Hyouka
Review
Hyouka is about a guy named Houtarou who spends his time unwillingly solving inconsequential mysteries. He does it at the behest of Chitanda who is very curious.
It’s a fairly standard slice-of-life with mystery elements. Although, it does keep hinting at supernatural happenings… but nothing supernatural happens. This came to annoy me more over time, but never enough to “ruin” the experience for me.
Some thematic elements also annoy me. Such as during the Juumoji arc, which is largely about talent… but since I fundamentally disagree with how they view it… yeah, I’m not the biggest fan.
The mysteries are fairly interesting… although I hesitate to call them “good” because a lot of the evidence is revealed last minute or after it’s solved by Houtarou, making them hard or impossible to solve (an issue I observe with many mystery series).
The emotion, characters and animation all keep it afloat though.
While this review may make it seem like I dislike the series… I do enjoy it a lot and recommend it. I dunno, these things just annoy me.