Hyouka 1

And after a ridiculous amount of delays, mainly stemming from my own laziness, here's the other show I will be doing this season, Hyouka.

Hyouka is the latest animated venture from the infamous Kyoto Animation, known for various popular shows like Haruhi, K-On, and unfortunately underrated shows like Nichijou. First of all let me say that this show is very very pretty, here are just a few screenshots.

So yeah, this is a very pretty show, think typical PA Works quality, huge plus right off the bat. Anyway onto the episode!

We start off with our very unenthusiastic main character, Oreki Houtarou,  walking into school, he is surrounded by plenty of energetic students, laughing, playing, and recruiting for clubs, but he's not interested, he then buries the idea of being energetic, and clearly states that he wishes to live a "gray" life, so he's pretty much me, I like this kid. Flash forward to his class where he's talking who has to be his only friend: Satoshi Fukube, after a short conversation between the two where we learn Oreki's motto "If I don't have to do it, I won't, if I have to do it, make it quick." Satoshi spots a club application form in Oreki's pocket and wonders what's up, he pulls out a letter from his sister which is pretty much forcing him to sign up for the Classic Literature Club, so after grabbing the keys and going into the clubroom he walks in only to see...

Our beautiful Mio...I mean Eru! He locks eyes with her and she gives him a smile. So we get a brief conversation from them and learn that they were in a music class together once, but only Eru remembers. So after this our first mystery comes up, it's a typical locked room mystery, but don't expect Gosick quality here, apparently the janitor was cleaning the classrooms and Eru wandered into the room and somehow didn't see him, he leaves while somehow not seeing her and locks her in, kinda weak, but we do get this wonderful shot out of it.

Later on in the episode we get yet another mystery, this time involving a secret club, turns out it's just a really small note under all of the other club posters, yeah not doing the best job of captivating me here, turns out the whole mystery was set up by Oreki just to distract her...still don't really care.



Overall Thoughts: Godly animation, just godly, but other than that nothing really happens that grabs your attention outside of the amazingly pretty visuals. I do recognize that this is a very slow type of show, I just wish they did more to make me want to watch next week, and did I mention the animation is amazing?