Hyouka is not just a simple slice of life anime. It is actually chalk full of mystery. If anything it is a mystery anime set in slice of life. It follows the everyday club activities of the classics club as they solve seemingly simple mysteries in such epic ways that leaves your mind completely blown!! It has a way of making the simple complex and the complex simple and it does all that without making the viewer's head hurt.lol It is what you'd call a beautiful oxymoron.
The art is beyond breath taking, the music is simply fitting and the character development is done so cleverly and superbly!! You get too see more to the characters than their arch types. You see the darker side to Satoshi's happy go-lucky live-and-let-live approach and understand why his relationship with Mayaka has been the way that it has been since middle school. You get to see more of Mayaka than just the feisty tsundere that she is. You see Chitanda as more than just the curious girl who lights the fire under the belly of the classics club and you see Houtaro with all his genius grow from "energy-conserving" to finding his calling in life and watch him beautifully fall into it, with the help of Chitanda, who is both his Kryptonite and his salvation. It is delightful to watch!
Enjoyment is definitely a 10!! But I will give it an overall 9 because there is more yet to be gleaned into in this amazing work of art. I will continue the story in the manga and the light novel because they are still publishing. But as for the anime I will say that it was such an experience!! I fell in love with all the characters because they were all so relatable! I saw myself in every single one of them; the story because the story is well...life! and the mysteries because their epicness was in their complex simplicity! I cannot remember the last time an anime delivered all that it was supposed to and more as impeccably as Hyouka did!
