Hyouka - Episode 8 Discussion / Poll

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Cipher

They could have showed the blood on his hand just to make things explicit for the audience.

If he's the murderer, you're right. It's very cheesy, and the sort of thing that wouldn't surprise me to see in a student film.

The first scene with the internet chatting shows Irisu inviting "L"(Eru) and the rest of the Classics club, and before that it showed the issues between the scriptwriter and Irisu and Irisu seeking advice from a senpai(which, probably someone got right(Oreki's sister).) I think Kari-no-sugata's explanation is the most in coherence with the data right now.

I suppose. But to briefly defend my first theory, there could have been a conversation between Eru and Irisu that happened "off-camera"

Also, it's a lot easier to think of ways to make the hints fit who the culprit is than it is to determine who the culprit is through the hints alone. Kari-no-sugata could still be right, of course, but if so, that's really not saying much about the students producing this movie.

Also, you didn't see anything suspicious about the behavior and words of the girl who lead the Classics Club to the meeting with the three detectives?

[Reckoner]

Gee that movie was so crude it bored the hell outta me. They almost did too good a job at showing us a bad crude movie. I feel this show sometimes forgets the idea that it's meant to be entertaining. It's being over deliberate in its execution so scenes get drawn out much longer than they should because they fill in every single irrelevant motion in the work.

Still not a bad episode regardless, but I think this show has capped out its potential already. It's mildly pleasant and easy on the eyes, but it'll never be great.

[Upscaled]

Pardon me, but I have a lot of questions which I'll just throw out there, and so far, no answers.

Someone else may have already mentioned it, but isn't the title that flashed at the end of the episode, just before the ED song, a massive spoiler?

"Why didn't she ask EBA?"

As others have suggested, I think the true mystery is the weird situation with the unfinished script. There's something very strange going on between Eba, Irisu and Hongou. Did Hongou really write the script? Was the texting at the very beginning really between Hongou and Irisu? How exactly does Eba fit into all this? The title "Why didn't she ask EBA?" suggests that Eba knows all the answers. She says that she is a good friend of Hongou, so one would assume that Eba knows more about Hongou's situation than others in the school. What is her relationship with Irisu? If the "she" in "Why didn't she ask EBA?" is Irisu, why indeed did Irisu not ask Eba? Have they had a falling out? Then why is Eba guiding the Kotenbu members down the hall? She claims that she is not involved, yet she is, sort of, if she is the guide.

Also, why is "EBA" in all caps?

Just had a thought. What if the true meaning of the title is, "Why didn't Hongou ask Eba for help once she realized that she had written herself into a corner?" Let me speculate: Hongou and Eba had a falling out. This contributed to Hongou's stress, and thus her breakdown. Irisu came back from Hokkaido, saw the mess, and decided to fix things up by manipulating Houtarou into a situation where he would use his talents to come up with a solution to the script that makes sense.

[Hyper]

Originally Posted by Upscaled

Pardon me, but I have a lot of questions which I'll just throw out there, and so far, no answers.

Someone else may have already mentioned it, but isn't the title that flashed at the end of the episode, just before the ED song, a massive spoiler?

"Why didn't she ask EBA?"

As others have suggested, I think the true mystery is the weird situation with the unfinished script. There's something very strange going on between Eba, Irisu and Hongou. Did Hongou really write the script? Was the texting at the very beginning really between Hongou and Irisu? How exactly does Eba fit into all this? The title "Why didn't she ask EBA?" suggests that Eba knows all the answers. She says that she is a good friend of Hongou, so one would assume that Eba knows more about Hongou's situation than others in the school. What is her relationship with Irisu? If the "she" in "Why didn't she ask EBA?" is Irisu, why indeed did Irisu not ask Eba? Have they had a falling out? Then why is Eba guiding the Kotenbu members down the hall? She claims that she is not involved, yet she is, sort of, if she is the guide.

Also, why is "EBA" in all caps?

Just had a thought. What if the true meaning of the title is, "Why didn't Hongou ask Eba for help once she realized that she had written herself into a corner?" Let me speculate: Hongou and Eba had a falling out. This contributed to Hongou's stress, and thus her breakdown. Irisu came back from Hokkaido, so the mess, and decided to fix things up by manipulating Houtarou into a situation where he would use his talents to come up with a solution to the script that makes sense.

I was about to ask about the arc's title after reading other posts but you just beat me to it. I like your speculation. I am pretty sure that her slight hesitation before Eba answered Eru what sort of person Hougou is is a foreshadowing to something. Maybe Eba is a Houtarou-type person? She already solve everything about the movie but doesn't want to be involved somehow? But then, why?

I'd prefer trying to solve mystery of how this whole affair happened, but I think we still don't have enough clues. The introduction of the three detectives next episode will be very interesting.

[FredFriendly]

Originally Posted by Cipher

I think your looking at this far too much as a real scenario as opposed to it being within the context of a low-quality school film. They could have showed the blood on his hand just to make things explicit for the audience.

