Dis Beauty

[TheNinjaNextDor]

Dis real music beauty:

 

[Fred Castellum]

Yea haywyre makes great music. However I don't think this goes in general discussions. 

[Ryan Leech]

[TheNinjaNextDor]

Yea haywyre makes great music. However I don't think this goes in general discussions.

Its off topic right?

Thats what it says for me.

[TheNinjaNextDor]

 

Hell yes.

[Ryan Leech]

Hell yes.

#hardcoreromanianfolk

[Fred Castellum]

Its off topic right? Thats what it says for me.

Dafaq I coulda swore this was in general discussion.... maybe I should get some sleep... 

[helping]

that looks uncomfortably close to a Hospital rec. logo.

[TheNinjaNextDor]

that looks uncomfortably close to a Hospital rec. logo.

I had to google it, but yeah it does.

[JLCitadel]

Yea haywyre makes great music. However I don't think this goes in general discussions. 

 

What anime is your Avatar from?

[TheNinjaNextDor]

Dis also beauty:

 

[Fred Castellum]

What anime is your Avatar from?

It's from "Hyouka" a personal favorite of mine. Liked it so much I decided to help with the manga translation efforts. 

 

[helping]

It's from "Hyouka" a personal favorite of mine. Liked it so much I decided to help with the manga translation efforts. 

goddammit I got b8ed so hard on the ending of that series.

 

...huh that's odd, that seems to be an open end suggesting a future relationship/marriage, why would they put that in episode 22, maybe th-

(what I thought were 23 and 24 were OP/ED, since most series end at 24-26)

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF SURPRISE ENDING 

those long titles and windows cutting them off, bad feels

[TheNinjaNextDor]

Dis pretty good too:

 

[Fred Castellum]

goddammit I got b8ed so hard on the ending of that series.

 

...huh that's odd, that seems to be an open end suggesting a future relationship/marriage, why would they put that in episode 22, maybe th-

(what I thought were 23 and 24 were OP/ED, since most series end at 24-26)

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF SURPRISE ENDING 

those long titles and windows cutting them off, bad feels

Hahaha I liked the ending, the stories based off of the "novels" full blown novels not light novels. The author's been working on the series for quite a while now. Apparently 60% of the story is based on real events. *shrugs*

 

It's got a different sort of pacing compared to other series, isn't overflowing with fan service and has a normal-ish feeling to it. There's enough content for a movie or potentially another season down the line. I hope we get more

 

The anime's mysteries though not very major, does make you exercise your brain. To quote Chitanda here "I'm not interested in the parts, I'm interested in how it works as a whole." another appealing factor to me was that Oreki was veryyy relatable, I've got a pretty grey life, the life of a hermit crab and I think pretty darn similarly to him, even down to the sarcasm. 

 

[helping]

Hahaha I liked the ending, the stories based off of the "novels" full blown novels not light novels. The author's been working on the series for quite a while now. Apparently 60% of the story is based on real events. *shrugs*

 

It's got a different sort of pacing compared to other series, isn't overflowing with fan service and has a normal-ish feeling to it. There's enough content for a movie or potentially another season down the line. I hope we get more

 

The anime's mysteries though not very major, does make you exercise your brain. To quote Chitanda here "I'm not interested in the parts, I'm interested in how it works as a whole." another appealing factor to me was that Oreki was veryyy relatable, I've got a pretty grey life, the life of a hermit crab and I think pretty darn similarly to him, even down to the sarcasm. 

I liked a lot that it wasn't fan-servicey at all. The Jumonji arc was probably the best, and the yelling teacher one was probably the worst, IMO (good thing it was short). 

 

I thought it was really well written with thought out, witty, and reasonable scenarios instead of crap like Deathnote and Gossick where it feels a lot like they were writing around an ending rather than ending a situation. I guess I can thank the novels and non-fiction influence for that.

 

They also managed to make Oreki surprisingly dynamic without being over the top too. Seldom does a non fan service, comedy, action, moeshit, or romance series go so well. 

 

My only criticism is that they left Chitanda kind of flat for the rest of the series, having 'taken care of her' within the first few episodes and then having her character as filler. 

[Askew]

dis beauty

 

[TheNinjaNextDor]

dis beauty

Ooh wow. Dat major beauty.

[Askew]

Ooh wow. Dat major beauty.

 

:lol:

 

I decided dat major beauty was too good.

