氷菓(ひょうか)(Ice Cream)^A) is about a guy name Houtarou who unwillingly spends his time solving inconsequential mysteries at the behest of Chitanda who is cute and curious and ever-so-slightly dim.

Hyouka’s a fairly standard slice-of-life with mystery elements. Actually, it keeps hinting at supernatural happenings that never actually happen. As the show went on, this came to annoy me more and more…but never enough to “ruin” the experience.

I’m most annoyed by the thematic elements of the series. Like the Juumoji arc, which is largely about talent. I fundamentally disagree with the view of talent that they take…just on a purely rational basis, so I’m not the biggest fan. Is it bad? I haven’t determined that yet and probably won’t for a while.

The mysteries are fairly interesting…though I’d hesitate to call them ‘good’ because a lot of the evidence is provided at the last minute or after the solution is reached by Houtarou…making it hard or impossible to solve for the audience. This issues isn’t unique to this mystery show, as you see with Death in Paradise for example.

Now that I finished re-writing the previous version of the review, I’ll note that I think I like the anime…but I also don’t have any particular urge to re-watch it.

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