Before when Oreki made up a theory that was wrong, he’d simply have missed a few details. This was really well used in this episode, in which it turns out that the solution he provided was wrong in every way and instead the theory by the props guy seems to have been the closest. Instead, his story completely failed to take into account the mindset of the scriptwriter.
I really like how this episode actually filled in some of plotholes that were introduced in the previous episode. I remember noting why nobody just directly asked Hongou what kind of ending she intended, and I really thought that that would be just glossed over. Instead that turned out to be the key to this mystery: the ending she intended was inconsistent with what everyone filmed and the movie club was just in need of a new ending. It completely falls in line with how Hongou was unfamiliar with writing mystery is: she’s not going to think of elaborate schemes.
The arc did withhold one vital piece of information though: the story poll that showed how the class thought about the murder. That really was the big clue about this mystery, and I am a bit dissatisfied with how it was glossed over how Oreki got his hands on it.
Also, it’s ironic how there are series with episodes that aired on the same day (I’m late, I know) that feature Tarot cards. The interesting part is that Hyouka did do its research and actually looked into the symbolism behind each card. Arcana Famiglia? Let’s have the guy with Strength become really strong, and make “The Fool” an idiot. I can already see them surround the guy with the “Death”-card with lots of death symbolism. The background on Hyouka overall is really solid. I first thought than the creators would disprove Oreki’s theory of the audience trick with the 20 commandments and the 10 rules for mystery, but instead they went even further and analyzed the works of Arthur Conan Doyle for all this.
Finally: who was the person that Irisu was chatting with? At first I thought that this was Hongou, but that didn’t turn out to be true when she suddenly revealed that she was on the other side of the world and started insulting Hongou. Irisu overall was a great character here: she just appeared in one arc, but there are a ton of details about her character that set her apart, and how she manipulated everyone in order to get the movie project done right.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
I believe she talked to two people at the end. The first person being Hongou and the second person being Oreki’s sister.
Ah, thought so! This nicely bookends Hongou texting her with the problem, Irisu asking Oreki’s sister if she can recommend anyone to help, and lastly chatting with Chitanda, inviting the Classics Club. We loved the use of this conversation device.
We especially liked how Irisu sought acceptance/absolution from Oreki’s sister. Admitting that her methods may not have been the most ethical, doing what she felt she had to do to avert failure left a bad taste in Irisu’s mouth.
She talked with Oreki’s sister (The one who called Oreki an idiot who didn’t figure out that Irisu looked down on Hongou), and also with Hongou.
Yes, it was Oreki’s sister. At the beginning of the episode I felt like Satoshi and Mayaka were overreacting about a simple school movie, but Chitanda gave it a new dimension to the plot by relating herself to Hongou. While the last episode seemed to give more deepness to Mayaka and specially to Satoshi, this one made me sympathize for the first time with Chitanda (I didn’t even liked her when she talked about how she wanted a sibling), she seemed more self-aware and conscious; let’s just hope she doesn’t return to how she was.
Oh that information was not withheld, it should’ve been presented when they got the script from the correspondent Eba
I find very interesting how they are developing Oreki’s personality, first, as a willingly gray persona, then the need of an incentive, like Chitanda(‘s curiosity ;D)and this time the apparent need of acknowledgement…so fun…
in which it turns out that the solution he provided was wrong in every way
Depends on what you see as the real problem. Personally, I’m swinging more towards Irisu’s point of view in this case, if not her methods to getting there. Oreki’s solution was probably the best way to salvage the initial footage and make the movie successful for the class. I was expecting Irisu to have cooked up a scheme with Tomoe to help out the class and for there to have been a more positive conclusion. From the previous tea house meeting, Irisu should have come clean that the script sucked and they needed a better conclusion from Oreki. Well, oddly enough, Oreki came to his current conclusion trying to figure out what Hongou intended so maybe asking him to write a conclusion from scratch may not have worked. Hm….
Instead, Irisu turned out to be a manipulative, self-centered villain. I’m particularly disappointed in her last statement in the last tea room meeting. She did recognize Oreki’s talents! Why go to all that effort to trick him into finishing the script in the first place? And I would have liked her to have pointed him to the audience’s reactions to the movie. Everyone (with the exception of the Classics Club) was happy with the movie. Even in the end, if we can trust what she wrote, Hongou was happy that everyone in the class was happy with the movie. The results should have spoken for itself towards Oreki’s talents. Instead, she chose to shoot him down. Was this her pride getting hurt at getting yelled at by Oreki? Or was she giving him the vent to his outrage that he was looking for? Well, in her last convo with Hongou, it does seem like she was doing it for Hongou’s sake. She may have misinterpreted Hongou’s wishes.
