Hyouka - General Discussion

[Archon_Wing]

Well, the OP had nice water effects and some of the backgrounds were neat. I kinda have a hard time thinking of anything else. But I'll try.

[Tempester]

Originally Posted by leokiko

Story? What story? This is just they going around solving little mysteryes on school so far. Hopefully, that will change, since there seems to be a reason for her to enter the Classic Club.

Well, I guess I'll be watching this for the animation and direction then, like everyone else seems to be. I don't feel like watching it this season though, maybe I'll marathon it when it ends. I'm not expecting much from it anyway.

Originally Posted by Dr. Casey

Wow, not even 10 seconds into the first episode and already this show's produced two of the most horribly wrong sentences to have ever been composed in history, that's pretty impressive (The words 'high school' to me usually bring to mind the words 'Thank God that shit's over')

Japanese adults have this ridiculous tendency to reminisce high school life as some kind of heaven on earth. Probably because the working conditions and culture in Japan are hellish, cruel, and boring to the point that it makes most Japanese middle-aged people walking zombies with little individuality and spirit. I'm so glad I'm not Japanese.

[AdamEndless9]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

blah.
Ending conclusion --- Am I seriously supposed to believe that Kadoakawa and KyoAni have passed off further productions of Haruhi and FMP for this piece of turd? What the fuck...
blah

You wouldn't even know anything about that.

[winhlp32]

I know what this show is missing - People talking while walking around in circles.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by winhlp32

I know what this show is missing - People talking while walking around in circles.

It has people talking while standing in circles though.

[Archon_Wing]

Well, I cared about those people walking around each other though...

[Tempester]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Our main character is some guy who apparently hates to waste energy, and does only what he must as quick as possible. OK cool, what a fascinating person right? No of course not. He's not funny, he's not charismatic, and his characterization is as flat as a pancake. What are we left with? Some dude with no scene presence apparently good at solving mysteries.

Only a culture like Japan's can embrace such an insipid main character personality to the point that it becomes a cliche.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Ending conclusion --- Am I seriously supposed to believe that Kadoakawa and KyoAni have passed off further productions of Haruhi and FMP for this piece of turd?

Yes. Yes, you are. Kyoani is an arthouse that doesn't give two damns about profits. You can see more evidence in their later anime for 2012, which doesn't look like it can gather a fraction of Haruhi's sales. And Kadokawa is just insane, completely off their rockers. One reason they haven't died yet from their maniacal decisions is because they own such a huge portion of the light novel market as a crutch.

Hopefully you've long stopped relying on Kyoani to deliver your awesome anime, because many, many studios have surpassed them in that regard.

[DragoZERO]

Wow... so much dislike. We've barely started. I don't even know if they'll continue with the mysteries or if it was just a way to show the girl's quirkiness. The set up has been done plenty of times and the character progression predictable, but... but... yeah. I enjoyed it, that's all I can say. Let's give it two more episodes and then give it a final decision.

[GreatTeacherKen]

It's a pretty low key opening episode, that's for sure. It's also not the first time KyotoAnimation has devised a controversial first episode; I remember quite a few people were put off by the first episodes of the first Haruhi series and Lucky Star, especially the latter. How this series will be ultimately received remains to be seen of course.

Unless the first episode is very misleading, it seems like this series will be very different from other mystery series like Gosick or Detective Conan in that the mysteries will involve a lot less murder , but I haven't read the original book though so I have no idea what's coming next. The animation and visual techniques used did make things look more interesting than they might otherwise have been.

I really like Eru's eyes. Guess I can't blame Houtarou for becoming entranced by them.

[Myssa Rei]

Oh wow, talk about having an incredibly low-key opener to a show. While I normally wouldn't mind having a casual pace (I love kuuki-kei series like ARIA and Sketchbook after all), in this one it felt dragging. The rather lackadaisical male lead doesn't help.

I will admit though that the show was very pretty, and Hotaru's eyes were... mesmerizing, but the former I usually said every week about Guilty Crown so...

[chrisbad726]

I, for one, enjoyed this. Sure it's a slow and dull start but I'm interested in seeing where this goes and how the characters develop. I do hope is ramps up later on and surprises us.

[Guardian Enzo]

Wow to the visuals. I wonder if KyoAni have topped themselves here - not a detail is out of place. Their attention to detail is astonishing.

As for the story, it's pleasant enough but feels very safe and somewhat bland. Casting is also very safe, KyoAni veterans all the way - and the male seiyuu are totally unsuited to the character designs. Sometimes I wonder if KyoAni is like a royal family that's had a little too much inbreeding, and would do well to have an infusion of robust, commoner DNA into their gene pool.

