Review of Hyouka

Hyouka is a mystery series in a slice-of-life setting, whose writing brings to life the little mysteries that appear in every day life. Compared to many other mysteries, the stakes at play are not finding the culprit of a murder, or a grand theft, but rather finding the reasons behind small actions. From the ending of an unfinished student film, to figuring out a random announcement made on a loudspeaker after school, the series explores many mundane mysteries but does so in an engaging and surprisingly intricate manner. This, while breaking the standard trope with mystery series of having a single, long-running mystery throughout thewhole season that gets solved at the end. In fact, the namesake mystery, "Hyouka" gets solved very early on in the series. What fills the remainder of time are little stories told day-by-day between the four main characters.

Regarding the characters, the way the show handles character growth is somewhat subtle. It isn't until well into the series that we start to really see major changes in characters, or explore more of their personality. This isn't to say the characters are flat: quite the opposite actually. We've got the energy-conserving Sherlock type in Oreki Houtarou, the bubbly and continuously curious Chitanda Eru, the so-called database with self-confidence issues Satoshi Fukube and the blunt but passionate Ibara Mayaka. Oreki and Chitanda, and Satoshi and Ibara, respectively, act as foils to each other. Their friendships (and more) are explored as the series goes on, and certainly hints at a lot of growth towards the end of the series. For me, this is one of the main draws of the series, and kept me coming back after each episode.

The animation and music as always are spot on, coming from Kyoto Animation. One criticism I would raise is that they didn't push the animation enough. Early on and at a few key moments throughout the series, there are shots that are absolutely breathtaking and almost dreamlike, and they are a massive attention-grab. Even so, they are few and far between, so I feel like more could've been done with it. Aside from that, as per usual, KyoAni does an excellent job with character expressions, giving them a very human feel.

My main criticisms that I would raise are as follows: character depth, plot conclusion, and relationships. For character depth, I would agree that at times it seems like characters are so grounded in their personalities that the same tropes get played over and over. For example, many think that Chitanda is a bit annoying simply because she doesn't really change her actions throughout the series, save for a few episodes towards the end. In that area, adding a bit more variety would've been a bit helpful. Given that the show is somewhat serial, obviously there is no particular direction that the plot goes, but even so there should've been a more clear end to the series. Even in the second-to-last episode, it's unclear in my view how the show is going to be resolved. The final episode, while gorgeous and having some excellent character beats, feels very open-ended and doesn't really tie up many loose ends. It just leaves a feeling of "that's it?" in my mouth. Finally, with relationships, there definitely is an implied development of feelings between the duos, which I wish was explored a bit more. This could just be me, since I eat that kind of thing up. However, this series is a mystery series after all, not romance. Like with the plot conclusion, I wish there was more to wrap things up with a bow.

Overall though, this is one of the more interesting slice-of-life series I've seen, and a very interesting introduction to the mystery genre, and I can definitely recommend it, despite its flaws. If you can't quite stay hooked on little mysteries though, this might not be the show for you. Even so, I had an excellent time watching it. For that reason, I'd give Hyouka an 8/10.