Hyouka - all of it
Wow. What an incredible show. Though most here have probably seen it and have already formed an opinion, on the off chance someone reading this hasn't, maybe my masturbatory prose analysis will convince them to watch this masterpiece!
Saying this show has "good animation", while correct, is misleading. It's the excellent direction and cinematography that makes it work. Canted shots are balanced by the serene pacing, the wonderful sound design, and the fact that everything is constantly bathed in soft, warm light, like living photography, so that despite the dramatic staging it's a really chill experience. As such I wasn't bothered as much by the slower first half because the moment-to-moment direction was so superb and relaxing. Even if you take out the frequent quirky visual metaphor bits the aesthetic of this show is unmatched. KyoAni have earned their rep. I believe that even with a smaller budget the only loss would be verisimilitude and not quality.
While the characterization is also excellent, I feel Hyouka is far more allegorical than it lets on, in the sense that its characters represent psychological ideas more than independent agents. They push the thematic center forward: in my view, it's the nature and representation of past time through memories, histories, etc. Oreki is introduced as someone wholly living in the present, without any sentiment or distractions. His worldview is utilitarian to an absurd degree and, worse than cynical, he doesn't seem to perceive value in anything. Yet the world of the show wholly contradicts him by being intimately concerned in preserving the past and developing the present into the past. Many of the mysteries revolve around methods of recording: video, newspapers, archived literary journals and so on. The process of investigation itself can be seen as the constructing of hypothetical pasts, and so in becoming a great detective Oreki must free himself from his dispassion. This emphasis on past time extends to the club members. Satoshi and Mayaka are connected to Oreki through middle school, and Satoshi repeatedly describes himself as being a database of memory. Chitanda is the most direct challenge to Oreki's worldview, by being engaged in these investigative pasts literally all the time. Meaning is then born out of these pasts, and the show conveys it through a myriad of subtle means: with Japanese traditions becoming the setting for many of the later episodes, with Oreki's relationship to his sister (his only displayed familial connection) developing, and so on. All of these forces are meant to act on Oreki and make him reconsider his utilitarian mandate.
In this sense, Hyouka is more like a bildungsroman than a pure character piece, or rather, it is up until the point at which Oreki matures a bit and the rest of the cast go from being a symbolic force for change into real, living people. It's a simple idea but it's delivered potently, with none of the character development feeling pressured or forced (they don't do a complete 180 with the MC's personality at the end of the show as if to prove he's "developed"). This intense unity between the nostalgic cinematography and the theme of remembrance is the single biggest reason why Hyouka is exceptional imo.
Even though it's more strictly a "drama", I think slice of life is a fitting description Hyouka since the average episode will take a mundane or trivial aspect of life and dissect and analyze it under the pretense of being a mystery. It's about forging meaning through the seemingly meaningless, which to Oreki probably is a mystery. Once that clicked, I didn't have any issues with the fact something like a missing book would be treated as serious as murder by the four leads. The individual arcs stand out too. There are a lot of clever things in the self contained mysteries, like during the festival arc the apparent parallel of Oreki making equal exchanges with visitors while the thief looted the other clubs, or the confused authorship stuff during the film arc. In fact the only bad things I can say about this show is that the OP/ED was mediocre and KyoAni eyes creep me out.
So yeah, even if I'm a shit writer, do not let that deter you from watching this show! It's convinced me to finally go through my KyoAni backlog.
I guess on to K-On two exclamation marks. Can I skip to the second season without having seen the first?