There was something off about how seriously Satoshi pressed Oreki about his false impression that he had solved Hongou’s intentions. I was expecting his usual light, playful tone. Perhaps it’s to impress on the audience how invested Oreki was in this mystery this time and how it may have blinded him a little? I’m starting to rethink Satoshi’s upset reaction to Oreki coming under Irisu’s influence. Was he simply worried that Oreki was going to be manipulated by Irisu to their detriment the way others have?
the story poll that showed how the class thought about the murder. That really was the big clue about this mystery, and I am a bit disaddisfied with how it was glosed over how Oreki got his hands on it.
It shows up very briefly in the meeting minutes Sawakiguchi hands over to Chitanda during the three-person interview. Chitanda reacts sadly to it after reading it, perhaps reminded about how her Uncle got roped into becoming leader of the student protest.
Let’s have the guy with Strength become really strong
I wish I could have seen a translation of that page (or any of them for that matter). All I could get was Oreki not recognizing any of the traits of the Strength card in himself. I thought Satoshi’s real intention of comparing Oreki to Strength was how he would constantly be controlled by women.
I wonder if the next episode will continue this arc. It looks like the School Festival will finally be underway. The Classic Club’s findings will finally be published. Will Oreki and the Classic’s Club finally get to meet Hongou in person? I think we got a hint of her looking at Oreki during the last movie preview.
Out of curiosity, are my posts contributing to a discussion thread or killing it?
haha Meow totally called it on the manipulative bitch :D, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say she is a villain, its just a case of blindness, the blindness of thinking that by lying you’re protecting people or making sure things go faster and smoothly. Her priorities are messed up, but the way she did it, was the only way it could work, if there was no such mystery Chitanda wouldn’t get interested and involved from the start and consequently Oreki being the energy saver he is, would never get out of his way to be a writer for goodness sake.
About the strong arcana thing, he is refering to how shit the tarot was used in another series (The Arcana Famiglia) in comparison to this one in which they went out of their way to at least brush on the meaning of the relevant arcanas.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say she is a villain
I don’t know. I would have liked her to have explained or tried to justify herself somehow the way she justified getting the Classics Club involved in the first place. And I wasn’t happy at all at her cutting off the wings she’d given him to get him to work for her. I suspect she just wanted to cut off the conversation as soon as possible, at the cost of pushing Oreki back into his gray world and reinforcing his original policy to not get involved in things like this. To do that to someone who had just done her and her class an invaluable service, that just sucks balls. I wonder what Tomoe would do if she ever found out what Irisu had done.
hahaha, i’ll go further, I’ll tell ya what tomoe was doing she abruptly logged off, she was laughing herself off of Irisu’s pathetic reason for going over all that work, I mean “I couldn’t possibly let this project fail”, really? Even I laughed. Logging off was also her way of making Irisu reflect on her beliefs.
Now I’m really curious how they used the Arcana in Hyouka – could someone watching it please explain? I’m always a fan of tarot depictions in fiction.
About the cards, Strength most of the time signifies just that (the names of the cards weren’t chosen to conceal their meaning), and furthermore other virtues, but the post seems to suggest that they used it to mean ‘lack of control’, which while not entirely wrong is an even more superficial use of it than just attaching it to a strong guy.
Similarly, the Fool symbolizes potential (‘a pure buffoon skips towards his doom, an abyss full of profound uncertainties’, etc), but also insanity, recklessness, innocence, and a whole host of other things like this, that seem fit the guy in Arcana Famiglia.
And the Death card is already full of death symbolism in and of itself, that’s why it’s called that – every meaning of it is tied to death, even if often symbolic.
From what I can tell of Arcana Famiglia from the first episode, it’s fine. The worst depictions of the tarot in fiction always happen when people do some research, enough to get that aha! moment, and just leave it at that. So you get things like ‘Oh, Death never means death’, ‘Strength is about control’, ‘The Emperor is about control’, or ‘The Empress is about motherhood’.
