hyouka 8
Categories: episodic review, hyouka
Tagged: hyouka
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Hyouka is disappointing. Frustratingly so. It has all the tools to be a great series, but it lacks one important thing: any semblance of an interesting plot. Look, the threshold isn’t high. There just needs to be some semblance of a plot that keeps my attention and, more importantly, keeps me caring about the characters. I don’t care what the plot is… Houtarou dealing with his blossoming feelings for Chitanda? Satoshi framed for a crime? Chitanda kidnapped by a far, far more sinister organization than the RIAA/MPAA, and Houtarou needs to solve mysteries to save her? There needs to be something. Anything.
Maybe Kyoto thought, “Hey, we made Nichijou and K-On!… we don’t need no stickin’ plot!” Well, K-On! had at least a semblance of a plot. It had character development. It had actual events (Ritsu’s date with Mugilicious, going to the music festival, preparing for the school festival, graduation) that made the audience care about the characters. We’re not talking caring about Daenerys and her dragons level of involvement… we need at least a minimal amount. Hyouka has none. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
(Nichijou had some fantastic plotlines and development… from Nano wanting to be more human, to Professor’s loneliness, to Yuko being trolled, to “EHHHHHHHH?!”)
The root of the problem is the lame mysteries. They are silly and, mostly, inconsequential in that almost all of them could be solved by asking someone. This recent mystery? They don’t want to ask the girl who wrote the story because she’s sick? She’s so sick that she can’t answer an SMS, or you can’t root through your Dropbox? I don’t mind silly mysteries, but at least have mysteries that aren’t, “Hey, if we ask this person, it would be solved” type. The whole thing with the uncle (which spanned over five episodes) could have been solved if the Scooby gang just asked the librarian lady right off the bat. There needs to be more interesting mysteries– I understand if the author wants to have low calories mysteries, but at least put some work into them. Having mysterious mysteries because someone doesn’t want to talk to someone is lame.
(And with this episode, we can settle the whole time period thing. Somewhat modern Japanese cell phone? Projector capable of 16:9? This has to be at least mid to late 2000s.)
How can the show be fixed? Better mysteries. Everything else is there. More interesting, more developed, less asinine, and more stakeful mysteries. And if we can get some character development from Satoshi (evolving from MySQL to Siri) or Chitanda (realizing Houtarou has the hots for her), it would be cream cheese.
6 Responses to “hyouka 8”
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The anime is set in 2012 while the novel was set in 2000.
This was already stated during the uncle arc because the student protest happened “45 years ago, in 1967”. In the novel instead the accident involving uncle Jun happened 33 years ago.
I don’t know why KyoAni felt the need to actualize the events.
Concerning this episode, I am actually interested in learning who the culprit is. At least it’s a better mistery than “why did the math teacher mistake his classes”…
Kyoto Animation: A production company that will go through great lengths to animate the most realistic and technically deft presentation of paint drying ever seen. Problem is, no matter how amazing the production, you are still watching paint dry.
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Please, please oh please stop the with the inane and go back to Full Metal Panic!
I think that if one walks into Hyouka expecting a mystery series they will be severely disappointed. Houtarou is no Sherlock and he won’t be chasing down any criminals. He is more the Mycroft, lounging about at the Diogenes Club, wondering whether life is more interesting outside but never really that motivated to find out.
The character development we have right now is awfully introductory; since we see everything from Houtarou’s perpective it’s basically bits of things he learns about his friends. Specifically he learns new things about Chitanda, since Satoshi is more a foil and Mayaka is the everyman. It seems slow, I think, because he’s still observing nuances in her character rather than anything revelatory. To draw broad conclusions so quickly is one of Houtaro’s “sins” after all–pride–and it’s good that he tries to hold back a bit.
I think part of the frustration may be from the lack of development on Houtaro’s part, or rather the one step forward two steps back thing. Sometimes he makes a resolution to be less damn misanthropic but he’s quick to slip back to his old ways. At the same time, it’d be cheap (and a betrayal of Houtaro’s own values) to have him just change personalities so easily, and with most of the season left there’s still plenty of room for exploration.
Almost all mysteries could in fact be solved by asking one person; the culprit ;)
It was pointed out in another blog, but the reason why they kept the year as 1967 is because that was when the book, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” was published (check it out on Wikipedia). Get it? “I Scream”?
The various phrases in the eyecatches are also book references. The Niece(Eru) of Time(Uncle’s past) being a blatant reference to “The Daughter of Time”, where it parallels how Houtarou deconstructs the anthologies bias and extracts the truth of the past.
KyoAni are notorious for their insane (the “Are you kidding me?” kind) levels of date/subject references.
Cheers.
I wonder if Satoshi’s memory of how Irisu-sempai settled the dispute between the “Light Music Club” and the “Drama Club” is from the book, or from KyoAni’s past works?