[Aquifina]

For me, Hyouka is slice-of-life anime at its best, dealing with serious themes while not having to resort to a dramatic setting, such as supernatural powers or war to move character development along. Indeed, even the primary plot of devices of mysteries in general involved relatively day-to-day problems, unlike something like Case Closed where murders are being involved.

For me, Oreki's character drives the show along, and he serves as one of the more appealing anime leads I've seen in a while. Unlike so many anime leads, he isn't burdened with some kind of terrible dark secret--he's just, well, indifferent to all things in life at the start of his show. He's obviously something of a genius, but the flip side for his astonishing capacity for analyzing any situation is his emotional dullness--which he himself realizes. Some of his indolence comes from normal adolescent insecurity, but much of it is just his personality. Indeed, during the chocolate episode, he himself tells Chitanda he doesn't feel things as intensely as she does, which is spot-on. There is something vaguely disquieting about this trait--it reminds me of the desensitization one sees in career EMTs/firefighters and police officers, who for the sake of their own emotional survival and the people they're trying to help, *must* become somewhat cold toward scenes of human suffering. It's clear that Oreki powers of analysis are related in part to how emotions affect him less than others, which helps allow his judgment to be not clouded by emotion. For the most part, he even lacks the egotism and pride that goes with genius, and which can cloud judgment in even the most brilliant.

But Oreki is anything but a robot, and his attempt to live by his emotional hard-wiring (low-energy living) is the kind of seemingly cool but lame solution a teenager would come up with. It's hardly a way for any person to live his life, much less reach the potential he has for doing great and good things in the world. Indeed, while Satoshi describes himself a database who can draw no conclusions, Oreki is the genius with neither muse nor purpose--a supercomputer devoted entirely to minimizing its own electricity consumption, as opposed to finding cures for cancer or inventing cold fusion *or running a family business).

While Oreki represents cold reason at its best, Chitanda is all about the innocent delight of discovery and pure emotion, almost unvarnished by artifice or cunning. She feels everything deeply and intensely--true to both her herself and her feelings. She wants to find out the truth behind her uncle's story, even though she knew it led to tears. When faced with injustice, she loses her temper, social conventions be damned. She owns up to her responsibilities as President of the club when the problem of extra anthologies come up, despite the fact it isn't really her fault. When she tries to follow Irisu's advice to be more cunning and deceptive in her emotional registers, she finds the experience exhausting and ultimately untenable.

Gifted with a superior memory and physical senses, she cannot at all match Oreki's gift for cold data-driven analysis, empowered by his emotional dullness, but in the film arc she teaches Oreki the lesson that it is dangerous to ignore emotional truths when dealing with human behavior. Indeed, in the hot springs episode, she already teaches him a lesson about cynicism, when her view of sibling love is vindicated at the end in the face of Oreki's dreary views of the subject (which is itself false to his own relationship to his sister, who is clearly looking out for him). By ep. 18, Oreki has emotionally matured enough due to Chitanda's influence that he is actually interested in getting right the motivations of his old English teacher--and he has learned enough to empathize better with what his teacher was feeling when he saw the rescue helicopter on its way.

The two represent a tremendous pairing. While colder than most, Oreki is *still* a teenage boy, and he's clearly attracted Chitanda from the get-go, and by the end he's almost overwhelmed by those feelings. But it obviously goes far beyond this. At the start of the series, Oreki claims to be devoted to energy conservation, but the film arc shows how much he craves finding a purpose--and by the end, I dare say he finds that purpose. When Chitanda insists on him helping the mysteries, he lets her drag him along, partly because it gives him some kind of direction to a fairly aimless life. And her plea to him about her uncle stirs in him his fundamental decency, even if he does not have her passion for justice or empathy for others. When he accepts her request for help, he bluntly tells her he cannot truly bear her burden for her, not because he is a stereotypical tsundere, but because cold reason says that is the truth--but more importantly, he *does* help Chitanda and resolve the mystery of her uncle. And it is partly his coldness that allows him to see the true message behind the title of the anthology. At the end of that arc, Oreki finds that Seikitani's rose-colored life had its own downsides--downsides that only his gray colored lenses could find.

By ep. 21, we see Oreki that is still Oreki--still a bit emotionally dull, still coldly analytical, but someone who cares deeply about Chitanda, and about his other friends in the classic literature club. This lets him defuse the near catastrophe of ep. 21, defusing Chitanda's anger and guilt with the sort of ruthless but necessary lie Chitanda could never come up with, while covering up Satoshi's failure of courage. But in his confrontation of Satsoshi afterwards, we see both his scruples toward Chitanda (fulfilling his promise to get the chocolate to him), and an actual moment of real anger on her behalf. But like any real friend, he in the end recognizes that none of us are perfect.

By ep. 22, we see an Oreki that has gone from perceived slacker to being praised by a distinguished elder for having his act together. He nearly passes out from his curiosity at Chitanda's appearance, and acts like a lovesick puppy. But he's still Oreki of the constant frown, processing everything around him with the cold instrument of reason. And Chitanda shows in full force the burden of her responsibilities, laying it all out for Oreki to see. In the end, Oreki can't truly say what he feels--it's a bridge too far for him still, but he has the sagacity to realize better why Satoshi did what he did. Most importantly, Chitanda has more than an inkling of the truth--in some ways she knows Oreki better than he knows himself (her comment in ep. 19 that he rarely thinks about exactly how he solves cases speaks volumes)--and I think his blush and lame reply about the weather is all she needs to know what he really feels. Combined with the gorgeous scene, where Nature itself seems to ratify the pairing, I found myself happy with the ending, giving us plausible relationship and character development, with more than enough closure, and enough left to the imagination.

As for Chitanda, another comment I'd add is that the writers pulled off something very difficult in my view--they combined huge, cataclysmic amounts of moe with real depth and seriousness. This starts as early as the Seikitani arc, continues with her emotional introspection in ep. 6, followed by a little flirtatiousness on her part in ep. 7 at the hot springs, followed by the film arc, where she teaches Oreki something about emotions, and the festival arc, where while not being moe, we see her strive to fulfill her leadership responsibilities. In the end, only Oreki's ruthlessness solves the problems of the anthologies, but at the end of the series, we know that Chitanda learns some hard lessons about her own gaps in competence during the arc. In 18, she sees manifest signs of Oreki's own emotional development, and a dating arc of sorts follows, with Chitanda displaying some serious feminine cunning. In ep. 21, we see the depth of her commitment to her friends, and in ep. 22, we see Chitanda not as a cute, child-like girl overflowing with moe, but as a responsible young woman talking seriously about her family and her future with the young man she's in love with.

At this point, I'm sure whoever's read this far is exhausted, and I'm exhausted with writing, but I'll make obligatory (but brief) comments on the tremendous animation and supporting characters--not only Satoshi and Mayaka, but also Tomoe and Irisu. And I think it should be pointed out that some of the mysteries themselves have serious themes--sacrifice, heroism, and historical truth in the story of Sekitani; deception and manipulation of others in the film arc; frustrated talent and the festival arc; even the sad fact that while that English teacher had some hope when he saw the helicopters, his friends still died. But the series had a wonderfully positive tone, and these sadder plots simply gave it real depth and realism, highlighting all the more the sweetness of the ending.