As the show comes to a close, the focus is now on Oreki and Eru.
Like the last episode, which focused on Mayaka and Satoshi, this one now puts the focus on Oreki and Eru at a local festival. Besides the initial uproar over crossing a different bridge from the struggle the North/South villages have in the past over territory, it’s amazing how much influence Eru has to resolve the conflict relatively quickly. Of course, the division between the South and the North shows what kind of relationship they have and their beliefs. From the first episode, Oreki just wanted to stick with his low-energy life style and disregard the exciting things in life. When he become close with Eru throughout the course of the show, he soon realized that there is more to life than just preserving energy as seen with him solving mysteries.
While the confession is not a true one, it was beautiful. The cherry blossoms conveniently blooming out of season and the windows blowing it contributed a lot to this lovely moment. Even so, it’s kind of interesting how Eru has her future already set in stone by taking science over business. She has feelings for Oreki, but doesn’t want him to get tied to a boring place that she is currently in. Even so, the transformation through cheery blossoms pedals being blown by the wind made it a perfect place to be together compared to the dull place she mentioned before.
Final Thoughts
Hyouka was interesting for me for the fact that they used mysteries to build the relationship between Eru and Oreki. While each mystery’s complexity varies, it is merely used as a vehicle for character development. Still, it provided a lot of exciting moments, especially with the festival arc, which showed a lot of interesting developments behind the festivities such as the Manga author/artist that transferred. From the looks of it, Hyouka is probably the most Japanese show as it places a lot of emphasis on Japanese traditions/beliefs through various stories.
Aside from that, Hyouka is a gorgeous show and I will certainly miss it.
Overall Rating: 9.3/10, A, Very Good
I agree it is truly a gorgeous animation!!!<33 It upheld its mystery til the end! Although, I wish we got to see them seal the deal and get together. But I was pretty satisfied with this ending 🙂
I was satisfied with the ending too… but of course, the animation is mostly due to Kyoto Animation’s attention to detail to that moment, which captured it between the two.
They must’ve spent a lot on this episode, the visuals were stunning and yes Eru was marvelous in that particular sakura scene at the end…*_*
Certainly, everything looks better with cheery blossom petals being blown at the wind… but yes, the beauty of the animation at this scene is unprecedented, which made this moment pretty memorable.