Last week I did say that it might be the last time I wrote a review for Hyouka. Turned out that I still decided to write another review, a decision made after I watched the latest episode. And I only watched it today although I obtained it a few days ago as this is no longer in my priority list.
In this episode I’m glad that Houtarou finally admitted that Satoshi makes him tired, where he did say that seeing Satoshi alone was enough to make him feel restless. I can still say Satoshi is still wrong about Houtarou. Houtarou is actually bored of the world around him as he found nothing interesting from it. Even the mysteries he solved so far feels like a normal thing to him although they’re enough to grant him a position of being a great person. So I could say the reason he avoided to “waste his energy” all these times was because he was worried the result would not worth the efforts.
Anyway the interesting part about Houtarou solving a problem is that he doesn’t have this “Ahha!” or “lighting up” (eureka) or moment of discovery like we usually saw in other detective/investigation anime. It’s as if everything was already in his head, knowing everything all along, only waiting for the right moment to be let out. Well maybe he did have those moments but he was cool enough that we didn’t notice it at all. That would be best explaining why Houtarou has always look uninterested in almost everything around him. He is like Haruhi without the bossy part plus Yui (Hirasawa) without the childish part (I mean I could say those girls are geniuses too in their own world).
After a phone call from his sister, Houtarou realized that the theory he gave Chitanda was partially right or incomplete. The next reconstructed theory would explain why Chitanda cried from hearing her uncle’s high school story. It seems like because of that Houtarou became eager to solve the mystery, for whomever sake it was. Maybe it’s the first time Houtarou feels interested to solve a mystery. He even voluntarily went to call Satoshi and Mayaka to the club room after that.
Houtarou discovered that the school librarian (Itoigawa-sensei) who attended the school at the same time with Chitanda’s uncle (Jun Sekitani). She knew everything and told them about what actually happened back then she was still quite vague about it. It might be vague but not for Houtarou though as he instantly understood the meaning behind the word “Hyouka” from the story Itoigawa-sensei told them. Hyouka means “ice cream” in English, and it was intended to be a pun of “I scream!” Clearly it was what Chitanda’s uncle felt when he knew he would become the black sheep in the student protest incident back then.
With the mystery solved Chitanda finally remembered what her uncle told her that made her cry back then. She was crying due to the fear of being alive but feels like dead, as what her uncle had experienced. However the solving of this mystery seems to have given her a new hope and motivation on how she should live her future. I guess I could call this the end of the first arc?