In the end, Oreki’s sister most likely had the right idea about her. Irisu found Hongou’s end to the movie boring and wanted to change it; however, she took it one step further. Rather than outright say ‘change the script’, she took on the role of a ‘friend’ to find a ‘compromise’. I felt that the reason she had to take this roundabout path was to not hurt Hongou’s feelings, and for the most part she succeeded. If you were to call her a villain, everyone in Hongou’s class would also be villains. Irisu just seems smart enough to separate herself from the rest of the bunch.
Unfortunately, she got caught by both Oreki and Tomoe. In Tomoe’s case, I suppose she was disgusted in Irisu’s desire for a successful film outweighed any respect she had for Hongou, Oreki or even Tomoe herself and somehow, to Irisu, justified her attempt to lie to and manipulate all of them.
Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m still trying to figure out what happened in this arc. (Convoluted plot, a lot of japanese I can’t understand) It seems Hongou had completed the script but Irisu secretly disliked it and wanted to reject it but didn’t want to hurt Hongou’s feelings. Hongou, meanwhile, found that the latest movie footage conflicted too much with her script. Here’s where it gets fuzzy. Did Irisu trick Hongou out of completing her script, using the footage conflicts as an excuse? It seems like Irisu was fully aware that Hongou never intended for anyone to die in the movie but was happy to allow Oreki to believe that he had solved Hongou’s script mystery with his solution.
The last conversation Irisu and Tomoe have seemed to imply that Irisu was lying to Tomoe when she first asked for her help. She had apparently said that she wanted Tomoe’s help because she was trying to help Hongou. Her reply to Tomoe’s final accusations was that she wasn’t in the position to allow the movie project to fail.
One thing I’m curious about. Where was Tomoe getting her information from regarding this project? She knew the movie seemed to be going smoothly. She had gathered enough information to guess what Irisu was up to. But she wasn’t aware that Oreki had come to the same conclusions she had.
In regards to Oreki’s sister, she knew all along didn’t she? I vaguely remember one of her lines in the beginning chat ‘They’ll dance for you’. More like, she probably had a good grasp on her personality before hand and made a good guess as to what she was up to.
Ah! I see. So it was Tomoe who helped set Oreki and the Classics Club up to be manipulated. I don’t think she has much right to be disgusted with being manipulated by Irisu herself though. Hm…
I get the feeling that she might have some other source(s) from the school about what’s going on. Possibly within the Classics Club itself.
Was she ‘disgusted’ by the manipulation? Something like that can’t really be inferred; however, Irisu presented a problem to her. The motives were not black or white, but can be best described as ‘grey’. I don’t consider Irisu to be a ‘villain’ or a ‘bad’ person by any means, so I don’t see why she wouldn’t lend a hand by suggesting the Classics Club. Though, in the end, I can assume she felt ticked off on how Irisu continued to lie to her on the subject.
Was she ‘disgusted’ by the manipulation? Something like that can’t really be inferred
True. I was just wondering what Tomoe was thinking when she logged out abruptly after receiving Irisu’s last response.
Tomoe had just accused Irisu of lying to her about the real reason why she wanted help with the script. According to her, Irisu didn’t ask Tomoe for help for Hongou. The real problem was the script sucked. She just wanted to reject the script without hurting Hongou’s feelings. In response, instead of an apology or some kind of denial, Irisu just stated that her position wouldn’t allow her to let the movie fail, as if her actions were fully justified.
Re the Tarot reference: we actually believe it was employed far more effectively in Arcana Famiglia than here…PSYCH.
It’s not a movie club, they’re just class 2-F, which is why the film sucked so much 😛
I think Satoshi’s reactions are quite fitting if you remember what happened last episode with his dark face and envious statement regarding Houtarou. Houtarou has the skills that he lacks and so Satoshi has high expectations of Houtarou. However, Houtarou has failed him, in a way. Not that Houtarou owns it to Satoshi to solve the mysteries correctly or anything but as someone who lacks his skills and is envious towards him, this may have felt very discouraging, hence, the overreacting.
Don’t mean to insult this fantastic blog, but what’s with all the recent misspellings? This is why I couldn’t vote for this blog despite the solid analysis of characterization and plot.
Running articles through a simple online spellchecker or word-processing program should only take a few minutes. Professionalism and presentation are equally important to me as quality of content.
In line 5, “tepisode” should be “episode”.
In line 12, “disaddisfied” should be “dissatisfied”.
In line 14, “thre” should be “the”.
In line 14, “I”m” should be “I’m”.
In line 17, “lotd” should be “lots”.
In line 18, “tha” should be “that”.
