Hyouka 11.5 (Rewatch)
Yeah, this episode was much better than when I first watched it, which surprisingly wasn't too long ago since I watched it once actual HD was available.
This is a directorial debut in Kyoani for Rika Ota. So far she has only done four episodes for the studio: Hyouka 11.5 and 20, Chuuni 8 and Tamako 5. While I'm not too fond of her two entries into other series, her two Hyouka episodes are really something.
Little stuff I hadn't noticed before includes the emphasis put in how dominant Oreki's sister is, personality-wise. It ties into the rest of the stuff we knew about her, but it's nice seeing it live like that.
Not just how they're portrayed in the screen, but also the nonchalant way in which she decides stuff for him looks like it's normal for their relationship. I get he was depressed this episode, but still.
Another thing that seemed pretty obvious to me this time around was that the mystery was fabricated. Either by the three of them or just Chitanda, but it's not something that appeared naturally, it was a deliberate attempt to liven Oreki up by his three friends. Chitanda for example doesn't even feel excited, and she doesn't seem to know what to say exactly when they're asking him about the "mystery". Then there's also the mystery in question, it seems like they knew beforehand that deduction would be involved. If the task was just looking around the pool, Satoshi wouldn't say it's "Oreki's area of expertise".
The clumsy attempts succeeds, aided by Chitanda's assets and the influence she has on Oreki (both due to them and due to all the other things). It was a really nice episode to conclude this part of Oreki's character arc.
I liked how understated most stuff felt; even if the script was very transparent in constantly pressuring you with its intent, it wasn't bothersome and the direction, particularly the economic use of BGM, underscored everything perfectly.
The change of place helped a lot to portray this, and we're also back to super backgrounds!
Besides those two and many other BGs, the episode was completely stunning. I think it's among the best animated episodes of the show, probably, along some others like 5, 12 and 21. Incidentally, it had to be Kyoani's ace Yukiko Horiguchi who directed the animation. But not only that, she also did key animation herself along Chise Kamoi (a very good animator in the studio) and more importantly Yoshiji Kigami, Kyoani's master animator. Chise Kamoi was on top of the list, so we are guaranteed good character animation, but Kigami was also pretty high up in there so he must have done a considerable amount of animation. The rad water effects are mostly his doing.
One thing I liked about the animation in this episode was the relatively little amount of typical Kyoani cliches in acting animation. For example, a lot of the times the characters will bounce in 2 or 3 frames when talking and not make any expression besides mouth-flapping. Other thing they always do is little movements of 1-2 frames at the mid-point or 3/4-point of the sentence to spice some stuff up, even if most of the shot is static; they also many times close up on the face and obscure some part with framing, giving much more impact to a very simple expression that wasn't very animated or substantial by itself.
This episode did little of that (Hyouka as a show already does very little of that compared to Chuu2 and Tamako Market, but here it was even less) and tried to use varied movements and timings for how the characters acted, as well as keeping the expressions fresh. Some scenes even were drawn a bit differently for emphasis, such as this shot:
Were the drawing draws the viewer's attention and lays on what Chitanda was probably thinking at the moment. It was a nice moment with the good drawings and quietness of the screen where just ambient sounds could be heard.
So yeah, this episode was very well-animated. I can't wait to watch episode 12 as that one was also really good.