[Fred Castellum]

I liked a lot that it wasn't fan-servicey at all. The Jumonji arc was probably the best, and the yelling teacher one was probably the worst, IMO (good thing it was short). 

 

I thought it was really well written with thought out, witty, and reasonable scenarios instead of crap like Deathnote and Gossick where it feels a lot like they were writing around an ending rather than ending a situation. I guess I can thank the novels and non-fiction influence for that.

 

They also managed to make Oreki surprisingly dynamic without being over the top too. Seldom does a non fan service, comedy, action, moeshit, or romance series go so well. 

 

My only criticism is that they left Chitanda kind of flat for the rest of the series, having 'taken care of her' within the first few episodes and then having her character as filler. 

The show really focused on character development more than the mystery's themselves. Chitanda doesn't seem to have changed much throughout the series but if you looked closely you can see the areas where her character development comes into play. 

 

You really get to dig deep into how the characters think, what problems they have, how they deal with it and how they change. That's what I find absolutely great about the series. 

 

 

Taken off of animesuki forums:

For me, Hyouka is slice-of-life anime at its best, dealing with serious themes while not having to resort to a dramatic setting, such as supernatural powers or war to move character development along. Indeed, even the primary plot of devices of mysteries in general involved relatively day-to-day problems, unlike something like Case Closed where murders are being involved.

 

For me, Oreki's character drives the show along, and he serves as one of the more appealing anime leads I've seen in a while. Unlike so many anime leads, he isn't burdened with some kind of terrible dark secret--he's just, well, indifferent to all things in life at the start of his show. He's obviously something of a genius, but the flip side for his astonishing capacity for analyzing any situation is his emotional dullness--which he himself realizes. Some of his indolence comes from normal adolescent insecurity, but much of it is just his personality. Indeed, during the chocolate episode, he himself tells Chitanda he doesn't feel things as intensely as she does, which is spot-on. There is something vaguely disquieting about this trait--it reminds me of the desensitization one sees in career EMTs/firefighters and police officers, who for the sake of their own emotional survival and the people they're trying to help, *must* become somewhat cold toward scenes of human suffering. It's clear that Oreki powers of analysis are related in part to how emotions affect him less than others, which helps allow his judgment to be not clouded by emotion. For the most part, he even lacks the egotism and pride that goes with genius, and which can cloud judgment in even the most brilliant.

 

But Oreki is anything but a robot, and his attempt to live by his emotional hard-wiring (low-energy living) is the kind of seemingly cool but lame solution a teenager would come up with. It's hardly a way for any person to live his life, much less reach the potential he has for doing great and good things in the world. Indeed, while Satoshi describes himself a database who can draw no conclusions, Oreki is the genius with neither muse nor purpose--a supercomputer devoted entirely to minimizing its own electricity consumption, as opposed to finding cures for cancer or inventing cold fusion *or running a family business). 

 

While Oreki represents cold reason at its best, Chitanda is all about the innocent delight of discovery and pure emotion, almost unvarnished by artifice or cunning. She feels everything deeply and intensely--true to both her herself and her feelings. She wants to find out the truth behind her uncle's story, even though she knew it led to tears. When faced with injustice, she loses her temper, social conventions be damned. She owns up to her responsibilities as President of the club when the problem of extra anthologies come up, despite the fact it isn't really her fault. When she tries to follow Irisu's advice to be more cunning and deceptive in her emotional registers, she finds the experience exhausting and ultimately untenable.

 

Gifted with a superior memory and physical senses, she cannot at all match Oreki's gift for cold data-driven analysis, empowered by his emotional dullness, but in the film arc she teaches Oreki the lesson that it is dangerous to ignore emotional truths when dealing with human behavior. Indeed, in the hot springs episode, she already teaches him a lesson about cynicism, when her view of sibling love is vindicated at the end in the face of Oreki's dreary views of the subject (which is itself false to his own relationship to his sister, who is clearly looking out for him). By ep. 18, Oreki has emotionally matured enough due to Chitanda's influence that he is actually interested in getting right the motivations of his old English teacher--and he has learned enough to empathize better with what his teacher was feeling when he saw the rescue helicopter on its way.

