Koten-bu Series

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I strongly believe Honobu Yonezawa is one of the best writers of japanese literature. His literaturical mannerisms and smart writing, whether using kanji wordplays or adding strong Christie influences (worn on his sleeve) prove such capacity.

With that said, Koten-bu Series is smart and provoking. It's a intricate work on its own, following Houtarou Oreki's daily life at Kamiyama High School. As stated many times by the character himself, he's an advocate of mininum effort, and he goes farther on such ideas to the point of getting average needed grades on tests.

But things become different when his sister, Tomoe, asks Houtarou to join the ... Classic Literature Club of Kamiyama. Considering that the club members graduated in the previous year, she doesn't want it to fade into nothingness and be closed by school directors. Against his will, Houtarou joins Classics Club, just to find another student, the lively Eru Chitanda, who was already at the classroom where the activities take place.

Along with Mayaka Ibara — library supporter and long-time Oreki's classroom colleague — and Satoshi Fukube, an outgoing close friend of Oreki, they revive the long forgotten club, and solve mysteries around the school in the meantime.

An adaptation called Hyouka, released in 2012, covers the first four volumes of the novel. And it is as detailed and well constructed as the original work, with a special note to the production and compelling atmosphere. Having watched it before reading, I was wondering if Yonezawa's ideas were as steadily pointed and developed as the anime, and I'm glad I did.

My only issue is the non-periodical release of volumes, that were only six in twenty years. Yonezawa follows a very free-on-his-own pacing, which won't be a problem for me as long as quality keeps high. With all that said, I strongly recommend trying Kotenbu Series, it is engaging and an intelligent work by the most strict sense of word. Thank me later.

10 Kudryavkas out of 10.

THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
(This is not a manga or an anime so instead of the usual criteria like music and animation i just speak about my general thoughts on it :D)

After i became a fan of the Koten-bu Series after i watched the phenomenal anime adaptation by Kyoto Animation. Everything from the characters, the music and the animation was perfect and i can safely say that it is one of my favorite anime ever. So naturally i wanted more of it, and discovered the original novels by Honobu Yonezawa. Two of these have not been adaped into an anime so i was really eager ... to read those. But would a simple novel without pictures, sound and animation be able to recreate the comfy atmosphere of the anime? The answer is yes!

My Ranking of the Novels goes as following:

1. Even though im told i now have wings (6)
2. The credit roll of the fool (2)
3. Approximating the distance between to people (5)
4. You can´t escape the niece of time (1)
5. The kudryafka sequence (3)
6. The doll that took a detour (4)

Note that novel #5 and #6 haven´t been adapted. There are no official englisch translations of the novels so you must figure out a way to read them on your own.

The Story is very simple on the outside. You have your stereotypical school setting with festivals,clubs and sport events. But those activities are just there to cover up some of the best written mysteries i have ever read. The funny thing about the mystery aspect of Hyouka is not that they are super intense or grand in scale. Most of them revolve around very mundane things that everyone may have experienced at some point in their school life.The real magic behind these mysteries is how they are told. Every single mystery evokes that sense of "curiousity" in the reader.When a new mystery comes up it is always a treat to see it solved,and it kinda feels like scratching an itch when it does.

But even that wouldn´t be enough to solidify this as a favorite because there are definitely better mysteries out there.The true strenght of the series lies within it´s characters.The main character Houtarou Oreki is maybe the best lead character of every novel i have ever read.He is written in such a unique way and seeing his steps to solving these mysteries is highly engaging.If you loved Oreki in the anime you will love him even more after reading the novels.That is because you see his inner thoght process on every single detail of information and dialogue. In the anime you see him solve a mystery from the outside but in the novels you ARE inside of his head which makes it even more interesting as before. The other characters are also great. You have the curious and cute Eru Chitanda who develops in a very interesting way especially in novel #6.The self-declared "Database" Satoshi Fukube also returns with many apperances throughout the stories and he is as fun and cleverly characterized as ever before. But the one character who impressed me the most out of the four was definitely Mayaka Ibara. The way the novels expand her character is truly fantastic. Not only that but there are multiple arcs where the novel was written from HER perspective some of which became my absolute favorites.

Honobu Yonezawas writing is insanely optimized. I have read englisch fan-translations so i don´t know if it is even better in japanese (which it probably is). But the way he writes these mysteries, giving you little hints and foreshadowing throughout, makes the novels a joy to read. Writing mysteries in itself is hard because you have to keep the readers engaged to the very end. Many authors need giant space-ships,murderers ,timetravel or war to keep an audience going. But making mysteries out of these mundane and everyday situations and making it enjoyable is an absolutely insane feed.

These novels have made me go through every possible emotion. Sadness, anger and of course curiosity. I nearly cried at one of the story arcs in novel #6.
This is a series that can truly be read by anyone. I can recommend this for anyone who likes to read novels. It is a truly beautiful experience!

- Marco_Yooo

FINAL SCORE - 10/10

I see what is Koten-bu trying to go for – to show that even mundane things in life can be interesting. Not bad for a concept, though hardly original one. The stumbling block of this novel is just that – being mundane. Or to be specific, being too mundane. It’s not that the mundane things are told in a symbolic way, or that a hidden deeper meaning of small occurrences is discovered. No, it is portrayed as mundane and mundane it stays. It doesn’t fall into the “mundane made awesome” trope. The “mysteries” are wholly unexciting, uninteresting and I wouldn’t hesitate to call them irrelevant. ... Though maybe it would be going too far to call it irrelevant to the plot, as if you would take them away there wouldn’t be much plot less. So yeah, the very core of Koten-bu is simply… boring.

Now you could object that perhaps it’s the characters that carry the script, not the plot itself. And to this accusation I must unfortunately also respond negatively. Well, the protagonist is what I think carried the popularity of this franchise, but not because he’s a greatly written characters – rather because he’s one of the “OMG that’s literally me” characters. You know, the usual “lone wolf outsider but somehow has a social circle build around him” and “clever but doesn’t want to even bother with most things”. The kind of characters to which people would point out and say things like “See, I’m totally also clever like them, it’s just that I don’t use this power” and “I’m also lazy like that, that’s so cool” etc. I swear large part of this series' popularity is thanks to two or so quotes by the protagonist that keep getting reposted on the internet. See also Hachiman and Ayanokouji. The heroine of the story, Chitanda… well, compared to the anime she’s less annoying. But also, compared to the anime she isn’t as moe thanks to the novel lacking visual aspect, and being moe was one of the few saving graces of Hyouka. This results in her being just forgettable. The rest of the cast – even more forgettable.

Overall, to me Koten-bu feels like just another of works that are aimed towards people that didn’t have much successful social life during their high school and are looking for a substitute in a form of fiction, one where the protagonist is cool but the plot is more or less still believably relatable for easier self-insertion. And I grew tired of these kind of works. If you’re going to dream, at least dream big and make it exciting, not this mediocre bullshit. But maybe it’s just me growing old. Or maybe it’s just some subconscious tendency to feel “elitish” – you be the judge, because undeniably most people that read this so far seem to have enjoyed it. Whether it’s because it’s actually good and I’m unfairly grumpy or because people are simply not going to read novels that don’t sound interesting to them so only those already into this style of writing are reading this. Only one way to find out, and that is giving it a try yourself. Or just watch the anime instead, that at least has nice animation. You won’t be missing much by skipping the novel and only watching the adaptation.