Very few anime series remain in the cultural zeitgeist after a decade, but the triple punch of Kyoto Animation’s breathtaking style, the boundless energy of the late Yasuhiro Takemoto’s direction, and the late Futoshi Nishiya’s gorgeous character designs gave us Hyouka, a wonderful anime adaption of the mystery novel of the same name by Honobu Yonezawa.

 

Hyouka’s 10th anniversary visual

 

Hyouka first premiered in the spring 2012 anime season and continued on through the summer 2012 season, giving anime watchers 22 episodes of curiosity capers and one OVA that streamed on Ustream on July 8 — why on there is still a mystery to this day.

 

As part of the 10th-anniversary celebrations of the Hyouka series, the GAMERS main store in Akihabara held a quaint museum for the adaptation, and we were there to see it!

 

The Curious Case of the Hyouka Museum

 

Poster for the museum in the GAMERS staircase

 

My interest was piqued more and more while walking up the lengthy staircase of the GAMERS to the event space on the seventh floor. As I stepped into the pop-up space filled with multiple small exhibitions, I turned a corner and there was the museum — well, not really a museum, more like a small convention booth that could fit like, four people, maybe five if one was a child. 

 

Obviously, the mystery of the museum was cracked far quicker than a Scooby-Doo short, but seeing it in person was still wonderful. Though not large, knowing that Hyouka was popular enough to get this pop-up space was nice. 

 

 

As I walked into the booth/event space/museum, on the right was a banner featuring iconic visuals organized to look like they’d been arranged on a chalkboard in a collage by the characters. Even after a decade, these visuals, drawn by the staff at Kyoto Animation and mostly by original character designer the late Futoshi Nishiya, are still as striking as ever. They would still stand out If they were released to promote a new series today.

 

 

In the center of the booth was the iconic key visual for the Hyouka anime. So iconic that the visual is used on Kyoto Animation’s website as the key visual. The recreation of the visual has the curious crew popped out from the background, giving a three-dimensional look to the image. It helped that two students blurred on the sides already gave the image a sense of depth, which was only amplified by the life-sized Classic Literature Club.

 

 

 

The final wall of the event space (which can be seen above) was used to sell Hyouka goods. All the goods in the glass case could be purchased alongside the books, Blu-rays and manga volumes from the franchise. A TV played the opening theme songs from the series on loop.

 

After collecting my gacha postcard of one of the characters and a copy of the first volume of the manga to read for the first time, I noticed that the elevator door had that same iconic visual on it, which sadly caused Hotaro and Chitanda to move apart whenever the doors opened. 

 

 

Hyouka is available to stream here on Crunchyroll in both subbed and dubbed formats, letting everyone enjoy the adventures of the Kyoto Animation classic.

 

All photos were taken by Daryl Harding unless otherwise noted.

 

 

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Daryl Harding is a Senior Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram. He loves to get curious!

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