Hyouka – 04 Review

Episode 04 – Past Days of the Classics Club and It’s Glory

Right… So Oreki does it again with his mystery solving skills, but this time he solves it all?

I doubt it.

The show is bad… but it can’t be that bad.

Review

This episode was pretty much a speculation episode with nothing to it. Perhaps it has provided a basic foundation for them to continue their speculations upon, but I would presume that the findings in this episode is probably not going to matter by the end of the series.

The club has now decided that finding out the truth behind mystery of what had happened 45 years ago would be made as part of the official club activities, and this episode had everyone presenting their own speculations as to what had happened based off research/homework that they’ve done.

Of course, as with many stupid shows, everyone does stupid things and this episode’s stupid thing is that they walked away deciding that what Oreki had said is most likely the truth – that the whole thing was a boycott incident due to the cultural festival having been cut short that year. Yet honestly, I can’t believe that Chitanda was the only one who had picked up on the fact that the story didn’t explain the main key factor of the mystery – what had caused Chitanda to cry all those years ago.

Once again, the show had heavily depended on it’s animation. The animation styles used to present the data/speculation that each member had found was interesting to watch and had managed to deflect how illogical/uninteresting some of their theories were. I’ve got to applaud the show’s ability to make something as dull as researching appear somewhat slightly above being dull, but it was still boring as hell.

Usually I would say that “I hope the next episode would step up it’s game” but it is appearing quite obvious that the series merely uses the case from 45 years ago as a device to simply to give this Slice-of-Life series a focus and reason to even exist as a story. It pretty much reminds me of ‘K-ON!’ with how this show masks its main focus (the characters and their lives) through using the detective element as a way to bring the characters together for that one sole purpose without actually giving much weight to that factor (the mystery).

Oreki get’s his own “cool” deciphering scene occurring on an alternate reality plane
(At least no flowers are wrapping around his this time.)

And then we have Oreki… The master of mysteries or big fat liar?

From observing the last few episodes, we can conclude that Oreki is simply like any other detective in a detective series. Where Conan from Detective Conan has the habit of pointing things out, Oreki has a habit of twirling his hair with his fingers with one eye showing. *insert sarcasm* Wow…. what a cool and unique trait…not.

But you’ve got to hand it to him, for a lazy person, he sure has a very good ability to imagine and speculate based on the facts that are provided to him. As to whether it is accurate? Well, no one really seems to question it too much and he simply acts as a plot device to drive the story forward.

Then there’s his weird behaviour in this episode.

He had gone through all that effort of getting to Chitanda’s house and had even done his research yet he didn’t even bother to come up with an explanation as to what may have happened a long time ago until he had stumbled Chitanda’s room? Well, I never picture Oreki as being a person who did things half-assed. I always thought that he would either be too lazy to do anything at all, and if not, he would do it right. So this idea of cycling all the way to a location and putting in the hard work to research the past without finishing things off with a conclusion seemed a bit out of character for me.

Whilst I know it is hard to be original in this day and age, it saddens me that so many series are conforming to what the public would want to see in their characters without putting in too much effort to give those stereotypical personalities a slight edge above the rest, and this results in series such as this where all the characters have no unique personality trait that would appeal or stand out.

What this episode has definitely proven to me is the fact that even though the small and simple mysteries were not great, it did have its value and place in the show. Without those small one percenters (more like 50 percenters) this episode was definitely duller than usual and all we had seen was a bunch of people letting their imagination run away with them.

Episode Rating: 5.5/10 – Although I know that this episode had accomplished something, I can’t help but feel that nothing was accomplished at all. Also, whatever nice atmosphere that had been build up was constantly disrupted by mundane household stuff like mushroom getting wet, people being hungry or the group simply wanting to move to another location.

-ra

P.S: Was anyone else annoyed that Chitanda kept getting interrupted despite the fact that she was in a hurry to get the mushrooms out from under the rain?

P.P.S: The bidet in the bathroom was one of the more interesting elements in this episode. Can you believe that a bidet was something that I had taken note of as being interesting? And where did that weird draft that blew Oreki’s shirt in the toilet come from anyway? All the windows and doors were closed, no?

Question of the Week:

Boycott yes? or Boycott no?
How accurate do you think Oreki’s theory is?

I would like to think that Oreki’s theory is so out of wack and that it’s actually a murder mystery that no one knows of, yet. But if the incident 45 years ago was mainly due to a Boycott over a cultural festival, I might actually be bored to death by the end of the series.