Review of Hyouka

This truly is a beautiful anime and is probably the best Slice of Life series I've seen up until this point. Its artwork especially with regards to certain scenes is phenomenal and like most other potential masterpieces they utilize music to accompany the series really well. The character designs are also top notch with most characters changing meaningfully by the time the series comes to an end. With that being said, there are slight problems that prevent it from being a true masterpiece. The series seems to skip several months at a time between episodes to show character interaction during special events which have themost impact to the relationships between the characters. This seems like a good strategy, but a lot of the time it leads to a lot of loose ends between main characters and side characters that may have been resolved during the timeskip, but there is no way to know for sure. On top of that, there are a lot of questionable relationships/interactions between characters like Houtarou's sister for example where they know someone and it impacts the story in a way but you don't know how they know them or why the interaction took place other than it led to an event in the story happening. The final problem with the series is that you just don't want it to end when it does. Wanting to watch a lot more of it can be viewed as a good thing, but I think it's slightly detrimental in this case. The series ended 6 years ago and the manga isn't in production anymore, so that means that the series is pretty much over at this point. If a series is over, you don't want the viewer to have a sense of longing to watch more of it because that means they weren't really satisfied with some of the outcomes. In this case, I would say the unsatisfactory part is probably the romance factor in the show. Throughout the series, multiple potential relationships were developed and seemed to progress albeit at a really slow rate, but by the end of the series, it seems like almost no progress has been made in any of them and they are at the same stages where they were towards the beginning of the show. It just kind of leaves the viewer wanting more and honestly I wish that they would release an OVA showing the characters years later wrapping up this aspect of anime. This series really is a potential masterpiece, but it's just plagued by loose ends concerning character interactions, conflicts, and relationships that slightly hold it back.

Edit: Just found out the manga has started up production again. Hopefully that leads to the resolution of my final problem with the series not wanting it to end, but even so I still feel like the series is a 9 considering its other problems.