Tag Archives: Hyouka

[Final Impression] Hyouka – Disappointing, in a good way

  By Halfey Halphstein | September 17, 2012 - 11:53 pm | ,
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To be honest I was not ready to face this ending because I was expecting the end at episode 24 or 26. I mean there’s no way I could have such expectation once an anime exceeded the 13-episode ‘barrier’. And that is not my only expectation as I wanted to see ‘proper’ romance between Oreki and Chitanda.

This is just me but I believe there’s no valid relationship between man and woman except family/relative or romance. That’s what I meant by ‘disappointing’ but it’s not just for this show; I also feel the same way towards similar works. However if I were to put that aside Hyouka is very good though I nearly dropped it back then. To take it positively it has to be done that way as not to be too far away from the light novel, because according to an unverified source, there was very little reference to Oreki-Chitanda romance in the light novel (I haven’t read any though) so all those “love atmosphere” were just KyoAni’s doing. By the way I can’t remember either KyoAni doing a ‘proper’ romance anime to begin with though I’d love to watch it if there was any (or if there wasn’t I’d love them to make one in the future). For now I’m not sure if KyoAni is good in doing such anime or not but most of the time it doesn’t matter and I don’t really care either. Anyway if it was me I’d use the ‘remaining’ 2-4 episodes only for something that is not present in the novel (proper romance of course!).

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[Review] Hyouka ep. 15

  By Halfey Halphstein | July 30, 2012 - 10:00 pm | , ,
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Shut up dawg! You're noisy!


Kinda like a dawg.

This episode still covers the Kanya Festival but I don’t really mind about that as the characters (other than Houtarou) have become less annoying than they were before. Yeah if I were Houtarou I wmight be bored to death since there was nothing to do other than waiting for people to buy the over-printed anthology. Well it wasn’t that bad though when Houtarou was a bit “fired up” when the other three entered the cooking competition and he ended up helping them winning, except it was done indirectly.

Shut up dawg! You’re noisy!

For the first time since the school festival started the Classics Club was affected by the ‘prank’ pulled by the thief “Juumonji” where the ladle assigned to the Classics Club was stolen. Satoshi wanted to use the incident to persuade Houtarou into investigating the case but of course he rejected though this is the first time I’m kinda disagree with Houtarou because he could help stopping the ‘crime’. Houtarou was pretty serious this time as he even refused Chitanda’s request too though later he kinda trying to solve it without realizing it.

What kind of fabric that could stretch that far?

Houtarou may sound like he was refusing it but Satoshi and Chitanda got other plans and they’re going to use it to advertise the club’s anthology. After they discovered that there was a pattern involved in the ‘crime’ Chitanda went to the newspaper club hoping that they would advertise for her. Satoshi on the other hand went to the magic club trying to catch the thief himself but only to be disappointed later as the thief already acted even before the magic show started though the incident didn’t affect the show much, unlike what happened to some other clubs.

Vocaloid bullies.

Mayaka is having her own problem with the other members of the manga society. I’m not sure how to put this in words but it seemed like she is bullied by the other club members and it did make her down a bit though she never showed it to Chitanda and Houtarou, let alone Satoshi who she is in love with. It might have been fine if she could find the manga she was talking about though but then it was revealed that the manga has some sort of connections with the club president.

See more dawg below.

Kinda like a dawg.
Shut up dawg! You’re noisy!
Vocaloid bullies.
What kind of fabric that could stretch that far?
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[Review] Hyoukaloids!

  By Halfey Halphstein | July 11, 2012 - 10:32 pm | ,
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Oh? That's quite close.



(Hyouka ep. 12)

So what happened to this series after I stopped writing reviews for it for a while? (Since the “mystery movie” episode if I’m not mistaken). I can say the show seems to have entered a new phase, probably a new arc too now that the OP/ED has changed (I prefer the old one) and there’s an OVA (ep. 11.5) released too (I wanted to see Houtarou’s asshole big sister but her face was no-show in that episode damn!). That said there’s a high chance that this show might end at episode 24 or something.

