Quote:
Originally Posted by Arabesque
On this episode ... honestly, I find myself left speechless thanks to this show. Even now, with a single episode left, it manages to throw some pretty damn hard punches at me and yank my heart strings so violently in ways I didn't think would affect me.
Speaking of, Houtarou manages to show another side of him, even this late into the show. It does look like seeing Eru so distressed had affected him deep down as well, and I thought he might have seriously punched Satoshi (I actually thought he Chitanda was going to slap him when he graped her hand, only to be surprised by her tears). Boy, for some reason I kept on thinking that things were about to get physical throughout the episode from how intense it all was.
I'm going to miss this show a lot  |
I think Hyouka subverts the anime model in an interesting way by having the girls be mostly the ones who drive the plot, and the boys the ones with the more well-developed character arcs and complicated issues. It's always been most obvious to me with Satoshi, but Houtarou has had a tremendous amount of development, though it's quite gradual and subtle.
This is a series that can make other anime look really amateurish by comparison when it goes all-out. Fantastic episode. I think people should look beyond simply hating on Satoshi for hurting Mayaka's feelings and Houtarou for hiding the facts, and dig into the deeper psychological issues involved. Hyouka is a very unconventional anime, and it needs to be analyzed with the same nuance that goes into its writing.