Hello,
Today we'll talk about the 13th episode of the spring season 2012 anime series Hyouka that delivers another filler episode based on the cultural festival various substories (Mayaka manga club, Satoshi's database skills, etc...).
After this episode, I'm thinking more and more about categorizing Hyouka as a "slice of life" series more than a "mystery" one, due to the great number of episodes that hardly could be configured as mysteries-focused.
This whole cultural festival arc looks like a way for the characters to improve their relationships. Some sort of prelude to a romantic story for Eru and Houtarou...
This episode was mainly divided between the three main sub-plots of this particular story arc. From one side we have Mayaka fighting against everyone in order to prove the differences between good manga and bad manga.
From another we see Satoshi trying to win a quiz contest in order to give visibility to the literary club. We even still have Eru trying her best to get some help in order to sell more copies of their production.
In this episode we also got a new opening animation/song. While the song is far away in terms of quality compared to the first one, I do think the animation combined with it is quite good.
I choosed this scene because this whole episode was empty of interesting or remarkable scenes to show. I could've gone with Mayaka fighting against an hateful cosplay upperclassman, but I decided to wait for the end of their battle to decide what to do.
In this awkward scene we see an extremely embarassed Eru noticing how Houtarou watched her "cosplay" photos, the photography club took of her while she was strolling around the school.
Why so flustered over such a small thing? Well, as we all are speculating at this point, Eru is in love with Houtarou and I really wonder how long it'll take for either of them to express their feelings.
Next episode should prove interesting and be more plot-driven because it cover the last bits of the cultural festival and will likely give closure to all the sub-stories they introduced in this story arc.
I'm especially curious about Mayaka's situation, because I'm not sure how she'll be able to convince the hateful upperclassman and at the same time help the literary club sell more copies.
I also wonder what will be the usage of that pistol Houtarou received in this episode. I suppose it'll be used in exchange of another item in order to help the club, but with what?
Concluding, Hyouka is looking more and more like a slice of life series, but the level of entertainment is high enough to make me continue blogging this series.
See you soon,
feal87