What. An. Episode. Simply amazing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo
I think Hyouka subverts the anime model in an interesting way by having the girls be mostly the ones who drive the plot, and the boys the ones with the more well-developed character arcs and complicated issues. It's always been most obvious to me with Satoshi, but Houtarou has had a tremendous amount of development, though it's quite gradual and subtle.
This is a series that can make other anime look really amateurish by comparison when it goes all-out. Fantastic episode. I think people should look beyond simply hating on Satoshi for hurting Mayaka's feelings and Houtarou for hiding the facts, and dig into the deeper psychological issues involved. Hyouka is a very unconventional anime, and it needs to be analyzed with the same nuance that goes into its writing.
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I can't put my feelings about this episode, and by extension Hyouka, better than this. Well said.
At this point I find myself going back to the conversation held back in the festival arc, about what classifies something as a "masterpiece". Surely calling Hyouka one would be a stretch for some, but after this episode I can confirm that I find this show to be my favourite KyoAni work. Before, it was the Haruhi series. While I still enjoy a re-watch of that a lot, I find a lot of the initial admiration was due to how much of a "breath of fresh air" it felt when it first aired. Here the delicate and masterful weaving of nuance and subtlety is something that isn't "fresh" per-se, but is definitely a higher and longer-lasting form of quality, in my opinion.
That being said though, this was undeniably a breath of fresh air in terms of Valentine's Day episodes. Having my eyes glued to the screen doesn't even begin to describe how hooked I was. Can't wait to see how this ends.