In line 19, “oreki’s” should be “Oreki’s”
Names should always be capitalized.
In line 22, “whe” should be “when”.
In line 23, “the” should be “she”.
In context, the word is used wrong.
In line 24, “taht” should be “that”.
I know you can do much better; previous articles have no or little artifacts such as these. Sorry for the long post, but I can’t ignore this after a year in AP Lang.
Why do you care about this? What’s important is that Psgels presents his opinion in a manner which it is understood. Despite misspellings you still understood what he was saying therefore this is irrelevant.
Psgels is not under any obligation to obey your standards. If you want him to be perfect all the time then by all means start paying him for his services. He’s fast at posting, writes a decent opinion and covers a lot of anime in a season despite how time consuming it is. The fact that some people are not satisfied with that and bitch about such unimportant things is downright ungrateful.
Although the blog excels in all the positive characteristics you mention, professionalism and presentation are equally important to me as quality of content. Don’t assert what’s important to me.
Although the creator of the blog is not under any obligation to “obey my standards”, taking the few minutes to check his work for erroneous material speaks volumes presentation and general self-image.
This is a free blog. Nobody has previously compensated him for his superb work. Your argument to being paying him for “services” he has previously rendered is laughable and illogical; psgels does this out magnanimous generosity.
I want psgels to win the contest, but can’t vouch for him as long as the quality of writing is lacking. It is a personal belief that psgels holds himself and his blog to higher standards outside your area of cognition, recognition, and appreciation.
Good day, sir.
“This is a free blog. Nobody has previously compensated him for his superb work. Your argument to being paying him for “services” he has previously rendered is laughable and illogical; psgels does this out magnanimous generosity.”
Yes and this magnanimous generosity is what you are currently spitting on by saying it’s not good enough. And your reaction to paying him just goes to show how much of a ungrateful bastard you are. With the amount of effort put into this blog Psgels should be getting paid. You find that laughable? No, you sir are laughable with your pitiful excuses to not throw a hard-working man a buck because you can’t be assed! Not to mention jumping in to criticise him for it. I swear, if you were right in front of me I would punch you. Cause that’s exactly what you deserve.
Who cares about some stupid Blog contest? I have seen the way that contest treated other bloggers with it’s ridiculous conduct.(Not telling the blogs in question they were participating?) They can’t even stop people from cheating by spam voting.
psgels would probably never ask for donations. He’s just that type of boss. You, from what I infer, would charge for something far inferior.
For your clarification, I’m not spitting on anybody. I’m holding high standards to this blog because that’s how epic it usually is. The article, as it was, was not good enough. Misspellings of simple pronouns and particles is alarming.
Having high standards is a form of respect. This is a concept you probably will never master; it is beyond your level of cognition.
Calling me a “bastard” from a single post speaks volumes to your arrogance. Wanting to “punch me” speaks volumes to your intolerance and inherently bastardized thought process. That’s your lesson of rhetorical analysis for the day.
Thanks for playing.
“psgels would probably never ask for donations. ”
Psgels should be start with a capital. It’s a name.
Silly Chu, why are you trying to play the intellectual? You have already proven yourself childish by repeating farewells and coming back because you need the last word. And resorting to calling me stupid is the tactic of a imbecile losing an argument. Anything you have said to me isn’t any less insulting as calling someone a bastard. The difference is that I am more honest about it.
Again this is just plain excuses. High standards are a form of respect? Says he who find it laughable to reward said person for producing efforts worthy of high standards. You are trying to dress up your petty complaints with words like professionalism and presentation but when someone counters you justify it by saying it’s free and Psgels has the god given right to live up to your demands without any regards to how busy he is with his real job.
Sigh…I know your type. I know that saying this will not change your mind at all. I know you will never truly understand this. You can’t reason with idiots after all.
Feel free to reply however you like. I am done wasting time on you.
Firstly, your use of “start” is wrong. You meant the past-tense, or “started”.
Secondly, I’m not trying to play an intellectual. I’m just trying to counter your illogical banter. Objectively, one could argue my posts to be less insulting – I never use unadulterated curse words.
Thirdly, you must not know what high standards constitute. Absence of misspellings is such a criteria for formal prose.
Fourthly, I never stated he had to live up to my “standards”. I simply recommended him to do so, to which he has gladly complied.
In fact, psgels states that “I’m willing to correct any spelling errors I make. You’ve got a point with that.” in a later post. He takes personal responsibility and upholds the same rigorous standards you easily discard. Hilarious, isn’t it?
