Ultimately, I think Hyouka is a show about what happens when people run into each other, meet each other, talk to each other, get in each others’ way, and—finally—change each other. It’s never a graceful process and sometimes it can be annoying and hard, but so much of the people we become comes from the people with whom we have contact.
This episode of Hyouka is about that.
How many different narrative threads does KimiUso think it can handle at once?
I’d be lying if I said I’m a little ambivalent about the introduction of Hiroko’s new student, Nagi. We’ve already got plenty of different stories going on in this show right now with most of our mainstay characters in some sort of flux, so to have an entirely new character introduced…well, it both excites me and irritates me. I like Kousei, Tsubaki, Watari, Kaori, Takeshi, and (former Best Girl) Emi quite a lot, so taking more time away from them to spend it on another character makes me wonder if we’re ever going to actually deal with everyone else’s storylines.
So, I realized that, as far behind as I was, if I tried to write individual posts for these episodes I would never ever ever catch up. I’m also not sure I could really make full episode posts out of each of these episode (14, I could have, I think), so it’s nice to be able to just focus on a few moments from each and then move on to the next one. In any case, we’ll be back on schedule next week. Woo!
Ah, yes, the Kitamura Goes Crazy arc. I remembered that this happened, but, as predicted, I’ve forgotten pretty much everything about how the events of the plot go. Kitamura’s issues aside (because they don’t really get revealed in this episode anyways), the biggest note for me here is how radically thoughtful Taiga has become in the days after the culture festival. It’s as if, after deciding she didn’t need support herself, she’s determined to support others instead. Of course, the lovely irony is that Ryuuji is always there, as if invisible, supporting her.
Mage in a Barrel 