Hyouka 5 (Rewatch)
And so I'm finally at the high point of early Hyouka. What an amazing episode. One should expect no less of Kyoani's SSS+ team: veteran Yoshiji Kigami directing, while K-On's ace Yukiko Horiguchi supervised the animation. This was the first (and so far, only) time they helmed an episode together, and my main question after watching it is: why the hell don't they work together more often!?
Kigami does pretty nice, solid storyboards overall. Not a lot in the way of fancy elaborated blocking or fancy camera angles like Ishidate or Takemoto, but they can really pack a punch, and when he does use those resources, it's always to great effect, like in the slanted cut of Oreki and Eru watching the sky.
Particularly, now that I come back to it after finishing the whole show, I find this episode is really filled with nuance everywhere you look. Little things like Mayaka being the one who notices the drawing of Hyouka's cover and picks up on its meaning, and looking at it with the face of an aspiring artist trying to learn, or Oreki being the one that gets the pun right away, going in line with his shitty wordplay antics. They also foreshadowed some stuff, like Satoshi's later development and relationship with Oreki in this sequence:
Here we see Oreki "stepping" into the light as he talks of becoming more rose-colored and abandoning his restrained ways, and the reaction from Satoshi is kinda strange and given importance by the directing, with that shading, scene composition and the traditional same-perspective shot for heightened tension. Later, on the festival arc, we get a complete explanation of his motivations and thoughts, but it's nice that they were getting at it this early already.
Another thing that's really noticeable now that I know the whole arc of the characters is the way Oreki changed his attitude when the possibility of his theory being wrong was brought up by his sister. Yuichi Watanabe (key animator for the episode)
commented on something along those lines, but I think there's a bit more than just "acting differently around his sister" to it.
We see throughout this episode that Oreki has become invested into the mystery, and is constantly thinking about how Sekitani Jun's "super rose-colored life" relates to him and his mindset, particularly seen in one of the first scenes when he's in his bed thinking about it. So it's only natural that he gets upset and fired up when he's told that there's more to the story. This is a pretty good instance of character development, and it will show again in future episodes (particularly in 18): Oreki actually does get curious about stuff, especially when they relate to him directly (or he himself becomes emotionally invested in them). Finding out what happened 45 years ago became not just a favour for Chitanda, but something that had to do with him and his ideas about life, as is brought to foreground at the end when he's writing the letter.
There's something to be said about the animation in this episode. I think it even surpasses the animation for the opener. That's the power of Horiguchi for ya! Not only everything moves a whole lot at every turn, but the characters strike fun, varied poses, and make really nice expressions, displaying a more broad emotional range than in the previous episodes (although this was also allowed by the plot and nice script for ep. 5)
The animation added some great bits of characterization and created much richer situations and a broader, believable episode overall. I found
this shot to be a strong example; as the characters get caught off-guard by Oreki's eagerness, they become quite excited, and we see their urge to rush into the library just in the animation, and details like Satoshi forgetting his bag for a second due to the hype. I wonder who animated it, maybe Chiyoko Ueno?
Another notable thing was everything to do with the
young librarian, when she was reminiscing. Her characterization and thoughts were really brought up by the animation, and enhanced by the nice direction idea about herself interacting with the "flashback" in a sort of tacked-on manner that worked perfectly.
In contrast, her adult self's reactions were really, really restrained, and never deviated from that melancholic smile that shows a person who has already moved on and is left with just the bittersweet memories of the event.
The conclusion to the episode was really well done, it had more power than something like what was happening deserves, lol. The OST, the Oreki grabbing his knee and being exhasperated, the gradual realization by each of the members about what "Hyouka" meant, the quick cuts between Chitanda reading and the flashbacks with her uncle, the brief switch into visual-craziness mode with that powerful cut of the bunny being killed, the build-up by the OST- and at the end, the really nice trademark color palette change we've seen quite a bit already in the show:
Everything came together just for that scene, and now that I've rewatched it I'm even more convinced that it's one of the best sequences in the show.
Oh, and for what it's worth, Chitanda
gets a little glimpse of characterization, albeit it's through standard exposition monologue, but I guess they needed to lay on the :firehawk somewhere lol.
I think I wrote much more than normally for this one, so apologies if it gets long and tedious; but I
really loved this episode