Fifthly, you don’t appreciate the rigor and details of psgels’ personal life. It is incredible for you to speak on his behalf. Running out of steam, bud?
Sixthly, you don’t know me. It is impossible to determine legitimacy of idiocy without objective testing. I shall make a special exception for you, and you only.
Do please spare us from your illogical ramblings and acknowledge the weakness of your so-called “arguments”.
psgels and the community likely look upon this facade with great trepidation and incredulity. I derive great pleasure for this difficult service.
Game, set, and match.
Chu, come on now this isn’t the place for this kind of thing. This post is for discussing Hyouka, fair enough you don’t like errors but your being excessive. I also don’t like how your going after Aidan like this either just for defending psgels. I think your taking things too seriously, this is a casual internet blog, these words like professional writer aren’t accurate, its not a big deal your making a mountain out of molehill.
Well thats my two sents Chu and I’m sorry if it sounded men spirited in any way toward you I just felt I had to speak up here.
*mean spirited. Aha! I have corrected myself!
two cents**
I’m just riding the bandwagon, you know, being a Grammar Nazi and all.
Sorry for the overreaction.
AidanAK47 was spitting on what the blog stood for; I couldn’t stand that.
Let’s continue discusing Hyouka.
@Anca (Re: Tarot)
Tarots first come into the picture in Episode 8, the start of this arc, when Satoshi first informs everyone that Irisu’s nickname is the “Empress”. He then goes on to suggest Tarots that symbolize the four of them. He assigns Mayaka “Justice”, although he mentions considering “Judgement” first. Mayaka asks Satoshi what his Tarot would be and he at first says “Fool” but later changes it to “Magician”, saying he’ll leave the “Fool” role to Chitanda. Finally Chitanda asks Satoshi which Tarot would suit Oreki and Satoshi replies “Strength”. Chitanda would have preferred the “Star” for Oreki though but Satoshi insists that “Strength” is the most appropriate. Oreki feels like the nickname doesn’t sound like a compliment but Satoshi replies enigmatically that that’s not completely true.
The next time Tarots come into the picture is this episode 11 where Oreki opens up a Tarot reference book belonging to his sister. (He’s never seen it before but then what was it doing on his bookshelf?) He first looks up the “Empress”, and mentions three traits: maternal love(?), ???, sensibility(?). He then mentions that they don’t resemble Irisu at all. Next is Justice. The three traits he mentions (Equality, Justice, Impartiality) seem to match Mayaka perfectly. Next is the Magician, (Start of a Situation(Causer of Incidents?), Originality, Interest) which he just seems to pass on. With the Fool, he seems to relate those traits to Chitanda pretty easily. Finally, with Strength, the three traits (Inner Strength, Fighting Spirit, ???*) apparently don’t fit him at all. He then reads the description of the depiction of strength as a gentle woman controlling a wild lion, which brings to mind Chitanda, Irisu and his sister. He at first denies that he’s under their control but later admits to himself that he might be Strength after all and that Tarots might be pretty fascinating.
*Couldn’t figure out the last character. Sounds like “kizuna” as in “bonds” between people but the character looks different. My japanese sucks so I think we’ll need a proper translator to work on this to figure out what all those words in the book really mean.
Thanks.
It seems to be okay, partly. Justice is about balance, and laws as a result of attempting to maintain balance, and Empress is not about maternal love, but about intelligence and science, so if Irisu fits those… well, that would be pretty brilliant from KyoAni o_O
Though I still have no idea why Japan is intent on grouping the Best Friend archetype under Magician.
My translation/intepretation of the traits may be incorrect. I was trying to translate the characters with Google Translate. Tough to find the right characters on IME and I’m not sure how accurate they are. Also, Oreki only quotes the first three traits. I think there are around six per Tarot and I couldn’t translate the other three. If you’re confident in your kanji, try taking a look at episode 11 yourself.
Though I still have no idea why Japan is intent on grouping the Best Friend archetype under Magician.
In this case, it does make sense to me because while Satoshi can’t solve the mystery himself, he has been giving Oreki just the right pushes and hints to get him to solve each mystery. He’s the magician in the back row who helps the knight slay the dragon.
Way off topic but…
Would you wear this?
http://www.amiami.com/top/detail/detail?gcode=CGD2-33806
Check out the subtitle. XD
Although the majority of the errors (9 of 10) have been corrected, one remains in line 23 (“the” should be “she”). In context, the word is used wrong.
