Sorry about the late reply, but I've been sort of busy IRL
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Originally Posted by Triple_R
However, I have to disagree with you, Arabesque, on the 3-Episode rule and on this show displaying its main strong points from the very first episode.
I'm a big believer in the 3-episode Rule, and sure enough, it was the third episode of this anime that truly sold me on it. And I think that it wasn't until the third episode that one of the main strong points of this show was displayed: Overarching mysteries tying directly and personally into the main cast of the show.
Up until the third episode, the only mysteries we really had were small episodic ones, and many viewers found them inane, as you did. No matter how good the animation and attention to visual detail is, this is still billed as a Mystery anime (not just a straight-up Slice of Life) and so some people watching this show were hoping for good mysteries, so I don't see how that could be considered anything less than one of the main strength of the show (since going by Episodes 3 and 4, it may in fact have that strength after all).
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I suppose I need to go more into detail what my criticism of the 3-episode General rule is, and why do I think of it as being a myth and how this relates to Hyou-Ka. I suspect that my view on the 3 episode rule is different from the one you have (I'm talking about the trend of thinking that the 3rd episode is some sort of magical episode, not the one of giving the show 3 chances to sell you on the show)
I don't think you are wrong with the bold part. Certainly, for an anime billed as a mystery (or at least, having mystery solving as a crucial part of it's narrative and the character story arcs) this is an important point that the first few episode failed to deliver in a satisfying manner (I had described it as puzzle solving that you might find in the early parts of a Professor Layton game). So yes, we did finally get what was the first tangible hint to something more mystery-like than what we had already (even though we didn't get into that until the 4th episode actually, and the 3rd episode was still a rather trivial puzzle as well) but yes, we did get our first look into what amounted to something bigger.
That said, the impression I got from you was that you had already been waiting for this to show up, a final piece to make you more sold on to the show. I know that I'm pretty similar in how I viewed this show. I already had more than enough reasons to like this show and be sold on it, as you put it. The visual aspect was top notch, the attention to details in it as well as the animation mesmerizing and fluid and the imaginative quality to the flashbacks and Oreki's daydreams shows a lot of care was placed into not only the production, but also how do these visuals tie into the story and how much do they tell us about the lead and the story without the usage of any additional dialogue.
By the time episode 3 rolled along, we had already got the push we needed to be sold on the trip fully, the promise of a larger mystery in store.
But that wasn't the episode that was meant to tie things together. That wasn't the conclusion the story was heading towards for this arc, nor was it paced so we'd be satisfied by what we got in that episode. The finale of this first arc was on episode 5, the episode where everything was meant to be revealed, where all the hints we had gotten via either the visuals (e.g. The female Librarian), dialogue (about Eru's ''family circumstances'') or the red hearings about the case (was the Uncle dishonored? etc.) and where we were meant to be truly sold on this anime.
The way Hyouka had been structured for this first arc was that we got about 4 episodes where the show gradually got more and more involving (intentionally) and where we were meant to be thinking about the mystery before the 5th final episode capped it off. we might have been sold on the show prior to that, but it wasn't designed to have it's third episode being the ''one'' where it was intended to change peoples thoughts about the series, or that it was of a completely different quality from the first 2 (it wasn't, it was in fact quite similar in that it had great visuals, and a rather trivial puzzle like the first two). Things didn't truly kick off until the 4th episode where things started coming together, and by the fifth we got our answer.
And that really my problem with the 3 episode rule:
It assumes that every anime 3rd episode has to be either the ''best'' episode of the introduction or that it has an event that drastically changes how we are supposed to see the anime. The problem is that not every anime is structured like that. With this show, the first arc was separated into 5 episodes, where the 4th episode is where things started shifting gear. Other anime like Fate/Zero doesn't have it's main conflict starting until episode 4&5, and even then it took thing a while before things got going. Steins;Gate didn't truly start until until the mid way point, and if you think about it, the first 3 episodes didn't show much of what the show is really about.
That's the same here. I don't think this is the correct to view anime, since each show is paced differently, has a different time span for it's introductory episodes, and some take longer to take off, and some are quicker.
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Originally Posted by Triple_R
Mind you, the visual strengths of the show were displayed well from the very first episode, and three of the four main cast members received good introductions in the first episode. But that's just the good foundational work for what the show is actually about, imo.
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Now that this arc had officially concluded, looking back on it, I do think that there is more to the first 3 episodes than good foundational work (though that is very important IMO) It also gave us hints to what the situation was, allowed us to learn about the cast and get to know them better before going into what was the first true case of the club. I think that I appreciate it now a lot more now that I re-watch it after learning of the conclusion of this arc, and I can see that a lot of thought went into constructing how from the meeting with Eru to the moment everything fell into place with what happened to her Uncle.
That said, what really bogs this intro down is the inane mysteries and the lack of good immediate hook. The latter is balanced by the quality of the visuals and the show gradually becoming more interesting, but the former is still a sore point to what I now think is a rather solid opener.