

Art/Animation:
The art here is very similar to other Kyo-ani shows such as K-On!. It has that moe, cutsie style like K-On! and has very detailed backgrounds. The colour tones of this show is what can be described as “lazy” which relates very well to our main character. The character designs were not too out of the ordinary either but, one note to make is that our main female lead, Chitanda, looked a little too much like Mio (black haired lead) from K-On!. The animation was also very nice and fluid. Overall, the art and animation were both solid while the character designs were a bit too generic.

Sound:
All of the opening and ending themes for this show were forgetful and boring. The opening and endings sounded like generic pop music and I honestly skipped them most of the time. The background music for this show was mixed. Half of it was happy slice of life music while the other half was more mystery themed. The mysterious background music playing while Houtarou did his deductions actually did a very nice job of making the mystery itself seem more suspenseful than it really was. The other slice of life type music was not very memorable and actually wasn’t played that often giving the show a more mysterious feel at times as well.

Characters (this is where the bashing begins):
The show features 4 main characters... first up, you have our main protagonist, Houtarou Oreki who is a laid back, lazy guy who likes to conserve as much energy as possible (by not doing anything). This makes Houtarou very boring. Houtarou is not special in the least; he doesn’t have any interesting ideas or deep monologues and rarely provides comedic relief unlike other characters who are similar to him. All Houtarou can do is solve mysteries and only does it (usually) when the main female lead forces him to. That brings up another point about him; Houtarou believes in always conserving energy yet is always falling victim to Chitanda’s pleas to solve pointless mysteries. He can easily avoid this but, he doesn’t, instead it seems like he grows feelings for her yet he continues keep up the charade of conserving energy which brings up yet another point. He gets little to none character development. During the film mystery arc, it had appeared that there would be some character development for him but, sadly, it lasts for about one episode and he goes back to being his old self again, never changing and never expressing his true self. The next character, our female lead, is Eru Chitanda. There is not much to say about her other than the fact that she is extremely annoying. In the beginning, her curiosity was sort of cute but, after a while it really gets frustrating because all she ever does is get curious. She is an airhead girl who apparently is, somehow, one of the smartest people in the school. She doesn’t provide much other than the occasional suggestion for a mystery, being Houtarou’s master, and doing absolutely nothing. The male side character, Satoshi Fukube, is your average overly energetic character, albeit he does have the most depth than anyone else in the cast. He is constantly struggling with being better than his best friend, Houtarou, and also has some love issues with the female side character. Though, none of this is actually that deep at all and it really just seems more melodramatic than anything e.g. they were crying over the fact that Satoshi broke some chocolate for Valentine’s Day that the side female character made. The last character is Mayaka Ibara (the female side character mentioned earlier). There’s not much to say about her, she’s just a basic tsundere type character who really loves manga; doesn’t provide much more than some manga club drama.

Story/Plot:
This is where Hyouka really fails miserably for me. Basically, Hyouka is set up in a way where there are multiple mystery arcs and these mysteries are what the plot consists of. The thing is, Hyouka starts off pretty strong with the first real mystery of the show (which is what the show is named after). This mystery is more serious and more important than any of the other mysteries presented but, it only lasts about till episode 5. After this one there are some other mysteries that are completely useless until we get to the film mystery. This one was actually quite intriguing and suspenseful and it was fun trying to figure it out with the characters. Disappointingly though, this is where all the good regarding Hyouka’s mysteries and plot ends. After this we are left with the big build up towards the crazy school festival. Now this is what really bothered me about this show. For 4 or so episodes we get no mysteries at all! During this time all we see is “fun times” at the school festival and extremely slow build up/set up for the school festival mystery. In fact, the mystery is solved in 2 episodes! I wouldn’t really say it was solved either since in those two episodes there was no deduction process by our main character, he just figured it out. In contrast, during the film arc, it took the main character quite a lot of thought and effort (which we actually saw on screen) to figure out the mystery but, here we just see Satoshi trying (and failing) to solve it himself and then all of a sudden Houtarou solves it. Even more frustrating is that, after this arc ended, the rest of the mysteries, I wouldn’t even consider mysteries. They were even more useless than the earlier more “important” big mysteries. Basically, towards the end of the show nothing happens at all (this is about 5 or 6 episodes). To top it all off, the series ends incomplete with no ending in sight and an open ended “romance” where Houtarou is too scared to actually admit his feelings. Overall, some mysteries were very fun to watch (two or three) but, in the end most of them were completely useless and mundane. Also, this mystery show stops showing mysteries for about 4 episodes just to build up to one lack luster conclusion for one bad mystery. Other than the 3 main mysteries in the show, the rest is just useless with the main purpose of taking up space.

Overall:
The art for the show is generic but, functional and the animation and detail is spot on. But, the character designs are a little generic. The sound matches the different tones of the show at times and the music playing while the characters are trying to solve a mystery adds a very fitting feel to the show. But, the opening and ending themes to the show are forgetful. Overall, the aesthetics are fine. The characters are dull and mostly generic with little to no character development. Some of the mysteries in the show are fun to watch but, most of the show is filled with useless fodder that does nothing and is “solved” within one episode. Also, the show stops for 4 episodes for a stupid school festival. The story and characters mostly fail. Overall, Hyouka is a mystery anime with more references to actual good mysteries than having good ones itself. And for this reason I am utterly disappointed and feel since it didn’t accomplish being good at what it was supposed to be that it is, in fact, worse than average.

Final Score: 4/10 :(