Review of Hyouka

---The review contains spoilers--- A mystery, that left me with more mysteries. So many questions, so many unsolved mysteries and plot holes, I just...Can't.Let me just begin with the art of the series, amazing, superb, beautiful, and there is a lot of scenery porn for all of you scenery porn fans out there.

But I didn't watch this anime for scenery porn, if I wanted to look at scenery porn I could have just gone on tumblr instead of watch this anime.

Why did I watch this anime you may ask? I'm going to be honest with you, the art attracted me, I loved the style and the quality animation.
But I MANLY watched for the romance that I kept seeing scenes of on other sites.

I was so excited to watch this because all of the characters looked very unique and beautiful and the art was just outstanding to begin with.

But the story, which is the biggest part of an anime, fell lackluster, and became very tedious to watch.

The series begins with Oreki, and his mindset on life; how he'd rather do nothing and doesn't want an exciting highschool life.
His character is extremely lazy, he's almost like a sloth.
He has a motto that is repeated throughout the show.
"I don't do anything I don't have to. What I have to do, I do quickly."

His friend Satoshi is flamboyant, he may seem simple minded at first; very loud, friendly, always cheerful, but he is actually very competitive and wants to be better than Oreki when it comes to solving mysteries.

He meets Chitanda shortly after, and instantly becomes infatuated with her.
(Don't get your hopes up though.)

Chitanda is simple minded, almost dumb, yet she gets one of the highest top scores in school.
She is the epitome of innocence.
And the field for Oreki's hyperactive imagination.

She uses her famous catchphrase "I'm curious!" And her eyes sparkle and she gets super close to his face, within kissing distance basically, but when she snaps out of it, she backs away and Oreki and her often end up flustered, but pushes it aside and continues on to the mysteries.

Ibara, is a feisty little girl, she seems to have many issues, but the biggest ones are her love for Satoshi and her low self esteem/insecurites. She is an extreme anime/manga fan, being in the club and also cosplaying, even though she's embarrassed to do it, she wants to.

With this, they all create the classics club.

The series begins with a big mystery: Chitanda's uncle.

He left their high school, and disappeared, Chitanda needs to solve her Uncle's mystery before the end of the 7th year of his disappearence or the government will label him as dead.

But then the biggest mystery, for HER, and for everyone else, is her last memory of her uncle, where she asked what hyouka was, and he tells her, and she cries, but why does she cry?

That's the big mystery, what did he tell her, why did he disappear, why did she cry? What does Hyouka mean exactly?

But the mystery gets solved within a few episodes, with like 19 episodes still ahead of us, and the meaning of Hyouka already solved; I had no idea what was going on.

But then I realized, and couldn't stop watching anyways.

Have you ever seen scooby doo? You know how every episode is exactly like the last hundreds of episodes? Where there's a mystery, they find clues, there's a chase, they solve it, everything's cool.

That was basically Hyouka.

They had a mystery EVERY episode, there wasn't one episode where they didn't get a new mystery to solve, or was solving a previous one.

They get a mystery, Chitanda does her famous "I'm curious!" states at Oreki, he gives in and begins to think about the mystery, they find clues and the chase ensues, except there's usually no one to chase and no one gets the cop called on them, Oreki ALWAYS, and I literally mean ALWAYS figures EVERYTHING out, and all the little details are brought forth as he supposedly blows your mind when confronting the culprits.

The mysteries, were not even that interesting, 3/22 times I was actually curious and wanted to find out why was a student shopping at a store near the elementary school called down to the staff room.

Either way, they make a mystery out of everything, every little thing from life became a mystery.

The thoughts Oreki has seems deep and we could all use a little more psychological insight on life. But then I felt like he was psychoanalyzing every situation and every person and every little detail of life, was turn, twisted, and turned into something deep.

So the mystery part of the series was turned into trash, some scooby doo type kiddish crap that was repeated every show, in a more serious realistic manner.

But even when the mysteries and every episode started become a chore to watch, why did I continue?

One thing in this show gave me hope, and that was the romance between Oreki and Chitanda.

Hell, basically more than half the show is about her pushing him out of his comfort zone and getting him to do shit he would have never done until he met her.