Oh? That’s quite close.

So the day that they were waiting for all this time has arrived, which is the school cultural festival (the main event that is the core of most stuff that happened in this show). Remember that they were working on “Hyouka!” anthology to sell on school festival and this is where their works, how well they’ve done it will be tested. The problem is their clubroom is quite ‘isolated’ and mostly nobody would notice it without going to the floor where it located (what a non-strategic place to join in the event).

Vocaloids? Check. Maid? Check. And now you know why Chitanda still can’t find the solution for their club’s problem. 

Because of that all members of the club went to look for solutions, one being making a request to the event committee (which was rejected) and another one is to see if they could get some help from other clubs. Houtarou as expected ‘volunteered’ himself to be in-charge of the clubroom while the other three split for the mission. Too bad Mayaka was still busy with her manga society, Satoshi seems to have completely forgotten about it while Chitanda couldn’t resist the temptation to have fun with all activities that caught her attention. Now will they manage to sell all 200 copies of the anthology? We’ll have to wait for the next episode for the answer.

Summer 2012 Anime: Things seem better than expected (my body is under-prepared)

  By Halfey Halphstein | July 2, 2012 - 11:24 pm | ,
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[Commie] Muv-Luv Alternative - Total Eclipse - 01 [8EA15F90].mkv_snapshot_14.01_[2012.07.02_20.36.56]


While Hyouka is still not ended and made part of the series into the summer season, I started my summer anime with the title I’ve heard for a very long time; Muv-Luv. This is one of many eroge out there that I really wanted to play but I usually turn down my own plan because Japanese form of censorship is always look stupid for me. Anyway this anime turned out sexy as expected, or perhaps sexier that I have thought before.

If this doesn’t fit your definition of sexy then I don’t know what else would.

For now I can’t tell whether Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse is good or not because none of the alien invasion plot impressed me but I’m not sure what is waiting me in the future. I hope this won’t turn into Shitty Crown and there are plenty of rooms for possible awesomeness. The only thing I’d like to see for now is the explanation on why those mechas only piloted by females, unless they were sharing the similar ‘excuse’ as found in the anime “Sky Girls“.

DAT

By the way I will write a proper review for Muv-Luv next week because to be honest I’m not prepared to write about it now. Today I’m excited that my big boss accepted my proposals and at the same time the Elecom Scope Node mouse I ordered via JList has arrived from Japan today. After this there should be no excuse for me not to be productive (in terms of producing artworks and publish them to pixiv).

A little bit about Hyouka ep. 11, Houtarou was somewhat screwed up in his deduction but that wasn’t entirely his fault. It’s because the bitch Iris tempered with the original script that resulting in a misleading deduction and she was exactly using Houtarou to reject the original script without having to hurt the original script writer. I don’t care if it was for a valid reason but she should have asked for help honestly instead of deceiving (or appear to be deceiving even if she didn’t). Oh I forgot to tell you that I’m not doing a ‘proper’ review for Hyouka because there was no awesome snapshot again.

Back to summer anime, I love the low-res preview OVA and preair episode for Mahou Tsukai Kara Miso wo Kue and Campione! respectively. Those two titles have high potential to become the best fap anime this season and of course I hope that there will be more in the queue list. About being fap anime, if you don’t believe me just look at the snapshots below that I stitched myself solely for the purpose of fapping and sharing. Enjoy!

Campione!

Mahou Tsukai Nara Miso wo Kue

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[Review] Chitandamn & Zombie Oppai (Hyouka ep. 08 & Sankarea OVA)

  By Halfey Halphstein | June 13, 2012 - 10:38 pm | , ,
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Chitandamn annoying...