I’ve got no hesitation to vote now. In all fairness, psgels should post a editor’s note to inform readers about the revision. However, it’s “perfectly understandable” should he not wish to pursue this option.
For those interested, the original version of the article can be seen at: http://imgur.com/6qMCw
Chu, I think you might be over-nitpicking just a little bit now. ^^; Typos happen, even to professional writers, and even with electronic spell-checkers, editors, proofreaders and what-not, quite a few usually make it all the way to press. AFAIK, most blogs are one-person shows. There’s only so much one person can handle. And personally, unless there’s some major, factual change to the content of his post, I don’t think an editor’s note is even remotely necessary in this case.
You’re not auditing a wikipedia entry or a high-profile news site here. This is more like a personal hobby blog and all the stuff here are biased opinion pieces of pure entertainment value only. Even the tourney has very little at stake in it besides some fame and bragging rights in a niche community. For all our sakes, take it easy. XD
Very true.
Taking it easy as a student is near impossible. We can all dream, can’t we?
I’m willing to correct any spelling errors I make. You’ve got a point with that. But please for god’s sake, don’t ask me to also add in post revisions when I do so. O.o
psgels, I personally appreciate your blog and have deep respect for all the efforts you put towards this work.
Sorry for the overreaction, but memories of sleepless nights working on AP Lang assignments have traumatized me for life.
Best of luck in winning the tournament!
@meow
True. I was just wondering what Tomoe was thinking when she logged out abruptly after receiving Irisu’s last response.
I think she just logged off because she didn’t want to hear excuses. The way she worded it was more in the line of “don’t lie to yourself, you and I know why you did what you did”
On the other note: did Chitanda actually said something about “dying wish” when referring to author goal for writing that particular mystery, because that weirder me out.
I think she just logged off because she didn’t want to hear excuses.
Yeah. That feels right. Thanks for the clarification.
did Chitanda actually said something about “dying wish”
I think that was just a figure of speech. Chitanda was mystified over why Hongou didn’t complete the script or pass on her ideas to someone else. She felt Hongou might have been cornered like how her Uncle was cornered by his peers and was looking for some hidden message (like a dying wish, regret or scream) Hongou might have left in the current script or in the direction of the production that would explain her true feelings and intentions for the movie and was hoping Oreki would discover it the same way he discovered Hyouka’s true meaning.
Well, the thing is Hongou isn’t dead. In fact, I have a strong feeling she’s the girl that was looking at Oreki as she was leaving the theatre during the second preview. We see the back of her head looking at Oreki as he’s being praised by Nakajou and Sawakiguchi. I wonder if the next episode will see her speaking to Chitanda and Oreki for real over the case of the movie. Or are we looking at the start of a new arc?
It’s a new arc according to the official website, it’s the start of the cultural festival. Hongou never volunteer to write the script, she was select because during the class discussion someone brought her up because she wrote stories, then she was led to believe that her class would alienate her for her plot.
The author’s style is to leave things feel a bit bitter because that his personal definition of “Youth”
IC.IC. Maybe it’s something semi-autobiographical.
It’s a bit of a pity though. I was hoping for a lighter, perhaps comical conclusion, with Oreki perhaps overcoming some great challenge and thinking he had beaten it, only for the audience to secretly find that he was secretly dancing in the palm of Irisu and his sister’s hand. I don’t consider Tomoe to be an antagonist at this point. I thought she had arranged for him to join the Classic’s Club with his benefit in mind. Possibly arranging for Chitanda to look after him in her place. I was expecting Irisu to be another part of Tomoe’s plans to add some color to Oreki’s life but I wasn’t expecting the arc to end on this sour note. This arc came out a little darker than I imagine but maybe this is good character bonding between Oreki and Chitanda. And maybe it will keep fans from hounding KyoAni to keep Irisu as a regular. ^^ She might have wound up outshining other main characters the way Mio outshone other lead characters in K-ON.
Well, the thing is Hongou isn’t dead.
Yes that’s exactly why i thought it was a weird way to put it. Thanks for confirming!
Actually, that particular class poll was shown, but in a REALLY discreet manner. Remember Episode 9? Sawakiguchi passes Chitanda a minutes of their meetings with one another, and later on Chitanda pauses to read that particular page, even looking slightly exclaimed. Really good foreshadowing from KyoAni imo.