Review of Hyouka

First of all I must warn you, the cover for the anime is quite misleading. The synopsis too provides little to the fact that this is not your regular mystery with typical character. The story depicts Oreki Houtarou, who is, in all considerations, lazy. After joining the classics club of his school upon his sisters request, he gets dragged into mysteries by the overly-enthusiastic memberof the club, Chitanda Eru, mostly against his will. The series consists of small stories, and some 3-5 episode long ones. Story - It's difficult to find a proper mystery story, especially one with non-supernatural/school theme. The reason should be obvious, such anime wouldn'thave a lot of scopes to be built on. Most of the times mystery stories go overly serious, having organizations or large scale crimes involved. However, in case of Hyouka, this was not the case at all. The stories were mostly small cases, actually it'd be better to call them puzzles than cases.

As said before, the stories are mostly small, even insignificant stories. The puzzles are nothing of importance, no one cares. But it was THAT what made it so impressive. They did not try to build some deep, complex mystery involving something big. If they did, well it'd be simply unnatural.

Art -

Nothing much to say in this case. Good, fitting, the occasional visualization of thought was a good addition to the art. That's all.

Sound -

Not much to in this case either. The opening and endings were good, I liked them. In case of BGMs, the did their work of depicting state of the story well. Once again, good, fitting, nothing to mention.

Character -

The story mainly portrays 4 characters. Oreki Houtarou, with his motto of "I don't do anything I don't have to. What I have to do, I do quickly.", who has a Sherlock Holmes in him despite the fact he doesn't really want to use his brain. Chitanda Eru, as par the synopsis "The Embodiment of Curiosity", who keeps nagging Oreki if something catches her attention. Fukube Satoshi, Oreki's friend, who has a rather vast knowledge of, well, trivia. and Ibara Mayaka, a strict girl, whose role, well I'm not quite sure if she plays some unique role, didn't seem so. Apart from them some other characters pop up occasionally, mostly for the sake of the story.

The characters are rather unique, and it's their diverse personality that makes up most of the story's fun. So i gave it a 9.

Enjoyment/Overall -

Simply stating - I Enjoyed It. The small puzzles were fun. Not challenging, but I wasn't looking for one. The characters kept things interesting.

Overall, if your looking for some serious dramatic action/mystery or horror/gore/mystery, Hyouka is not what you are looking for. It is, as far as I believe, a mystery inspired from Sherlock Holmes, and toned down to School setup. Despite being a mystery, it has a refreshing tone, instead of the serious heavy atmosphere of general mystery. Which is what impressed me the most.