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Originally Posted by GMT
Arguably, from a mystery-solving standpoint, the least-replaceable of them is Chitanda. Houtarou's known Satoshi and Mayaka for years. Before Chitanda turns up, Satoshi and Mayaka both regard Houtarou as a bit of a sorry git.
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Mayaka, yes. Satoshi, not so much.
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If there were no Chitanda, Satoshi and Mayaka, being mystery story buffs, would try to solve mysteries on their own and leave that useless git Houtarou to his own devices.
Certainly, Satoshi would make an excellent police detective. He tirelessly pounds ground, sets up stakeouts, and works shady characters for information. Mayaka seems able to fit pieces together, but she's a determined perfectionist, and for all her prickly snark, she's really quite shy. If Satoshi weren't so fabulously gay, I have no doubt they'd be able to achieve through brute-force detective work and hard-boiled gumption what Houtarou can through pulling thoughtfully on his bangs.
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But that's the thing - sometimes, brute force isn't just slower and less elegant - it just plains doesn't work.
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Now throw in Chitanda (and omit Houtarou.) Chitanda's chief mystery-solving skills are her incredible senses and her HYPNOTOAD skill.
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It works on Houtarou. Not sure if it works on Irisu or if it's just the fact they're friends. On the others, like the committee president or the newspaper president? Not so much.
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She can pick up on things that mere mortals can't. If we omit Houtarou from the mystery involving the school history book, Satoshi and Mayaka probably would've cracked the mystery once they identified what it was Chitanda was smelling.
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I doubt it. She didn't know what she was smelling, and they just weren't figuring it out. But yes, there are ways to brute force an answer to this case, so they'd have done it, provided they invested the energy to do so.
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Likewise, if Chitanda didn't have a cold on the day they were trying to figure out where the Classics Club anthologies were archived, she'd have picked up on the newspaperman's smoking habit.
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But that's the thing. She'd just have smelled smoke. She wouldn't have known what to make of it.
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Failing that, there is her way of motivating people by getting deep into their personal space and using her eyes on them.
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Most people just try to escape. That guy would have just kicked her out.
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So the addition of Chitanda would make Satoshi and Mayaka much more effective. Arguably, Chitanda is the only one who can really whip Houtarou out of his armchair. She's compelling in her curiosity, absolutely oblivious to snark, and non-threatening enough that she won't bruise Houtarou's fragile ego and send him screaming for his shell. You couldn't really replace Chitanda with, say, Irisu. Irisu would be able to use Houtarou for her ends once. The results would be spectacularly good, but Houtarou would make a hasty exit from the mystery business after that.
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I'm sure if she needed him again, she'd find some way to persuade him again. She wouldn't be the Empress if she could only use people once.
Ultimately, Hyouka's about all four of them. Taking any one away would change the story drastically, maybe fatally. (Maybe not Mayaka, though. What was her contribution already?)