For a show about a group of teenage friends living a curiosity filled life together, there sure is a lot of understated tension bubbling underneath the surface of their generally cheery lives (Oreki excepted, of course). They aren’t saying it, of course—but they don’t have to, because the camera is taking care of all of that for them. [1]
I think…it would be pretty easy to despise Houtarou Oreki if you were so inclined. I myself may indeed be inching that way. As our warm-hearted friend Eru Chitanda notes, Oreki is not a nice guy. And that meanness, born out of selfishness, was on full display in this episode.
Any worries that Hyouka‘s first episode was just a fluke of goodness have been dispelled (not that I was really much worried about that anyways). Episode 2 turned in an excellent new character with Ibara, continued to add nuance to Satoshi, Chitanda, and Oreki’s characters, and episode director Hiroko Utsumi’s focus on body language gave us one big new clue to unraveling the true mystery of Hyouka so far—Eru Chitanda.
Hello, and welcome to Hyouka Saturdays! For the next twenty-one weeks, I’ll be watching and writing up an episode of Kyoto Animation’s well-loved 2012 show, Hyouka. I’ve heard many good things and been told many times that it’s a show I would like, so I’m giving it a go.
Hope you all enjoy the ride! If you haven’t seen it before, feel free to watch along with me! I’d be glad to have company~
Our time here on earth is limited. It’s bound by the inevitability of time, by the temporality and transient nature of human life. Our entire existences are marked by this unavoidable inconsistency—we change, the people around us change, our relationships with them change, and the world itself changes. At the beginning of Madhouse’s adaptation of Kugane Maruyama’s light novel series, Overlord, the main character Momonga finds himself dealing with the reality inside the virtual world of Yggdrasil, a MMORPG in which he’s spent hours with friends, building up a grand castle…a structure which now only stands as a wistful reminder of what once was.
This probably comes as not much of a surprise, but this is going to be the last blog post I write on Ore Monogatari!! I am happy to note that, really honestly, this isn’t directly related to last week’s burst of annoyance—that was simply the symptom of a deeper problem I’ve been having with Ore Monogatari!!, one that helped me realize the solution to the issue is probably to not blog the show anymore. Which isn’t to say I don’t like Ore Monogatari!! I really did enjoy this week’s episode. But there are shows that are good to blog and shows that are not so much, and it seems to me like Ore Monogatari!!—for me, at least—falls into the latter category.
Unlike the last few times I’ve been a been down on Ore Monogatari!! and not quite sure about how I felt about it, this time I’m very much certain in what I felt about the episode and why I felt that way. Hold on tight, folks. This is going to be a rocky ride. If you’ve been with me since my very hot-and-cold posts about last season’s Your Lie in April, you’ll know how much I find myself fascinated by shows that posses the capacity to simultaneously enrage and enthrall me. This episode of Ore Monogatari!! is very much the same—some moments of absolute brilliance, a lot of stuff that really got on my nerves. So. Let’s go to the beach!
Is this the week I finally get on the same page as Ore Monogatari!!?? After a couple of weeks of being kind of on-again-off-again with the show, everything clicked this week—and did so in a way that actually felt like my expectations and what the show’s goals were actually lined up for the first time in a long time. And, you know what? I kind of liked that. Oh, and the cute stuff. I liked that, too. Like THIS.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little unsure about my ability to blog Ore Monogatari!! through the end of its runtime. As much as I like it, I can’t really deny that there’s a gap between substance and depth in this show that was highlighted in this episode—plenty of teases at going deeper, but no actual commitment. Which isn’t, by any means, a terrible thing for a show like this, it’s just not all that conducive to weekly blogging.
In which I shed many tears over the genuine love shared between a couple of friends.
So, wow. Yeah. That episode was phenomenal. Easily the best 25 minutes Ore Monogatari!! has done all season. Definitely among the best episodes of the season. Subtle, adorable, melancholic, touching. Special. I’ve cried over Suna moments before, but this…this was something else entirely.
Mage in a Barrel 