And how would Houtarou think of it? Would he not look at all of the available "evidence" and determine what is and what is not important? After all, he is being asked to think like a detective, and that's how detectives think. There was certainly enough "blood" spewing out from under the "body" that there was no need to make it any clearer what it was by having some doofus stick his hand in it and zooming in on the hand. But I suppose that might just be the sort of stupid thing that would happen in a student produced movie. I wouldn't know, I've never seen one before.

Originally Posted by Upscaled

Someone else may have already mentioned it, but isn't the title that flashed at the end of the episode, just before the ED song, a massive spoiler?

"Why didn't she ask EBA?"

Perhaps it's just a play on words of another Agatha Christie mystery titled "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?"

[winhlp32]

Episode 8:

- Lots of shiny new characters this time around. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this reliable-looking person:



- I thought the movie dragged a bit. Also made me a bit queasy when they were moving through the corridors. But well, this is coming from someone who couldn't watch Transformers 2 without feeling the head spinning for a bit. But otherwise I quite liked this episode. Irisu has quite a magnetic presence to her, especially in her voice. The way she spoke reminded me of Senjougahara Hitagi in that she has a tendency to rephrase to herself whatever has been said to her.

- And she's quite cunning too. She seems to have intentionally use the word "efficient" to quell Houtarou's complaints.

- "settled the dispute between the light music club and the drama club". Oh Kyoani you.

[freshoutofthepan]

Originally Posted by FredFriendly

uck his hand in the blood did so on purpose to disguise the fact that his hand already had blood on it? Who would walk into a room, see someone lying in a pool of blood, kneel down, and stick their hand in that blood? After all, the culprit must have gotten some blood on their person or clothes, unless they also put on a mask, raincoat, and gloves before doing the deed. Granted, severing a limb postmortem (if that's the case here) would not result in a spew of blood, but you would expect some blood to splash around, leaving some evidence on someone.

Never thought of it that way, but it makes sense..

Also, one of the things that the the movie didn't show was which key corresponds to which room, or who was searching what room. If i remember correctly from the floor map there were 3 rooms on the left and right of the corridors on the 1st floor, and 2 rooms on the left of the 2nd floor, and 1 room on the right of the 2nd floor.

There were 6 keys in total if i saw it correctly. That means all rooms on the 2nd floor were searched, since 3 people went up, which tallies. That leaves 6 rooms on the 1st floor, excluding toilets. Two of the waiting rooms were shown to be unlocked from the movie as the group walked up the right corridor to the crime scene of the locked room. However, on the left corridor, only two people went to search 3 rooms. The only information they gave is that there was a broken mirror in one of the rooms that Yamanishi searched, and a room in a "similar state" which Takeo searched.

So it seems to me like the three who went to the 2nd floor have a more solid alibi than those two. Takeo seems to be leading the rest of the group on after the regroup, as he started by asking the rest about the conditions of the rooms they searched instead of giving his own report first, and then avoided a direct answer by saying that he found a room in a "similar state" to Yamanishi's. And then he gave the idea of searching for Kaito. If he was the murderer, he probably would not have the time to go back to search the room, and had to fake an alibi.

The results of the 3 who searched the 2nd floor seem to make sense, lighting and sound rooms probably would have old equipment lying about, making it unsuitable, the tool room (i think) Sugimura searched would have them packed in boxes or something. These are just assumptions though..

[Qilin]

Oh, my. This show seems to be back to setting up that tense atmosphere that I love so much.

Now, I'm not going to comment on the murder mystery just yet since I have yet to try to solve it. As for the movie itself, I had a bit of a laugh at how amateurish the movie seemed. The erratic camera movements and the awful acting was entertaining in that weird sense. Sort of like Episode 00 of Haruhi: The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Part II.

Lastly, I should just note that something feels really off about the whole set up. As other posters have said, why couldn't they just have asked the original author about it? I'm pretty sure that some deception is at work here.

If I were to guess, I'd say that some kind of disagreement happened within the class that led to Hongou withholding the mystery's solution from everyone else. As such, they're resorting to the help of outsiders to finally bring the matter to rest.

[winhlp32]

Oh forgot to mention, but after taking a good look at the internet chat log at the beginning of the episode, the person that Irisu was talking to had a speech pattern very similar to Houtarou's sister, from what we've heard of her on the phone. Or at least, the speech denotes that Irisu was almost certainly talking to a woman. Plus theres the whole not being able to do anything about the time or place, which would certainly match Houtarou's sister's situation of being in the Middle East.

EDIT: And it would also explain how Irisu knows about Hyouka, since Tomoe knows from Houtarou's letter/phone call.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Qilin

If I were to guess, I'd say that some kind of disagreement happened within the class that led to Hongou withholding the mystery's solution from everyone else. As such, they're resorting to the help of outsiders to finally bring the matter to rest.

That's a very interesting theory. And it could explain the suspicious behavior of that girl who considers the script-writer her "best friend". She was a bit curt towards the Classics Club because she knows that their efforts could make the script-writer's withholding a meaningless effort - This fits well if your theory is correct.