 

The two represent a tremendous pairing. While colder than most, Oreki is *still* a teenage boy, and he's clearly attracted Chitanda from the get-go, and by the end he's almost overwhelmed by those feelings. But it obviously goes far beyond this. At the start of the series, Oreki claims to be devoted to energy conservation, but the film arc shows how much he craves finding a purpose--and by the end, I dare say he finds that purpose. When Chitanda insists on him helping the mysteries, he lets her drag him along, partly because it gives him some kind of direction to a fairly aimless life. And her plea to him about her uncle stirs in him his fundamental decency, even if he does not have her passion for justice or empathy for others. When he accepts her request for help, he bluntly tells her he cannot truly bear her burden for her, not because he is a stereotypical tsundere, but because cold reason says that is the truth--but more importantly, he *does* help Chitanda and resolve the mystery of her uncle. And it is partly his coldness that allows him to see the true message behind the title of the anthology. At the end of that arc, Oreki finds that Seikitani's rose-colored life had its own downsides--downsides that only his gray colored lenses could find.

 

By ep. 21, we see Oreki that is still Oreki--still a bit emotionally dull, still coldly analytical, but someone who cares deeply about Chitanda, and about his other friends in the classic literature club. This lets him defuse the near catastrophe of ep. 21, defusing Chitanda's anger and guilt with the sort of ruthless but necessary lie Chitanda could never come up with, while covering up Satoshi's failure of courage. But in his confrontation of Satsoshi afterwards, we see both his scruples toward Chitanda (fulfilling his promise to get the chocolate to him), and an actual moment of real anger on her behalf. But like any real friend, he in the end recognizes that none of us are perfect.

 

By ep. 22, we see an Oreki that has gone from perceived slacker to being praised by a distinguished elder for having his act together. He nearly passes out from his curiosity at Chitanda's appearance, and acts like a lovesick puppy. But he's still Oreki of the constant frown, processing everything around him with the cold instrument of reason. And Chitanda shows in full force the burden of her responsibilities, laying it all out for Oreki to see. In the end, Oreki can't truly say what he feels--it's a bridge too far for him still, but he has the sagacity to realize better why Satoshi did what he did. Most importantly, Chitanda has more than an inkling of the truth--in some ways she knows Oreki better than he knows himself (her comment in ep. 19 that he rarely thinks about exactly how he solves cases speaks volumes)--and I think his blush and lame reply about the weather is all she needs to know what he really feels. Combined with the gorgeous scene, where Nature itself seems to ratify the pairing, I found myself happy with the ending, giving us plausible relationship and character development, with more than enough closure, and enough left to the imagination.

 

As for Chitanda, another comment I'd add is that the writers pulled off something very difficult in my view--they combined huge, cataclysmic amounts of moe with real depth and seriousness. This starts as early as the Seikitani arc, continues with her emotional introspection in ep. 6, followed by a little flirtatiousness on her part in ep. 7 at the hot springs, followed by the film arc, where she teaches Oreki something about emotions, and the festival arc, where while not being moe, we see her strive to fulfill her leadership responsibilities. In the end, only Oreki's ruthlessness solves the problems of the anthologies, but at the end of the series, we know that Chitanda learns some hard lessons about her own gaps in competence during the arc. In 18, she sees manifest signs of Oreki's own emotional development, and a dating arc of sorts follows, with Chitanda displaying some serious feminine cunning. In ep. 21, we see the depth of her commitment to her friends, and in ep. 22, we see Chitanda not as a cute, child-like girl overflowing with moe, but as a responsible young woman talking seriously about her family and her future with the young man she's in love with.

 

At this point, I'm sure whoever's read this far is exhausted, and I'm exhausted with writing, but I'll make obligatory (but brief) comments on the tremendous animation and supporting characters--not only Satoshi and Mayaka, but also Tomoe and Irisu. And I think it should be pointed out that some of the mysteries themselves have serious themes--sacrifice, heroism, and historical truth in the story of Sekitani; deception and manipulation of others in the film arc; frustrated talent and the festival arc; even the sad fact that while that English teacher had some hope when he saw the helicopters, his friends still died. But the series had a wonderfully positive tone, and these sadder plots simply gave it real depth and realism, highlighting all the more the sweetness of the ending.

You have to start with the love and care that Kyoto Animation put into the making of this series, and this episode was no exception. “Spare no expense” is an obvious mantra, and it starts with things like getting top-rate seiyuu like Ishizuka Unshou (as Hanai) and Suwabe Junichi (Konari) to play relatively minor one-off roles – something KyoAni has done for the entire series. But as it is with the visuals, it’s not just about throwing money at the show – these aren’t just famous seiyuu, but phenomenal actors (Ishizuka-san especially is as good as they come). Likewise the animation isn’t just lavish and detailed – it’s art. It has style, and grace, and whimsy, and acts almost as a kind of second narrative running alongside the written script like a stream running next to a mountain road.

