In this post I’ll be discussing Hyouka (氷菓)the anime. Those who have actually watched the 22 episode anime series should be aware that the title of the anime “Hyouka” refers to the magazine or anthology published and sold by the Classics Club in the anime. I am not going to go deep into the details as to why the club named the anthology “Hyouka” as doing that would be to discuss a major spoiler of the story, but again, it is no spoiler to reveal that Hyouka, or “Bing Guo” in Chinese (literally “ice fruit”) refers to the deliciously cold and irresistible frozen dessert - the ice cream. Hyouka is an anime adapted directly from a light novel. Other animes that are also adapted directly from light novels include The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai and Ore no Imouto, and a striking similarity of these animes is that they tend to have a lot of dialogues amongst the character to explain what is going on, and sometimes even excessive monologues justifying their own actions to themselves. You can hear the characters talk or having nonstop monologues within themselves without sharing it with others while carrying out their activities explaining what they were doing, chatting with others, complaining about how life is boring, or plain cursing others.Hyouka, just like Detective Conan and Gosick, has its main plots surrounding mysteries. The protagonist would be the one solving them together with the help of the other characters, usually his sidekicks or mates. However, Hyouka is not exactly the same as the two mystery-genre animes that I have listed above. I’ll elaborate on why I think so in the next few paragraphs. Firstly, would like to point out that usually the mystery in the story is solved by specific character who has a special analytical ability that no one has (except perhaps his rival), usually the protagonist himself like in Conan in Detective Conan, or a main character but not the protagonist himself like Victorique in Gosick. Hyouka is not very much different in this aspect as most cases are solved by Oreki Houtarou who is the protagonist as the whole story is seen from his point of view. Our protagonist Oreki is a self-proclaimed lazy sloth whose aim in life is to conserve as much energy as possible, and as a result does everything in the simplest way possible. As we can see in the second episode he actually creates false evidence and with them, come to a conclusion about the existence of a secret society for Chitanda Eru, his fellow female member of the Classics Club so that he “solves” the mystery and is able to leave school and go home quickly. To him then, he would want to just get rid of Chitanda. As to why he joined the Classics Club in the first place, he was forced to do so by her elder sister who was an ex-member concerned of the club being disbanded due to insufficient number of members. Oreki couldn’t say no because he’s afraid of her sister who practices judo actively, very unlike him. It is a good thing Oreki has such a sister or else, in my view, he’ll end up as a hikkikomori sooner or later (just like Sato in Welcome to the N.H.K) and it would be a waste of his pretty efficient brain. I seriously think that Oreki could join the police force and become an inspector, or even become a detective – which would be an excellent idea – after he graduates. Or otherwise he could also possibly become a fraudster, which would be utterly unfortunate. Talking about detectives, I still don’t like how Chitanda and the other girl Mayaka became the detectives while Oreki and the other guy member became the fugitives in the second ending video. A major difference and the ingredient which makes Hyouka stand out from Detective Conan and Gosick is the fact that in Hyouka the protagonist does quite a lot of monologue telling himself to save energy and ignore the curiosity of Chitanda whenever she exclaims “Kininarimasu” with her two big sparkly puppy eyes that shows that she is very curious and that she’d be sad if he’d reject her request to solve the mystery for her. However, he fails miserably to fend off Chitanda and by the end of the series actually voluntarily solved an issue which he himself is curious of, something he would not have done at the beginning of the series. In Hyouka the protagonist did not willingly solve the problem but was only persuaded to do so by a girl’s curiosity to while in Detective Conan, Conan willingly and actively assisted in solving cases on behalf of an incompetent detective whose name is not worth mentioning. In the latter anime, the element of justice is present, i.e. I solve this mystery/case because I want justice to be done to the perpetrator, while in Hyouka, the element of justice is… absent. The characters in Hyouka solve mysteries just to fulfill their own curiosity, and sometimes even ignored justice (this can be seen how deception is used throughout the series by different characters). But again, Hyouka’s mysteries are a lot more complicated compared to those in Detective Conan (or at least it seems to be a lot more complicated with all the explanations or thoughts by Oreki before coming to a conclusion or solving the mystery. Some people don’t like to think too much and Hyouka just makes you do that and that is why some people don’t like Hyouka. I don’t blame these people either because everyone has their own reasons in watching anime. Some just want to rest their minds after a day’s work and therefore would prefer animes like Nichijou or Azumanga Daioh which has no real plot. However, this does not mean that Hyouka is a tiring anime. It is a good anime if you have the time to think about the mysteries, and as you think about it the anime will be stuck onto you for some time. As a conclusion, I would highly recommend Hyouka to those who have the time to watch it, but not to those who just want plain action or comedic story that requires no thinking at all. I'll be writing about Yuru Yuri next in (hopefully) a weeks time.
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