[Lilith]

Ep 8
I believe that the author (Hongou) simply does not know the culprit because she stole the script from her best friend (Eba).

Also, I thought Irisu was chatting online with the place owner (talking about "time and place?"). But Oreki's sister is a better (and more interesting) guess.

Finally, my guess is the glasses-boy. IIRC, there were 5 keys handed in so one of them would have used the master key.

But more importantly, WHY did they cut off the arm??? I hope I'll find an answer to this.

[Flower]

Ep 8 was good as well ... such enjoyable and beautifully presented material!

8 of 10 vote from me....

I must admit that I lol'd when the discussion about who was what Tarot card came up though....

[Ruby Princess]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Gee that movie was so crude it bored the hell outta me. They almost did too good a job at showing us a bad crude movie. I feel this show sometimes forgets the idea that it's meant to be entertaining. It's being over deliberate in its execution so scenes get drawn out much longer than they should because they fill in every single irrelevant motion in the work.

Still not a bad episode regardless, but I think this show has capped out its potential already. It's mildly pleasant and easy on the eyes, but it'll never be great.

The last time you went down the river's flow you said something rather different. Though I guess it's not too shocking considering your past experiences.

[NinjaDude]

tl;dr my musing on the movie mystery. I think Mamiko did it.

Something odd about when they were splitting up the keys, both Midori and Takeo took a key, but it looks like Jirou/Mamiko didn't take a key. Since Midori and Takeo both went off together, and came back together, and the debris blocking the passage between the left and right halves of the "closed room", it is unlikely that either are the suspect.

Something to notice is that Jirou kind of trips and falls into the blood, not that he is trying to place his hand in it. This way, he couldn't really be hiding blood on his hands.

As for the window, since it was jammed a bit before they finally opened it, it seems safe to say that it wasn't used recently. If it had been, then it should have opened without taking two tries. The trap door also seems to be shut, so the only way the murder could occur is for someone to had entered through the front door. This means that either Kaitou didn't lock/shut the door behind him, or that someone got the master key and opened the door, then killed him and left. This pretty much confirms it is a closed room (to me anyway).

Since there is no evidence of key swapping (the key by Kaitou's hand is likely the key to that room), then the only way to lock it was with the Master Key. The odd thing is that when they get the master key to open the door, they only have one key, not the ring of three. Normally, someone would probably just grab the ring, since they weren't actually sure those were the master keys in the first place. This leads me to believe that the culprit is either Yuri or Mamiko. Since Yuri seems more like the detective character, it is more likely Mamiko. Another strike against Mamiko is that between her and Jirou, there was only one key. In that case, they definately should have come back together, but didn't. I believe that Mamiko was the one who killed Kaitou, since she seemed to have knowledge of the master key, even though she shouldn't. and she came back before Jirou, when there was only one key between them, and Jirou was in the middle of checking out a room.

Of course, this means that Kirou could be the killer, checking out his room late and thus being late to get back, but I just don't see it.

[Skane]

Is it wrong that I find the opening scene the most fascinating? That is the REAL mystery folks. My take on it is that-

1) The SMS-exchange was between Irisu and Hongou.
2) The initial net-chat was between Irisu and... Houtarou's sister. She's EVERYWHERE, and nowhere at the same time.
3) Time laspes (see near-empty drink), and Irisu is now chatting with Eru. Notes how she manipulates Eru into roping Houtarou since he is her actual target, not Eru.

Houtarou is being played for a puppet by his sister. Dance Houtarou, dance.

Cheers.

[Hyper]

I think it should be mentioned here to help solving the mystery within the movie. Here's the link to the maps from the novel, translated (by Kinny Rindle @Baka-tsuki.) I'll keep it a link just in case. This is nothing but the map, so I hope I don't break any rule.

http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/in..._-_004-005.jpg

[don_Durandal]

Note that we did see a key in the room with the corpse, next to the severed hand. However there is nothing that confirms this is the room's actual key. The murderer could have left his original key there and closed the door with the dead's key.

[freshoutofthepan]

Or the original key that the victim took could have been the key to one of the control rooms, from the baka-tsuki map Hyper linked. The movie doesn't explicitly show the labels on those keys..he could have been knocked out after opening one of the control rooms, then shifted to the locked room at the end of the hall..

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by Ruby Princess

The last time you went down the river's flow you said something rather different. Though I guess it's not too shocking considering your past experiences.

Elaborate please? '

I have no idea what you're trying to say.

[OceanBlue]

Originally Posted by Lilith

Ep 8
I believe that the author (Hongou) simply does not know the culprit because she stole the script from her best friend (Eba).

That's actually a really interesting idea and makes a lot of sense as far as everything goes. In that case, when Irisu told Hongou that things wouldn't go the way she planned, she would've meant that Hongou wouldn't have gotten the credit for the script like she had wanted. It would also explain why Irisu hasn't asked Hongou who the killer is.