[Myssa Rei]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

Sometimes I wonder if KyoAni is like a royal family that's had a little too much inbreeding, and would do well to have an infusion of robust, commoner DNA into their gene pool.

The metaphor is stretching it a bit, but it IS true that they're a relatively small production house (despite their reputation), so playing it safe in some areas -- like casting familiar faces for roles in their series -- kind of fits. No argument from me on the show being VERY pretty and shiny though, but I have to wonder if it will be enough to keep people watching the show for the long run.

[rulfo]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

The visuals were not that spectacular. Yes they were good, particularly the background movement at times, but what about the high amount of static scenes of 3 people talking in a circle? If you continuously shuffle out nicely animated scenes with very static scenes why should I believe this is a better visual effort than the likes of EO7 Ao, Fate/zero, lupin III, Sakamichi no Apollon? KyoAni is not even that special in the visual department anymore.

Yeah because they keep doing good that it's not that special anymore.

And I think you're trying to categorize visuals as just one. There are many approaches to it. It all depends on what your tastes are.

If I were to contest, Fate/Zero were pretty much disturbing at times. Sure they got nice backgrounds and such, but what I hate with them is the overuse of 3D models. Not only that they stick out too much that it gets my attention. Ever seen that ep 1 of Fate/Zero S1? That 3D wine glass(or so it looks like that, if it isn't 3D then god damn it. It looks disturbingly bad.) was beyond comprehension.

Anyway I'm not gonna try and expect a mountain here. The more you set your hopes up the more you're geared for disappointment.

I'm not gonna say that the opening episode wasn't tame since that's the gripe I had with the first two chapters of volume 1. In fact I would say they successfully managed to make it not as bland as the novel. Now I don't know why they chose this, but I still think they've got a good reason for doing so. So I'll stick around with my expectations on a low-key since this title was pretty obscure and doesn't have much of a name to go with it.

If this were LB or any high profile titles that are adapted, I'd probably be greatly disappointed.

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

Sometimes I wonder if KyoAni is like a royal family that's had a little too much inbreeding, and would do well to have an infusion of robust, commoner DNA into their gene pool.

You could say that. Most dominant style will be transferred to new projects no doubt.

I've been praying hard they somewhat get a collab with other studios. Or get some guest animator/advisor into their projects. That'd give them some inspiration and learn something different.

[justsomeguy]

Is this going to be one of those shows where people just talk and nothing happens?

There's a certain charm to this, but it's probably all from KyoAni and not from the source material, and still not much compared to the other shows this season. I really wish Kadokawa will stop giving stuff like this to KyoAni, and make them do FMP and Key instead. SHAFT can handle material like this.

[Hiroi Sekai]

I personally loved it, beginning to end. There was a slight moment of "WTF?" when Chitanda's hair began to transform into the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but overall I loved that fantastic KyoAni atmosphere and the fact that it's taking the mystery aspect slowly. If they made a more intense opening episode, I'd actually fear its progression considering it's to be 21 episodes long.

Speaking of which, what an interesting number of episodes.

[Myssa Rei]

Originally Posted by papermario13689

Speaking of which, what an interesting number of episodes.

It's not entirely unprecedented though even outside of Noitamina. I wouldn't be surprised if the number corresponds to the future number of BR volume releases at this point, but that means there might be some extras in store for the series as well (if only to pad things out).

[Wandering_Youth]

Four words for Eru. Curiosity kill the cat!

[Skane]

Interesting first episode. Appreciated the twist towards the end. Wonder if the wild imagination scene was KyoAni's attempt at animating Hotarou's "Love at First Sight".

Too early to tell at this point, especially since I have zero knowledge of the source material, but... there were scenes where I wondered if they were being setup to be foreshadowing. Time will tell, I guess.

Cheers.

[Proto]

THIS THING WAS JUST GENIOUS. And I'm not even being sarcastic about it.

KyoAni has slowly become one of the best in the industry when it comes to creating interesting environments and ambiances. Not in the sense of the overall background complexity, but in terms of establishing a believable and easy to seep in environment that just allows the characters to develop. A masterful combination of the right color palette, the right camera perspective,super-b direction, etc.

If they get this right this might become one of my favorite series of the year. A series whose strong point is not the plot, or the characters, or even the ideas behind the series but the feelings and overall ambiance that it projects. Kudos KyoAni. Once again you've nailed it for me.

11/10