 

I often myself dumbstruck by an image in Hyouka – so much so that I have to stop and play the moment back. Sometimes it’s a capture of one of the faces – all four of the leads are beautiful in their way, like Platonic ideals of ephemeral youth – and sometimes it’s something simple like the residue on the bottom of a coffee cup, or a construction sign on an old wooden bridge. Nothing in animation can equal Shinkai Makoto’s films in terms of visual artistry, but Hyouka is as good as any TV anime since Moribito in this way, showing a “more real than real” world that doesn’t impress you with it’s photographic detail – though that’s impressive – but with the way it captures the essential beauty of people and objects, even “mundane” ones.

 

The Shinto ritual was depicted in heartbreakingly beautiful fashion (I especially loved the soft-focus perspective during the procession, and the 360 degree slow pan as Houtarou and Chitanda were walking together after the festival). The end was also to show Chitanda at her most ceremonial, dutiful and serious – effectively brokering a deal between two old rival villages now joined in all but ceremonial matters – and to give her a chance to give Houtarou a kind of declaration of purpose.

 

I wasn’t necessarily expecting a definitive finale here, but KyoAni delivered an ending that made the series feel complete. It demonstrated how far the characters have come over the course of 22 episodes, and how far they still have to go in their lives. When you’re 16 life is rich with endless possibility, yet you sometimes feel as if the weight of the world is pressing down on you, forcing a certain path on you whether you might wish it or not. In a sense I think Chitanda was confessing to Houtarou here, showing him everything that she was and will be, and letting him know that while she might dream other dreams, she’s fiercely proud of her legacy and means to do her duty to delay the demise of the old way of life for as long as possible. If Oreki was to decide to be with her, Eru wanted him to understand exactly what he was getting.

 

I never really expected Houtarou to definitively respond here, and he didn’t. But the moment in his mind’s eye when he did so by asking if he might be by her side to help her in her task was beautifully executed – believable, powerful and beautifully drawn. The mere fact that he thought what he did is a huge leap forward, and a sense that Oreki finally has some purpose. As for Fukube and Mayaka, we have no firm resolution there either. But we do get a sincere expression of gratitude from Mayaka to Houtarou for his help with the Valentine’s incident, and a new sense from Houtarou of just what Satoshi was going through – it’s not so easy to make that kind of commitment when the chips are down. If the ending left things open-ended, that’s as it should be – life isn’t definitive when you’re 16. It’s an endless array of possibilities that are both exciting and terrifying, and for a series that depicted what it feels like to be 16 as well as any anime has, it was a perfect mood on which to close.

 

Hyouka was the classic slow build, a series that showed more patience than about any anime I can recall – sometimes too much, in fact. Because so much of the series is about atmosphere, it wormed its way into the consciousness rather than overwhelmed – and it was only in hindsight, sometimes, where I realized just how amazing what I’d just seen truly was. It was apparent almost immediately that Hyouka was operating on a different level than most anime based on manga or LNs, not concerning itself with traditional structure but rather following its muse wherever it led, almost as if the stories were written as a stream of consciousness. Character development was happening, but it wasn’t being explained to us in unnatural monologues – it just happened, and we only noticed when it manifested in the way the kids behaved. That’s how people change in real life, but very few anime (or any other works of fiction, for that matter) are patient enough and trust the audience enough to allow the characters to grow in this natural fashion. Satoshi was the standout for me, the most conflicted and complicated cast member, but all four of the leads had very satisfying and substantial characters arcs by the end.

Hopefully it's not TLDR immediately for you

Take your time. 

[helping]

Chitanda doesn't seem to have changed much throughout the series but if you looked closely you can see the areas where her character development comes into play. 

-much text-

She does change but something feels off about her compared to the rest. It's like her exposition wasn't deep enough and the empathy just wasn't there as much as it was with the others.

 

will traverse the essay later

[orangecat]

DaftPunk sucks.

[Nineshadow]

Do you like Romanian popular music? <3

[Nineshadow]

 

Haywyre makes some good music indeed.

[Ryan Leech]

Do you like Romanian popular music? <3

No, I'm a hipster. I only like folk <3