Charachters:
When you first get into this series, you get introduced into an kind of unsympathic main character. Houtarou Oreki is a typical lazy student who seems quite pathetic in the beginning. During the series you slowly see him evolving into somebody completely different due to his friend (if you can call her that), Eru Chitanda. She is his obvious opposite: She is a happy, optimistic and most importantly curious person. The character development is pretty good. There is a small romance between to pairs of main characters as well : Oreki and Chitanda and their friends, Satoshi and Mayaka. I'm not going to get too deep into their character development, but it shows some relevance in the later episodes.
Art & Sound:
This area of Hyouka can be summed up in 3 words: pretty freakin great. I didn't want to fix myself on this aspect, but during my run I realized, that these 2 things were pretty amazing. The Art Design and the Animation is very detailed and in my view quite beautiful. The Soundtrack underlines the atmosphere very well, but it could've been done better.
Story:
You could say, that this is one of the weaker aspects of this anime. It's PG-13 what basically tells, that there are NO REAL MURDERS OR SERIOUS CRIMES. For me at least, it was a huge bummer and a waste of potential. I don't intend to say that what the writers did here is bad or anything. But this series could've been much better with actual crimes. As said, the story, as it is, is ok and quite entertaining as well. I also gotta say, that Hyouka had the best School Festival Arc I've seen in a long time.
Overall:
Hyouka has its flaws, but I cannot deny that I enjoyed the heck out of it. My attention was fixed on Shounen and other anime genres for most of the time, so this Mystery type anime is quite fresh to me. The astethics blew me away and its overall presentation is pretty well done. Charachter development is pretty good.My only problem is the lack of actual crimes which could've lifted it up to one of my favs. In the end I can only say that I hope for an improved 2nd season.
9/10