I guess this is the first time in weeks that I watched Hyouka on time instead of delaying it several days like I did in the past few weeks. Not that this episode was interesting or anything but I just happen to have extra time to spare to watch it upon arrival (in fact the first 2 minutes felt like crap as it was filled with boring scenes of someone texting and IM-ing). This episode is about the classics club investigating “the mystery of another mystery”, except that they didn’t investigate it.

Houtarou should learn to make that face more often.

So this class 2-F was making a mystery-thriller movie but the scriptwriter stopped halfway so the production was currently on hold. Because of that the class rep (Fuyumi Irisu) invited the club to ‘preview’ the half-finished movie (which was actually to make them find the mysterious culprit in the movie so that the movie could be finished). Turned out that Irisu and Chitanda know each other so it’s just natural for ‘news’ about Houtarou reached her thus she wanted to seek help from the club (or Houtarou to be specific).

There's nothing wrong with your eyes; I just shopped this image.

So did they manage to find the culprit? No, or it would be more accurate to say that Houtarou refused to work his brain for that this time. However the club (or Houtarou if you ask me) agreed to observe other wannabe detectives to do the job instead.

Sankarea the prequel

7 months ago...

I don’t always write a review for OVA and this might be my first time either (I don’t remember much about writing OVA reviews before this though). Since Sankarea is the series I follow closely despite having many complaints about the story/setting I decided to write this review anyway. After all this OVA features bare boobs (READ: NIPPLES), something you would never get from the aired episodes (or maybe it will be in the upcoming episodes but we have yet to know about that).

This is only a small part of it.

So turned out that Furuya and Rea did meet each other albeit not in a situation that would allow them to see each other clearly and remember. However the main point of this OVA was to bring the audience to the point Furuya found the ‘recipe’ or ‘prescription’ of the zombie potion. Other than that, if anything it was how Furuya’s father refused to talk more about his deceased wife (Furuya’s mother) and there was a hint that she probably has something to do with zombie.

This is not even made half of the "special treatment" in this OVA.

So do you like what you see above? Well I have no intention to turn this blog into a hentai or ecchi blog so of course you won’t find any nipples here (because I only made those available to invited personnel only). I could show you but you would have to befriend me first; how’s that?

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[Review] Hyouka ep. 07

  By Halfey Halphstein | June 6, 2012 - 11:04 pm | , ,
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Looks cool, at least to my eyes.


Since the end of episode 05 I guess there has been not much noteworthy stuff happened in this show. However the building above caught my attention as I’ve always have the ‘hots’ for well-designed building, cityscape and sceneries. I’m not sure what the building above is (probably a bus station) but for me it looks good.

6th grade and 4th grade lolis... OK

I was annoyed by the amount of coincidence or ‘luck’ in this show though. For example they got free lodging because Mayaka happened to run an inn where they could stay for free since it was undergoing a renovation. And there were 2 lolis greeted them.

This is the best fanservice KyoAni could give you and it couldn't get any better than this.

So this episode is about the club went for trip to a hotspring. I feel bad that Houtarou has appeared to be not manly enough, I mean he couldn’t stand long distance journey and also the heat of the hotspring. However the latter might be contributed buy the thought of naked Chitanda in the bath next to the male’s.

Those eyes were saying "would it be wonderful if I have a big sister or a little brother?" or something like that.

Ever since the end of the “Sekitani arc” the show has become like a kiddy show with its “monster of the week” formula, except that instead of monster, it’s the mystery of the week. This week they (or rather Houtarou alone) have solved the “hanging ghost mystery as well as the mystery involving the relationship between the 2 lolis above. On the other hand Chitanda kept thinking about having an older sister or a younger brother…

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[Review] Angry Girls (Hyouka ep. 06)

  By Halfey Halphstein | May 30, 2012 - 10:35 pm | ,
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Chitangel


So this episode is about “you mad?”. In the first few minutes, right after the classroom scene we were presented with Mayaka getting angry at Satoshi for whatever reason I don’t care about. It might be necessary but as Satoshi hater I’m quite happy with that, and although nearly 1 minute was wasted for that scolding scene it didn’t feel like wasted since it was filled with Houtaou’s random thought about it.