In the beginning he says he doesn't want a colorful highschool life, but Chitanda came and brought color into his dull life, whether he liked it or not.

Every episode was filled with shy glances, interest in each other, and most times, Oreki's perverted thoughts about Chitanda.

The romance was nice and steady, slow, you can see the progress as the episodes continue on and Oreki cares even more about Chitanda than he'd really like to let on.

Second to last episode is Valentines day, and here I was thinking she was going to give Oreki chocolate, instead the whole episode is about Ibara's unrequited love for Satoshi.

Which in the end the producers let YOU decide if they actually got together or not, but the vibes Ibara gives me, tells me they didn't.

Ibara asks Chitanda if she has someone she likes, she blushes furiously and thinks about it, (obviously Oreki seriously it's Oreki, even my 4 year old little sister would know that she likes Oreki and he likes her too)

Valentine's day, she apologizes to Oreki because the custom in her family is that they do not give gifts/chocolates to people they are close with on Valentines day, and so she didn't get him anything.

There's a whole mystery that episode about who stole Ibara's chocolate that she made for Satoshi.
Turns out it was satoshi so that he could continue to push her feelings aside.

At the end of the day he eats the crappy chocolate his big sister gave to him earlier in the morning, takes a bite from it, and says "bitter"

Agreed.

The last episode, of course just has to have a mystery, but the final scene is what really, realllllly, grinds my gears.

They both talk about the different fields, such as sciences and humanities for their future, turns out Chitanda chose sciences, and Oreki chooses Humanities.
This gives us the idea that they will part ways in the future due to their different fields.

Chitanda must take over her family's business, and focus on that.

Chitanda sets out her plans for the future, but there's a missing puzzle piece for her grand plan; in which, is an open position for Oreki to fill and continue to be part of her life.

Oreki IMAGINES, that's right, /IMAGINES/ that he offers himself to her for the future, for her grand plan, he offers himself to help her and her family's business in the future.

But, back to reality, he didn't propose any idea of him working with or for her, and gets really flustered at the thought of himself saying that he would.
Changes the subject, talks about the weather/season, chitanda replies, and it's a beautiful moment.

The End.

I guess.

And then that's basically how it ends.

You never get to really find out what really happens to her uncle.
You never get to really find out about Oreki's strange mysteriously outgoing and happy go lucky sister or what she knew or had to do with Chitanda's uncle.
You never get to really find out if Satoshi rejected Ibara or will end up with her in the future.
You never get to really find out if Oreki and Chitanda will be together.

[ Story: 3/10]
If there was any story to this, there were no decent conclusions for it.

[ Art: 10/10]
Superb, honestly, eye candy all over.

[ Sound: 7/10 ]
Everyone's voice actors were great, Chitanda's voice was a little too unrealistic for my liking.

[ Character: 6/10 ]
Everyone had issues and made a big deal out of them, got me really down and depressed when watching them and their issues, especially Mayaka, but none of them really fixed their ways.
There wasn't any real character development except for Oreki, the other main characters are pushed aside.
But most characters just seem really flat compared to Oreki.
He was able to morph and change, while the other characters........stayed.......the.......same...................................yeah

Except Oreki's predictableness and personality started annoying me towards the end.

[ Enjoyment: 2/10 ]
This series honestly felt like a CHORE to finish, it was so TEDIOUS, I was like, ugh I have to finish hyouka, just for the sake of finishing it. Though I was curious about how Chitanda and Oreki would end up.
They ended up with nothing.
A huge disappointment for me.

Oreki and Chitanda's relationship for me was like this, a girl teases you, and she's completely interested in you, you KNOW something's gonna happen, and she tells all her friends about you, and you talk to all your friends about her, and you guys talk every night for hours and then when the time comes, she teases you to the point you have a big fat raging boner, and then her phone rings, and she has to leave, forever, to another country, and she has a boyfriend in that country.

And you're just sitting there with your big fat giant boner, that will never be relieved or touched by that girl.

This completely left me HANGING AND I FEEL SO INCOMPLETE AFTER WATCHING THIS SHOW FML.

[ Overall: 3/10 ]
Art is amazing, that's basically it.

Did the leave an impression on me?
Yeah, as a big fat waste of time that amounted to nothing what-so-ever.