Hyouka Episode 1 review/thoughts

It being the first episode of the series here is a little synopsis of Hyouka.  Oreki Hotaro is a boy who doesn’t like to get involved with anything.  He likes to live an energy saving type of life style. Upon his sister request he joins the Classical Literature club which has no other members.   He does this to make sure the club doesn’t die. He thinks he will be the only member but he soon finds out a girl named Chitanda Eru has also joined the club “for her own reasons.”  Oreki, Chitanda, and Oreki’s friend Fukabe a boy who is a database for useless knowledge all become apart of the classical literature club, but there is more, a mystery awaits… 

Kyoto does not skimp on the animation; this series has one hell of a budget.  It has only been one episode and it has some of the prettiest animation I have ever seen.  The hair web art style with Chitanda is brilliant; it is exactly the type of animation I am a sucker for.  There is also a scene that I fell in love with where the characters are recalling a story about the music room and the animation looks watercolors.  I don’t think I have ever seen animation like it before.  I really don’t care that the first episode wasn’t that interesting and didn’t have much of a plot.  I was so occupied with the animation, that the show never seemed boring despite it being a very slow episode.

I also really love the character design.  Chitanda is the prettiest girl of the season and she has a great personality to go along with it. Oreki is pretty lucky to have her join the classical literature club; hopefully there will be a future romance.  Both Oreki and Fukabe are very interesting.  I like how Oreki leads a low-energy lifestyle, sounds kind of like me except for he really takes it to the extreme.  Fukabe is a database for the most useless knowledge, which should add some comedy to the series later on.

Episode 1 was very dialogue heavy, which may turn people off from the series, but not me; I love my dialogue in anime.  Hyouka is going to be 21 episodes (kind of a weird number) so there is no rush for the plot to kick in.  I expect there to be some more character development and some new characters before we eventually get to the plot.  The show has potential and should be interesting, I look forward to seeing some more of it.

Thanks for reading.

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