It’s Spooky Season! – Day 10: Hyouka Episode 7

For many years I was kind of the de-facto anime provider for the anime club I attend. Mostly this was because I had been maintaining a version of this website for many a season, giving me insight into a lot of anime that wasn’t as popular with mainstream fandom but was still great and worth sharing with others. The other reason was probably because I was an adult with a job who could afford to constantly buy new anime DVDs (I’m not sure how that’ll go now that I’m paying for a kid, haha). Now that I’ve taken a slight step back from it for the time being (I continue to call myself an “alumni advisor” for the club but I think that’s just a title I’ve given myself rather than a label others would use) I’m getting the opportunity to see how tastes in anime have changed with newer fans. Or, how much they’ve stayed the same.

Hyouka was a series I got the club to watch many years before it was officially licensed in the US. It was the type of show that definitely wasn’t mainstream – a subdued mystery series where the mysteries were fairly low-stakes and the appeal was as much in the character interactions as it was from the actual mystery elements. Sure, it had Kyoto Animation’s typical visual craft to boost it up, but at the time I don’t remember the show being particularly popular (thought I could certainly be misremembering). Now, several years later, the club is watching the series again at their meetings, and it’s given me a good opportunity to re-watch and re-assess my feelings on it.

The short answer is that, yes, it’s still great, and it’s nice to have my previous opinion be validated. But another happy side-effect of the re-watch is that I’m being reminded of some of the minor storylines that I had forgotten over the years, including one with some specifically spooky vibes.

Episode 7 of Hyouka is a standalone story where the Classic Literature Club members travel to the countryside to spend the evening at a hot springs resort maintained by the Mayaka’s family. While there, they learn information about one of the rooms at the resort, where a guest allegedly died by suicide. Later that night, Mayaka looks out her window and sees what appears to be a body hanging in that specific room.

As is typical of Hyouka, the situation has a perfectly reasonable explanation that revolves more around the mentality of the people involved than any actual supernatural circumstances. However, as is also typical, the tale is told with beautiful animation and sense of humor that’s bolstered by main character Houtarou Oreki’s delivery.

Obviously as episode 7 of a 2-cour series this episode requires a bit of character context to get the most out of the experience, but there’s a lot to be gleaned simply from observing the character relationships within this self-contained story. If you’re on the fence about watching the entire series, this could be a great place to start.

Hyouka is available to watch (both sub and dub) on Crunchyroll.