dt 
No Thank You
**Hyouka** ep 16. This ep was a bit below the high bar that the show has set for itself.
As expected,[spoiler]||Satoshi fails again. This ep's shots framed his helplessness well, but not nearly to the same level as in the magic show.[/spoiler]
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From Eru's encounter with Hotaro's sister this ep, it seems like the reason the show never shows her face is to try give Oreki-sis a more otherworldly feel. From the distant shots down the hallway, to the careful focus on body language, to the dramatic angles as she passes Eru. I feel like the show is trying to frame Oreki-sis as some kind of wizard, or a god even. Showing her face would actually humanize her, and the show is actively trying to avoid that because they want her to feel more ethereal.
On top of that,[||spoiler]she just drops off Mayaka's Holy Grail without a second thought.[/spoiler]|| Oreki-sis does feel like she's separate from this world. Her comment about "whether this staves off your boredom or not is up to you" feels like it speaks to the audience more than Hotaro. Like she knows this is part of a larger narrative. I mean, maybe I've giving the show too much credit here, maybe this is just a bit of lamp-shading for this contrived way to put this arc's pieces together, but I still think it's neat.
I liked the afterword in_*A Corpse by Evening._* I liked that it portrayed art not as an assembly-line production, but a product of individual creators who put themselves into their work. That a collaboration does not (should not) diminish the individuals that created it. The line "self-review holds no ground to true criticism" was also interesting, because it seems to reflect the cast's inability to recognize their own strengths. Each of them sees their friends as someone special and valuable, just not themselves.
Mayaka suffers another disgrace at her club. Some good shots of her trying to hide her despair, particularly the handkerchief being filled with surrogate tears. The way Eru perked her back up so easily was great.
The scene of the main cast getting back to the club room again was good. The use of the light-dark motif was perphaps too overt in this last act of the ep, but it's not awful. I liked how Satoshi could tell that something very bad had happened to Mayaka without her having to say it, but Hotaro doesn't even know Mayaka loves manga. I like this sort of depiction of friendship as something that isn't uniform. Even within a group of friends, every pair is going to have their own emotional distance.
**Hyouka** ep 16. This ep was a bit below the high bar that the show has set for itself.
As expected,
From Eru's encounter with Hotaro's sister this ep, it seems like the reason the show never shows her face is to try give Oreki-sis a more otherworldly feel. From the distant shots down the hallway, to the careful focus on body language, to the dramatic angles as she passes Eru. I feel like the show is trying to frame Oreki-sis as some kind of wizard, or a god even. Showing her face would actually humanize her, and the show is actively trying to avoid that because they want her to feel more ethereal.
On top of that,
I liked the afterword in
Mayaka suffers another disgrace at her club. Some good shots of her trying to hide her despair, particularly the handkerchief being filled with surrogate tears. The way Eru perked her back up so easily was great.
The scene of the main cast getting back to the club room again was good. The use of the light-dark motif was perphaps too overt in this last act of the ep, but it's not awful. I liked how Satoshi could tell that something very bad had happened to Mayaka without her having to say it, but Hotaro doesn't even know Mayaka loves manga. I like this sort of depiction of friendship as something that isn't uniform. Even within a group of friends, every pair is going to have their own emotional distance.