_Hyouka_ episode 2: Kyon solves another mystery well. It's too bad that Haruhi let Kyon take her seat, and I was surprised to see Mikuru - what on earth did she do to her hair? It's so ugly! But it must've been some sort of accident because her personality has gotten much more poisonous than usual; probably she's envious of Haruhi's new long flowing locks of hair.
I liked the resolution of the first uncle arc in episode 05 (IIRC), which was definitely pretty satisfying, although I feel let down a bit by the anime - since they didn't show clearly the cover of the anthology, and I was left completely blindsided and going 'wait, that was a dog mauling a rabbit? I thought it was just a tiger by itself! And there was an audience of watching rabbits? I didn't see that at all...' - and by the fansubbers - 'no, I do *not* know what "Hyouka" means and so the explanation of it as an English pun on 'ice cream' is completely lost on me, a native English-speaker'. (I also wonder how consistent the world-building is: Oreki's sister orders him to join because there are *no* remaining members but in her phone-call, assumes that Oreki's been told the uncle's story by older members!) Episodes 6 and 7 are a bit tame and back to the 'minor mystery of the day' format; I don't know what will happen in the rest of the episodes, but pacing-wise, I wonder if maybe the uncle arc should've been left to the end as a final bittersweet sort of summing up the _barairo_ highschool days motif.
The more I watch _Hyouka_, the more I feel that the animation is simply being wasted on sub-par stories. I sort of appreciate the theme of using small mysteries to illuminate relationships, but it's not much of a payoff (and using a class movie really continues the 'let's look like we're ripping off _Haruhi_' streak of similarities).
It's a little sad that Hyouka's cooking episode was the best episode in quite a few... The last episodes of the school festival arc turned out to be pretty good and genuine character development for the entire club. If the whole series were at that level or the original Hyouka arc, I would have a higher opinion of the series.
When I finished _Hyouka_ and picked up the missing 2 episodes whose initial versions were apparently corrupt in my torrent, including the first school festival arc episode, I reassessed my ongoing comments, and decided I missed essentially nothing by starting with the second of the 3 episodes... and that I stand by my initial impressions. Great animation, good characters, the formula works well in some episodes; but: considerable apparent copying from _The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya_ & _K-On!_ (although since the novels apparently started in 2002, the borrowing may be the other way around), weak-sauce mysteries (episode 20 marked a new low of stupidity for the series), many poor episodes, arcs padded out (the festival arc would've been better with just 2 episodes), etc.
I don't see myself ever revisiting this series, and if I did, it would basically be to re-watch the first arc and the latter episodes of the festival arc.
