I attended high school way before cell phones and instant connectivity became the rage. All of us had to keep in touch the hard way. This also meant that information wasn't readily available as it is nowadays. Wikipedia was in its infancy, Orkut had just been launched and memes were virtually unknown. At that time and age, urban legends were the rage. People always had an uncle working for Nintendo and just about everyone had a "friend of a friend" feed tham sweet rumours.
For example "You see that school watchman with his eye bandaged, rumor has it that one of the seniors wanted to steal the exam question papers last night and there was a fist fight and the watchman fought single handedly against 6 seniors" or "The computer room has a potrait painting where the eye follows you as you move"
Now some of these rumors were really silly and you knew right away it was fake (when the 100th guy tells you of his uncle at Nintendo you kinda figure something is off) but others became legends and were passed down from generation to generations as gospel truth. Some others were genuinely mysterious and made you think and try to come up with logical (mostly fictional) reasonings.
Why do I bring all this up? Because Hyouka embodies my school life like no other anime I have seen before or since. It doesn't concern itself with character growth (while there is some, it isn't the focus) nor does it really delve deep into romance. It is classified as mystery but its not detective anime mystery but rather high school urban legend mystery. It takes a look at how school myths and legends are immortalized and manages to spread some rumors of its own during the course of its 22 episodes. Its highly enjoyable to me because I can actually picture myself attending this school and not feel out of place which is more than I can say for other anime in high school. The mysteries themselves end of being trivial/unimportant things when explained but that is the point. In school we do not see murders/ghosts (I hope) However our boundless imagination and energy combine to make us misinterpret a signal and we start spinning our own tales. When Hyouka presented the mystery of a bunch of high school girls all took out the same book under mysterious circumstances, the school kid in me threw logic out of the window and insisted that Witchcraft/Necromancy was involved somehow.
For me ultimately, this is the best kind of escapism. Presenting a world which I look back with rose colored glasses and adding some more of those myths, legends and mysteries which made it so endearing in the first place. I watched the 22 episodes and while I liked the ending and the closure, I hungered for more. Give me more mysteries, more urban legends, more myths, more gossip and more rumors.
You will realize that I have rambled on for so long and I have barely touched on the characters, story, sound and animation. Frankly I do not want to write anything more than say they were all great. It isn't just a gimmick anime either. There are deep themes of being a loner, price of being a genius and how normal kids view child prodigies explored as well. Overall I would say just watch it.
As a 90s kid growing up, I am probably gonna sound older than I am when I say, "those were the days" and Hyouka took me right back there. One of my favorites.