Then everybody started to talk about getting angry and stuff. It was supposed to end there but Houtarou reminded Chitanda of her getting mad at the Omichi-sensei during class earlier. I’m with Houtarou though where I think it’s perfectly normal for something like that to happen but knowing Chitanda, everything that she doesn’t know or have forgotten will be deemed is the mystery of the day, which is very very irritating.

Long story short, Houtarou solved it without breaking a sweat, without even leaving from his chair. The problem was with Chitanda, where she was too considerate that she wouldn’t have a peace of mind until her action of getting mad at her teacher earlier is justified. In other words she wanted to reconsider her action to be her fault alone.

Not sure she’s just too nice or what…

[Review] I scream!!! (Hyouka ep. 05)

  By Halfey Halphstein | May 23, 2012 - 9:40 pm | ,
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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?

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[Combined review] Let’s nyaa~!! ep. 05 and Hyouka ep. 03

  By Halfey Halphstein | May 8, 2012 - 9:50 pm | ,
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It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote a combined review. Previously I wrote combined reviews because I had little time to spend on blogging. However this one is not because I have not enough time but because there ain’t any awesome snapshots I could extract from Hyouka ep. 03, thus think it would be a ‘waste’ if I made a standalone review for it. Yeah I know Hyouka has moe characters but it doesn’t mean they’d always make awesome snapshots, and I don’t want to make ‘empty’ review (a review without snapshots) so the least I could do for it is to combine it with other anime.

Although Hyouka ep. 03 was aired before Nyaruko ep. 05, I prioritize the one with snapshots. Haiyoru Nyaruko-san this week introduced us with the glasses woman we saw driving a DeLorean last week. No thanks to the conversation Mahiro, Hasuta and the other 2 had in this one restaurant, that woman tailed them to the house and then ‘kidnapped’ Mahiro’s mother.

In a sense it’s not really a kidnap because after that glasses woman whispered something to her she agreed to follow that woman. Even worse that woman also whispered something to Cthuko as well that she also sided with her. Nyaruko alone couldn’t save Mahiro’s mother now that she opposes Cthuko although she could have defeated her if she was serious like when she met her at the R’lyeh island last time.

I think Mahiro’s mother could have defeated her ‘kidnapper’ if she wanted to but since she agreed to follow her so she didn’t show any resistance. Determined to save her mother despite she agreed to follow the ‘kidnapper’, Mahiro, Nyaruko and Hasuta went to the sunken R’lyeh island after Nyaruko got a clearance from her boss to deal with Cthuko herself.

From Nyaruko’s boss, there seems to be a conspiracy involving the internal Cthulu officials behind what had happened thus she had to deal with it herself first. Too bad while on their way to the island their vehicle got attacked by the Dagon couple. As a result Mahiro and Hasuta got separated from Nyaruko while Nyaruko is now have to face Cthuko, alone.

That’s all I can say about Nyaruko so far. Moving to Hyouka ep. 03, we’re brought to Houtarou and Chitanda having a ‘date’ (continuing from last week’s episode). Now it is revealed the reason Chitanda so enthusiastic about solving mysteries. It’s about to remember what her uncle told her about the classics club and her uncle was a member on the club too when he attended the school back then.

Apparently Chitada want to seek help from Houtarou to make her remember again. Although it might be not nice to turn a girl’s request down but I was kinda happy when Houtaru did just that because I always think that he needs to be firm too sometimes. However after hearing more from Chitanda he eventually agreed to help her ‘indirectly’.

The next thing happened is the club searching for the back issues anthologies the club had produced in the past. From his sister’s letter, Houtarou learned where the old issues were kept. However it took them to solve another mystery to get it back. Even so, with them got the back issues, another mystery was revealed; the first issue is the only one missing!

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