You have to start with the love and care that Kyoto Animation put into the making of this series, and this episode was no exception. “Spare no expense” is an obvious mantra, and it starts with things like getting top-rate seiyuu like Ishizuka Unshou (as Hanai) and Suwabe Junichi (Konari) to play relatively minor one-off roles – something KyoAni has done for the entire series. But as it is with the visuals, it’s not just about throwing money at the show – these aren’t just famous seiyuu, but phenomenal actors (Ishizuka-san especially is as good as they come). Likewise the animation isn’t just lavish and detailed – it’s art. It has style, and grace, and whimsy, and acts almost as a kind of second narrative running alongside the written script like a stream running next to a mountain road.
I often myself dumbstruck by an image in Hyouka – so much so that I have to stop and play the moment back. Sometimes it’s a capture of one of the faces – all four of the leads are beautiful in their way, like Platonic ideals of ephemeral youth – and sometimes it’s something simple like the residue on the bottom of a coffee cup, or a construction sign on an old wooden bridge. Nothing in animation can equal Shinkai Makoto’s films in terms of visual artistry, but Hyouka is as good as any TV anime since Moribito in this way, showing a “more real than real” world that doesn’t impress you with it’s photographic detail – though that’s impressive – but with the way it captures the essential beauty of people and objects, even “mundane” ones.
The Shinto ritual was depicted in heartbreakingly beautiful fashion (I especially loved the soft-focus perspective during the procession, and the 360 degree slow pan as Houtarou and Chitanda were walking together after the festival). The end was also to show Chitanda at her most ceremonial, dutiful and serious – effectively brokering a deal between two old rival villages now joined in all but ceremonial matters – and to give her a chance to give Houtarou a kind of declaration of purpose.
I wasn’t necessarily expecting a definitive finale here, but KyoAni delivered an ending that made the series feel complete. It demonstrated how far the characters have come over the course of 22 episodes, and how far they still have to go in their lives. When you’re 16 life is rich with endless possibility, yet you sometimes feel as if the weight of the world is pressing down on you, forcing a certain path on you whether you might wish it or not. In a sense I think Chitanda was confessing to Houtarou here, showing him everything that she was and will be, and letting him know that while she might dream other dreams, she’s fiercely proud of her legacy and means to do her duty to delay the demise of the old way of life for as long as possible. If Oreki was to decide to be with her, Eru wanted him to understand exactly what he was getting.
I never really expected Houtarou to definitively respond here, and he didn’t. But the moment in his mind’s eye when he did so by asking if he might be by her side to help her in her task was beautifully executed – believable, powerful and beautifully drawn. The mere fact that he thought what he did is a huge leap forward, and a sense that Oreki finally has some purpose. As for Fukube and Mayaka, we have no firm resolution there either. But we do get a sincere expression of gratitude from Mayaka to Houtarou for his help with the Valentine’s incident, and a new sense from Houtarou of just what Satoshi was going through – it’s not so easy to make that kind of commitment when the chips are down. If the ending left things open-ended, that’s as it should be – life isn’t definitive when you’re 16. It’s an endless array of possibilities that are both exciting and terrifying, and for a series that depicted what it feels like to be 16 as well as any anime has, it was a perfect mood on which to close.
Hyouka was the classic slow build, a series that showed more patience than about any anime I can recall – sometimes too much, in fact. Because so much of the series is about atmosphere, it wormed its way into the consciousness rather than overwhelmed – and it was only in hindsight, sometimes, where I realized just how amazing what I’d just seen truly was. It was apparent almost immediately that Hyouka was operating on a different level than most anime based on manga or LNs, not concerning itself with traditional structure but rather following its muse wherever it led, almost as if the stories were written as a stream of consciousness. Character development was happening, but it wasn’t being explained to us in unnatural monologues – it just happened, and we only noticed when it manifested in the way the kids behaved. That’s how people change in real life, but very few anime (or any other works of fiction, for that matter) are patient enough and trust the audience enough to allow the characters to grow in this natural fashion. Satoshi was the standout for me, the most conflicted and complicated cast member, but all four of the leads had very satisfying and substantial characters arcs by the end.