Reviews

I see what is Koten-bu trying to go for – to show that even mundane things in life can be interesting. Not bad for a concept, though hardly original one. The stumbling block of this novel is just that – being mundane. Or to be specific, being too mundane. It’s not that the mundane things are told in a symbolic way, or that a hidden deeper meaning of small occurrences is discovered. No, it is portrayed as mundane and mundane it stays. It doesn’t fall into the “mundane made awesome” trope. The “mysteries” are wholly unexciting, uninteresting and I wouldn’t hesitate to call them irrelevant. Though maybe it would be going too far to call it irrelevant to the plot, as if you would take them away there wouldn’t be much plot less. So yeah, the very core of Koten-bu is simply… boring.

Now you could object that perhaps it’s the characters that carry the script, not the plot itself. And to this accusation I must unfortunately also respond negatively. Well, the protagonist is what I think carried the popularity of this franchise, but not because he’s a greatly written characters – rather because he’s one of the “OMG that’s literally me” characters. You know, the usual “lone wolf outsider but somehow has a social circle build around him” and “clever but doesn’t want to even bother with most things”. The kind of characters to which people would point out and say things like “See, I’m totally also clever like them, it’s just that I don’t use this power” and “I’m also lazy like that, that’s so cool” etc. I swear large part of this series' popularity is thanks to two or so quotes by the protagonist that keep getting reposted on the internet. See also Hachiman and Ayanokouji. The heroine of the story, Chitanda… well, compared to the anime she’s less annoying. But also, compared to the anime she isn’t as moe thanks to the novel lacking visual aspect, and being moe was one of the few saving graces of Hyouka. This results in her being just forgettable. The rest of the cast – even more forgettable.

Overall, to me Koten-bu feels like just another of works that are aimed towards people that didn’t have much successful social life during their high school and are looking for a substitute in a form of fiction, one where the protagonist is cool but the plot is more or less still believably relatable for easier self-insertion. And I grew tired of these kind of works. If you’re going to dream, at least dream big and make it exciting, not this mediocre bullshit. But maybe it’s just me growing old. Or maybe it’s just some subconscious tendency to feel “elitish” – you be the judge, because undeniably most people that read this so far seem to have enjoyed it. Whether it’s because it’s actually good and I’m unfairly grumpy or because people are simply not going to read novels that don’t sound interesting to them so only those already into this style of writing are reading this. Only one way to find out, and that is giving it a try yourself. Or just watch the anime instead, that at least has nice animation. You won’t be missing much by skipping the novel and only watching the adaptation.